Mister Fixit (Love in New York #3) (18 page)

“I came back with your brother for Christmas break.”

“Oh, believe me, I remember every detail.” My heart grows full with memories of myself dreaming of him over the years. That first day I saw him, I knew. I knew he’d play the starring role in my dreams forever.

“So do I. You were wearing shorts and a rainbow unicorn T-shirt. You were just a kid.”

I frown. “Shorts? It was winter time.”

“I know. You were dancing around in your room or something. You came running down the stairs in shorts and a T-shirt, with your hair in a ponytail. You told James you were going to be a cheerleader when you were older and you had to start learning the moves now.”

“Oh my god, I forgot that part.” A flash of Rob at the bottom of the stairs comes to me. “I was so mad at James for not warning me you were coming.”

The corner of Rob’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “You were mad at him? Why?”

I sigh, trying not to grin but finding it impossible. “He sent a picture of the two of you home with one of his letters. I’m afraid to admit I got a little nuts over that thing.”

“Reeeally? When you were that young? Tell me more.”

His silly grin makes me want to smack him or kiss him, I can’t decide which. I keep talking instead of choosing between the two. “I don’t know. I just saw you and you were wearing that crew shirt and you guys had your arms around each other and…” I shrug. It seems silly to say it out loud.

“What? Tell me.” He leans in closer, shutting out the world. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I thought you said you were terrible at keep secrets.”

“Not all secrets. Just the ones that should be shared.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Stop stalling and tell me the rest of the story about how you fell in love with my picture.”

“Hey! I didn’t say I fell in love with your picture.” I try to push him away, but he stays put, holding me tighter. I feel silly with him smiling at me like that.

“Come on, just admit it,” he says.

“No. I’m not admitting anything.” I pout, trying to move past my silly emotions. He could devastate me so easily. One wrong word and I could go from happy and confident to destroyed. I feel like I’m standing near the edge of a cliff being urged to move a little closer to it.

“Okay, I’ll start.” He leans down and kisses me briefly on the lips, pulling away before we can really get into it. “The first time I saw you, I thought of you like a kid sister. That vacation, you were with us everywhere. James was annoyed, but I thought it was cute. I didn’t have any siblings, as you know, so having a little girl running around bugging us was funny to me. And you were so comical. I was constantly laughing at the things you were saying, but James just got madder and madder. I didn’t care that you were always there. I liked it.”

My heart lurches, like it’s flipped over in my chest cavity. The smile on my face gets even bigger. “Really?” That he had the patience for a little girl as an eighteen year old teenager is amazing. I remember my brother trying to shut me out of his bedroom and our mother forcing him to let me stay.

“Really. James hated that I liked having you around. I think he was jealous or something. Not that he was in love with me or anything, but I think he had more exciting things planned for our break than babysitting his annoying little sister. After the first week, he did everything he could to keep me away from you.”

“I didn’t notice.”

He laughs. “Of course you didn’t. Because no matter what he did, you showed up anyway.”

I can’t look Rob in the eyes now. I remember hounding them over the years like some kind of crazy hunting dog on a scent. When I got to my pre-teen and early teen years, I’d ask my parents where James was going, they’d tell me, and I’d pretend like I was planning to go there too and get my mom or my dad to drop me off or force James to chaperone me.

“The country club, the mall, the golf course, even.”

“And I hated golf too,” I add, kind of proud of my determination at such a young age. I’m going to try and convince myself it was that and not the early budding stage of a stalker.

“You were terrible at it, I remember that.”

“Hey!” I play smack him on the chest. “I wasn’t that bad.”

“You hit the side of our cart with a ball from the tee.

“It was a bad slice.”

“James was convinced you were trying to put him in the hospital.”

“He was always overly dramatic.”

“Your brother? Overly dramatic? On what planet?”

“Whatever. He just didn’t want to share you, but I did.” I shrug. “Not my problem.”

“I’m glad you made him share. Over the years we both got used to it. And after I saw you in your bathing suit when you were seventeen, I didn’t want to hang out with him anymore anyway.”

“What? You’re crazy.” I want to jump out from his arms and dance and sing, but I restrain myself. Barely.

“It was yellow and pink. Bright colors. And each side had this tassel thing hanging down. You were way too young for me, but I couldn’t help staring.”

“Wow, your attention to detail is amazing.”

He leans in and whispers in my ear. “I remember other things about you in that suit too, but I’m keeping it clean since we’re in public.” His lips touch my neck and he kisses me. A shiver moves out from there to cover my entire body.

“Next!” a voice from off to my left says loudly.

We both look up suddenly, as if we’ve been caught doing something we shouldn’t have.

A lady is standing there with a clipboard in both hands. “You coming in or staying out here?” She smiles.

“On our way.” Rob takes my hand in his and guides me into the restaurant. I’m glad for the support because otherwise, I’d probably just float right up into the ether and set the sky on fire.

Chapter Thirty

THE PLACE IS HOPPING. THERE must be three hundred people inside, from all walks of life. It’s impossible to tell how many are tourists and how many are locals. We get a seat right in the center of everything, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with other people at tables so close I could reach over and sneak french fries from their plates.

“You’ve been here before?” I ask.

“Once.” He looks down at his menu.

“Was it a date?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look up.

Jealousy like I’ve never known comes rising up from the depths and feels like it’s strangling me. I want to kill this woman, whoever she is. Obviously, I’ve gone completely mental, now that I have my prize nearly in my grasp. I should probably stop asking questions and convince myself that jealously like this is a bad idea, but I don’t. Of course I don’t.

“Do I know her? What’s her name?”

“Yes, you know her.” He frowns at the menu, like he’s concentrating really hard on it.

I lift my own menu a little and move it across the table to tap on his with it. He finally looks up, acting all innocent like he wasn’t just trying to hide from me.

“What’s her name?”

He stares at me for a few seconds before answering. “Does it matter?”

I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. “Yes. It matters to me.”

“I’m not seeing her anymore. I went out with her twice. That’s it. It was never serious.”

“Just waiting for a name,” I say, smiling. I’m pretty sure my expression is a little strained, but the more he plays hard to get, the more worried I become.

He opens his mouth to say something, but a voice coming out over a loudspeaker interrupts him.

“Are we ready for a little noise?” the person asks, obviously expecting a positive response.

I look around, confused as to what’s going on. There’s a table of women across the room from me who are waving long strips of white paper around. It’s then that I notice a server with a roll of register tape running from table to table, ripping off two-foot lengths of it and giving them to other diners.

I lean over and ask my date, “What the heck?” but before Rob can answer, the voice is back, and now there’s music pumping out of the sound system.

“Aw, yeah, baby! Let me introduce to you… tonight, back from his Broadway debut… Johnny Blakely!” The girls at the other table start yelling and waving their register tape even more enthusiastically. And then off to my right some guy starts jumping up and down and singing into the microphone. I recognize Macklemore’s
Can’t Hold Us
immediately.

Rob starts to grin, and I smile like a fool. I had no idea we were going to be treated to a show with our meals. When the waiter behind me hands me some register tape, I take it and start waving it around enthusiastically with everyone else.

The entire place is hopping with the beat. I can feel the bass in my bones. The singing waiter jumps up on the back of the booth Rob is sitting in and does a rap duo with another server across the room. Lights are flashing, and a chorus line of other servers starts up; they’re dancing in synch to the rhythm set by the two rapper guys, the music, and all us diners stomping our feet.
 

I start yelling for the sheer joy of it, and I’m not the only one. It’s crazy; like I’ve entered into another dimension where yelling at the top of your lungs and waving paper around is completely acceptable behavior in a restaurant.

By the time they finish, they’re covered in sweat and I’m exhausted. There’s more yammering going on over the mic but I can’t focus on anything but Rob now.

“Did you know that was going to happen?” Why am I out of breath? I have no idea. I’m not the one who was performing, but it feels like I was.

“The singing? Yeah. It happens all the time. You’ll hear more.”

I look at the guy who was just rapping his butt off, who’s now calmly serving drinks at a table nearby. “More? How can they possibly keep that up all night?”

“It won’t be him singing all the time. They take turns.”

“They?” I’m wondering if they hire performers and mix them in with the other servers.

“Everyone who works here is a Broadway hopeful. They all can sing and dance, and they take turns. Usually it’s musical numbers, but not always.”

I have more questions, but they’ll have to wait because our server’s here and he wants to know what we’re ordering. After some hemming and hawing I settle for a chicken wrap and then stare at my date while another song starts, this one from
Les Miserables.

“This is the most interesting first date I’ve ever had.”

“It doesn’t feel so much like a first date anymore,” Rob says, leaning forward and taking my hand. He rests it on the table as he gazes at me.

I swear it hurts to look at him this close and know he’s here with me. He’s so beautiful.

“What?” he asks, smiling.

“What?” I say back, feeling silly.

“What are you thinking? You have the cutest expression on your face.”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“Fine, you want to know? I was thinking how gorgeous you are. And how I can’t believe I’m sitting here across from you after thinking about doing it for so long.”

“How long?” he asks, teasing me.

“Way too long.” A little girl’s crush turned into a teenager’s obsession and eventually an adult woman’s fantasy.

His teasing face falls away. “Me too. It’s been too long.” He tilts his head. “Tell me again why we waited to do this.”

I shrug. “I had no idea you wanted to.”

“How could you not know?”

“You never gave me any signals.” I can clearly remember thinking how one-sided the feelings were. He smiled at me and was polite, but I never caught him looking at me or trying to get close to me.

“That’s because your brother would have killed me.”

“Why? Why is he so against us being together?”

“I guess a lot of his friends started going after you once you got some curves, and he was starting to think that’s the only reason anyone came around to hang out with him anymore.”

“That’s not true.” This is the first I’m hearing of this. I think Rob’s fooling himself.

“It absolutely is. And he’s warned me in no uncertain terms that I’m not to go near you. More than once.”

I sit back in my chair, my hand sliding from Rob’s. “And you listened to him?”

“I listened before, but I’m not now, am I?” He pauses. “What’s wrong? Are you mad?”

I shrug. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“At me or James?”

“James, mostly. Why would he do that? Why would he interfere in my life like that? In my happiness?”

Rob’s expression changes. It happens so fast and then it’s gone, I almost can believe I imagined it. But when his jaw tightens once really fast after, I know I didn’t.

“What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

Rob shakes his head. “Now’s not the time to discuss it.”

“When?” I ask, getting cranky.

“When what?”

“When will be the time to discuss it?”

Rob stares into my eyes for a long time. “After dinner. I promise.”

I nod once. “Fine. After dinner, then.” I try to smile and move past the moment, but it’s impossible. Now there’s some kind of weird dark shadow hanging over our table that won’t go away. Our dinner is delivered, and I manage to eat some of it, but when they ask if we want coffee or dessert I decline and ask for the check.

“Anxious to leave?” Rob asks, putting his napkin on the table next to his plate.

“Anxious to get to the bottom of your story,” I say, standing as the bill arrives.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Get into all these details before we have a chance to enjoy ourselves for a while?” He helps me get into my coat as the mood grows even darker.

“I’m sure.” We walk out of the diner into the cold night air. Rob hails a taxi and I follow him inside. He gives the address for his apartment, but I don’t say a word. Might as well get to the bottom of things, so I can decide whether I’m going to keep singing Rob’s praises and my good fortune or start planning the rest of my life without him in it.

Chapter Thirty-One

I HAVE ONLY BEEN TO Rob’s place a few times in my life. Today I’m seeing it for the first time as his girlfriend. Or his potential girlfriend. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next hour. We could end up in bed together, or I could be in a taxi going home and crying my eyes out. The stress of not knowing which one it will be is killing me.