Push Me (To The Edge series, #1) (9 page)

Sam
offered me another slice of pizza. I turned it down.

“I’ll be right back.
” He stood. “Going to get a box. This’ll make for a good breakfast in the morning.”

I watched him walk to the counter and get one of the boxes. The thought of him eating cold pizza for breakfast was odd. He’d been a professional athlete, in top shape, and he still was. He must have worked out a lot if he was eating like that.

Sam put the remaining few slices in the box, looked at his watch and said, “You like beer and live music?”

.  .  .  .  .

Ten minutes later we were in a dive, a small place in the basement of a building. A man and a woman were on the stage performing acoustic cover versions of classic rock songs.

I was worried that he was taking me to a place where there would be dancing, something I occasionally enjoyed, but wasn’t really in the right frame of mind for at the time.

The place was dimly lit, with a little light being reflected off the brown walls from lamps pointed upward, casting glowing triangles toward the ceiling. The only other illumination in the bar came from the tables themselves. They were made of alternating panels of wood and glass, the glass portions having small bulbs inside that provided muted light. They were interesting, odd things I’d never seen before, lined up in front of the dark red velvet-covered benches.

I ordered a Stella Artois.
Sam had a Newcastle. We sat in one of the booths near the back of the room. The music wasn’t too loud. Perfect for talking.

Sam
had been playful, even teasing, in the pizza place, but his mood became more subdued in the bar. He seemed more focused on me.

“Tell me more about your job,” he said at one point, and I explained everything I hadn’t told him when we ran into each other on the Atlanta trip. He
hadn’t been interested in my work then, and I’d had no intention of telling him about it at that time.

He listened intently
now, only taking his eyes off of me when picking up his beer glass. He asked questions that no one had ever asked me before.

When I felt like I’d talked enough, I said, “Do you miss playing baseball?”

“Not anymore. I like my life.”

“That’s great.”

“It is. How about you? Do you like where you are in life?”

I’d spent several months trying to answer that question, and had come to the realization that I was content. I liked the direction in which I was headed. Professionally, at least, which was my only
real focus. I told Sam all of that.

“So,” he said, “
you’re not looking for someone special.”

“Oh, God, no. Not at all.”

“How long have you been single?”

This wasn’t a subject I wanted to discuss, but it also wasn’t an unreasonable question. “About four months.”

“Right around the time we last saw each other.”

I nodded as I sipped my beer.

“So you were recently single.”

“No,” I said. “I was still with him.”

“No wonder you gave me the brush-off.”

I wasn’t going to live that down.
“That’s not why. You didn’t remember me.
Remember
?”

“Yes,
I remember not remembering you.”

This was the most enjoyable, easy-going time I’d had with a man in…
well, it was impossible to say how long. A very long time, at any rate.

The duo onstage finished a song.
Sam and I applauded with the rest of the audience. Then they started playing “Leaving On A Jet Plane.”

“Speaking of leaving on a jet,”
Sam said over the music, “I have an early flight tomorrow.”

It occurred to me that I did, too. The evening had gone so well that I’d even forgotten what day it was. Work was the farthest thing from my mind.

When I mentioned that we were both frequent travelers, he said, “Too bad we only ran into each other that one time.”

“Well, it’s a big country
with a lot of airports. What are the chances?”

“True. Where are you headed next?” he asked.

I picked up my purse. “Phoenix.”

Sam
looked at me, straight-faced. “The chances are better than you think, Claire…I mean Dawn.”

Chapter Eight

“We’re going to Phoenix,” I told Rachel.

“Wait. What?”

“Not together. But I’m going there tomorrow and so is he. For a baseball series, or whatever they call it.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,”
Rachel said. “What are the chances?”

“One h
undred percent, apparently.”

I had called her the minute I got home. I would have called her on the subway, but
Sam accompanied me all the way to my building before going back to his place.

And I was held up for a few minutes in the lobby. The new doorman, Kenny, had been eyeing me strangely
for the past few days and when I walked in that night, he said hello, I said hello back, kept walking, and then he asked me if I liked Lindsey Buckingham.

I stopped halfway to the elevator bank and turned. What kind of question was that out of nowhere?

“I’m not sure who that is,” I replied.

“From Fleetwood Mac.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not too familiar with them. I’m really tired, so…goodnight.” I started to walk toward the elevators again.

“I thought you might not. You can’t be more than, what, twenty-five?” he said.

I didn’t like this conversation, if you could even call it that.

I kept walking and just said, “I’m a little older than that,” then felt
disturbed when I realized he was trying to find out how old I was.

Kenny, for the record, must have been pushing fifty.

He said, “Goodnight, Dawn,” just as the elevator doors were closing.

I was new to the building, so I didn’t want to cause any problems, but I briefly considered saying something to Carlos, the main doorman, who was very professional and probably wouldn’t stand for Kenny flirting with residents.

Lindsey Buckingham? Really? Get a new approach, Kenny, and don’t use it on me
, I thought as I rode up to my floor.

“Tell me everything,”
Rachel said, when I called her. “I want details. Go.”

I told her the whole story, from the bookstore encounter to the pizza joint and the bar, to the subway ride home.

“He was funny and playful and didn’t try any of that shit Ian did early on. You know, the low voice and the staring deeply into my eyes like he was trying to put me in a trance, like he was some kind of damn vampire or something.”

“T
hat all used to sound so good to me,” Rachel said. “But not anymore.”

Rachel
and I always read the same books at the same time. We had our own little two-person book club. When we discovered erotic romance, we tore through those novels faster than anything else we read, and we both found ourselves totally smitten with those wildly dreamy alpha males.

“He’s so…” I tried to think of a better word, but I couldn’t. “Normal. That’s what he is.”

“Nothing wrong with that, as long as you don’t get bored.”

I said, “Not normal as in boring—”

“I know what you mean.”

I was standing in my little kitchen. I had too much energy to sit down. “It makes me wonder what it would be like. After
Ian, you know? To date a guy who isn’t so goddamn intense all the time. Ugh.”

Even the thought of how I had to act around
Ian was exhausting to me now. Who can maintain that level of submission all the time? And to think that all along I was trying to do it to please him, to meet his lusty demands, and he had manufactured the whole thing.

“You’re doing it again
,” Rachel said. “Don’t get worked up over him. It’s history.”

“I know. You’re right.”

I walked around my apartment, which didn’t take very long, but I had to move. I was walking in circles as I listened to Rachel.

“This was meant to be,” she said. “
I know you said the chances were a hundred percent, but seriously, think about what’s happening here. You have to see where this goes. Maybe this Sam guy is the one. Maybe not. But in the meantime, you could have some fun.”

“I’m not even thinking about that,” I said.
And if she brought up the analogy about dried up eggs again, I was going to hang up on her.

“Yeah, you are.”

“I am? Do tell.”

“You’re definitely thinking about it,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t ha
ve spent so much time with him.”

“Okay, so maybe the possibility did run through my mind once or twice.”

“Or forty times. Remember when we went to see
Friends With Benefits
and
No Strings Attached
? We were totally into the idea.”

She was right.
When we saw them, we debated which was the better movie, and her bringing it up again on the phone started that discussion again. She liked the first movie, while I liked the second one.

“I could do that,” I said. “I mean, nothing’s happened yet.”

“
Yet
,” she scoffed. “But you know he wants something to happen, and we both know you do, too.”

I thought about it for roughly a half second.
“This could be just what I need. Something fun, no commitment.”

“
Right. Why should guys be the only ones to go after something like that?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, “I think we’ve talked you into it. You need something fun, something different, something…just
something
. Even if it’s just a rebound thing. So what? Hell, I’d take that right now.”

It made me realize I hadn’t asked her about her evening.
“What did you do tonight?”

“Nothing as exciting as your night. Actually, it was a disaster.”
She told me she met someone from Match.com, a guy named Bradley. “Not Brad. Bradley. I called him Brad once and he corrected me.”

“Really.”

“Weird, huh? Anyway,” she said, “remember that wine bar we went to a few months ago?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s where we went. His idea. So I’m thinking, okay, this guy knows his wine, I like wine. Could be a good night. But, no. He starts talking about how wine is made, which is fine for like, I don’t know, the first fifteen minutes. But he keeps going on and on and on about it, and I’m thinking, okay, this guy just read a book on wine-making and he’s trying to impress me with his knowledge or something.” She stopped and took a breath.

“Wow, that’s a lot of wine talk.”

“Too much.
Way
too much. It wasn’t even a conversation. It was a lecture, is what it was. But that’s not the worst part.”

Having made several trips around my apartment, I was getting a little tired of it, so I finally sat down on my couch. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

“He starts telling me that certain wines are aphrodisiacs. And, of course, he’s an expert on that, too, so he starts listing the wines that supposedly make you horny.”

“I thought
most alcohol made people horny,” I said.

“No, just stupid enough to make stupid sex decisions.
So I’m still faking interest in his bullshit, and then—then!—he says we should get a bottle of one of the sex wines and go back to my place.”

“No shit.”

“Nope.”

“So which one did you pick?”

“Ha ha,” she mock laughed. “That would be
none
. I didn’t even answer him, because it got even worse.”

“Oh, no
.”

“He tells me, ‘
You don’t have to do anything. I’m an expert with my tongue.’”

“Oh,
I’m sure,” I said. “Tell me again all the good reasons for meeting this guy?”

Rachel
said, “I know, right? He wasn’t anything like that in our emails or on the phone. It was like he was a different person when we met up.”

“I told you.”

Rachel and I had a vastly different view of Internet dating. She thought it was the best way to meet new people. I thought it was the best way to meet new people who act one way online and totally different when you meet them, or the best way to meet someone who will chop you up and leave various parts of your body around the city for the authorities to find.

My view wasn’t based on
any personal experience. I’d never tried it. My opinion came from Rachel having not one, but more like five or six dates where the guy was totally different in person. But still she kept doing it. As for the chopping up thing, I guess I’d watched too many TV crime dramas.

“I know,” she said. “But it’s so hard to meet people. There has to be
one
normal guy online, right?”

“Hmmm. What are the chances you’ll find him?”

Rachel sighed and I could imagine her falling onto her side on her couch, exasperated at the thought that she’d never find “The One.”

“
I’m not giving up hope yet,” she said. “But probably close to zero. You have all the luck. Speaking of that, as your best friend I’m morally obligated to encourage you to take it slow and be careful, but this time I’m not going to.”

.  .  .  .  .

There’s really nothing quite like sitting in an airport restaurant, watching your ex-boyfriend on CNN. But that’s exactly what I was doing around noon the next day.

The sound on the TV was low, and I got the waiter to turn it up so I could hear what they were saying over the looped footage of
Ian, with two FBI agents behind him. He was handcuffed, and they were walking him from his office building to a waiting car, through a scrum of aggressive reporters and camera operators.

I watched, transfixe
d, as the images played out above the words on the bottom of the screen: BREAKING NEWS: NYC INVESTMENT FIRM RAIDED.

I listened to the anchor explain the story
. The firm wasn’t exactly raided. It was a planned search warrant execution that coincided with Ian turning himself in to the authorities. Details were sketchy, but the gist of it was that the FBI had been investigating Ian and his associates at Baker Capital—named after Ian the CEO himself—for six months.

God, I was still with him for two of those…

The charges against Ian included securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, money laundering, filing false documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and multiple counts of making false statements to investigators. All very serious charges, any one of which would bring serious jail-time if he were to be convicted.

In all, the reporter said, there were as many as
500 people who fell victim to Ian’s scheme. They ended the story by comparing him to Bernie Madoff, one of the most notorious investment Ponzi schemers of the last decade.

I was so nervous I could hardly hold my phone when trying to call
Rachel.

She answered: “Hey, I’
m on the subway, so if I lose you—”

“
Ian’s been arrested,” I interrupted.

She almost shouted her response. “
No! For what?”

I told her what I’d been watching on CNN, including the part about him being investigated while we were still together.

“This is crazy,” she said. “I’m not sure whether to laugh at him or cry for you.”

“I know you really hated him, but this sucks.”

“You’re right. Sorry. I’m really just worried about you. Are you okay?”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I picked up a napkin to dab them away. “I’m shaking.
And
I have to get on an airplane in about thirty minutes.”

“I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

I wished there was, too. She was my best friend, and I needed her by my side to keep me from flipping out.

“
Call me if you need to talk. I have a meeting with a potential client, and I’d normally turn my phone off but I’ll keep it on just in case.”

I had to take
my eyes off the screen. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

“Call me if you need to. I’ll only be with these people for an hour or so.”

I wished she didn’t have to go, but work was work. “I will.”

“Love you.”

“You too. Talk to you soon.”

The waiter stopped at my table.
I made a point of not looking up. I didn’t want him to see my eyes.

“You can take this,” I said,
pushing my plate toward the edge of the table.

“Was
something wrong with it?”

I’d barely eaten any of the salad, so the plate was almost full. “It’s not the food. I’m just not as hungry as I thought.”

He picked it up. “Can I refill your diet Sprite?”

“That’d be great.” I handed
him my glass, but then reconsidered, figuring I definitely could use something stronger right about now. “Actually, I’ll take a martini instead.”