The Someday Jar (29 page)

Yes, sure, I may be unoriginal, but at least I look cute.

A mischievous corner-smile curves his lips. The same smile that I’m certain has garnered its way into countless women’s panties. Not that it matters, but the smile does have its charm.

“So . . .” he says, “I need someone like you?”

“What? No, not like me.” I reach for a pencil, though I’ve nothing to jot down. “Well, yes, technically, I suppose . . . exactly like me.” Bree, what have you done? You’ve given Nixon the wrong impression with your flirty and sassy ‘you’re my two percent’ garbage. Some expert you are, leading the poor guy on. I pull the lapels of my blazer closer together, then with the eraser, tap the framed picture of Sean and me paddle boarding in Cabo. “Sorry, Nixon, not me. I’m here for you professionally.”

“Whoa. I was kidding. Did you think . . . me and you?” He laughs loud enough to grab a glance from my secretary, Stacia, seated in the next room.

It isn’t that funny. No funnier than that spotted patch of jaw fuzz you call a beard.

“You’re too old anyway,” he says.

“I’m thirty-one!”

“Yep.”

I shoot him a look, but, truth be told, his comment stings, more so since I filled out a health insurance questionnaire two weeks ago and, thanks to my last birthday, had to check a lower box. A lower box.

But my eggs won’t shrivel up until I’m forty-something, right?

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Nixon says. “You’ve
made yourself clear.” He nods as if about to say something more, but stops. For the briefest moment, his jaw bone clenches and he stares at his feet.

I’ve struck a nerve.

Two seconds ago I was prepared to kick Nixon in the shins—hard—but now, a wave of loneliness washes over me. Not for me. For him. Nixon’s a good man. Yes, a tad smug, making a mockery of my livelihood, but all the same, he deserves a loving relationship, someone to hold hands with when shopping for air filters on Saturday afternoons or snuggle close to on lazy Sunday mornings. The type of effortless connection I have with Sean.

As I think about my boyfriend of four years, a sense of calm replaces my unease. I think about how his beach-colored hair reflects the season, dark like wet sand in the winter and light as dry sand in the summer, a result of surfing and impromptu weekend volleyball games. His skin bronzes the color of a mocha latte and we mark the calendar noting how long his swim trunks tan line lasts. January 9th is the record. My sun-screened body never makes it past October 1.

We hardly argue—aside from him getting upset when I fall asleep during Bruce Willis movies (try as I might, his acting is like a horse tranquilizer to me)—or the few times I didn’t laugh at one of his lame lawyer jokes. But, at the end of the day, there’s a treasured comfort level that we share, a priceless familiarity.

My eyes dart to my purse where I tucked the Post-It note Sean stuck on my bathroom mirror this morning while I showered.

You, me. Antonio’s. 8:00 p.m.

Today is our anniversary. Leave it to Sean, scrawling a note
about our special evening. That’s so him. Such an adorable little quirk he has, writing everything down on stickies. I swear there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t find something scribbled and stuck somewhere; on his apartment’s medicine cabinet, dash of his Audi, upper right corner of his latest deposition. I bite my lip, quelling my smile as I remember the other night when I found Sean, naked in my bed, with a smiley face drawn on a Post-it, and stuck on the tip of his—

“Bree?” Nixon redirects my attention. “Wasn’t it you that chewed me out for not being present?”

“Sorry.” I pat my cheeks, hoping they haven’t flushed as pink as they feel. “Yes, let’s continue with your situation. You’re paying me to find you love, so its time to let me call the shots and—”

“You win.” Nixon raises his hands in surrender. “My cousin’s wedding is a couple weeks away and my mom will see right through me if I show up with a piece of arm candy. Get my mom off my back so I can focus on work. You pick the woman this time.”

“Finally!” I raise my fists in victory.

“Settle down, crazy lady.” He laughs. “Just find me my lovely.”

I sit upright, pulled like a puppet on a string, caught by the tenderness of his words. My lovely. “Why, Nixon Voss! Underneath this smooth-talking, systematic, number-crunching, all-business-all-the-time exterior is a mushy center.”

“There’s nothing mushy about me.”

“A soft underbelly.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Beneath your thick crust, you’re as gooey as a marshmallow.”

“Okay, then, time for me to go.” He stands, but before
turning away, points at the
New York Times
bestseller webpage. “People buy their way onto that list, you know.”

“What?” I spin around for a quick peek. “No, they don’t.” Do they?

“Sure they do. It’s not about quality. It’s about how many aunts in Wisconsin got their garden club friends to buy her niece’s book in a particular week. It’s manipulation and marketing.”

It’s all Jo reads.

Nixon braces his fingers on my desk’s edge. For the first time, I notice tiny specs of brown sprinkled in his blue eyes and catch a whiff of his Giorgio Armani cologne. I recognize the woody scent because I bought a bottle for Sean last Christmas.

He exchanged it.

“So, how many weeks?” Nixon asks.

“Until the release? Eight.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t put too much weight on the
New York Times
, Amazon, or
USA Today
lists because they have as much merit as what’s etched on the bathroom stall of a gas station. It’s not the only threshold of success.”

My tattoo tingles. It does this at random times: writing a check, reading an e-mail, pouring detergent into the wash.

I glance at my parents’ initials, L and S, scripted around an inch-long scar, snaking the inside of my wrist. The toughened pink flesh tingles and as I trace the letters, I see the hint of my mom’s narrow hands and slender fingers in my own. I’d never noticed the similarities until the night I sat rigid in the backseat of Dad’s Jeep Cherokee with arms folded across my chest in an adolescent act of defiance. Illuminated by the dashboard lights, Mom’s thumb massaged Dad’s vein, bulging above his temple, soothing his anger as he drove us toward home.

I think about the deafening screams and shattered glass, the hissing fluids, the smell of fuel, the twisted steel. I think about the suffering in Jo’s eyes and the arms-length distance she’s kept me ever since my dad and mom, Jo’s only daughter, died. I think about the reverence Jo gives bestselling authors and the purpose and compulsion I’ve invested into
Can I See You Again?
I think about how it’d feel for her to be proud of me. To like me again. To share something besides loss.

I glance again at the bestseller list. Not the only threshold of success? It is for me.

Nixon taps my desk, redirecting my attention a second time.

Honestly, Bree, hold it together.

“Find me the right woman.”

“Will do.” I step around my desk and slide my hands on my hips. “You know what they say, twelfth time’s the charm.”

“Sounds good.”

“Leaving so soon?” Stacia purrs, sauntering toward us in a borderline-too-short-for work shift dress and wedge heels, twisting the end of her long blond ponytail, this week’s hairstyle. She colors, straightens or curls her hair, adds or removes extensions, more frequently than I empty my dishwasher.

I chuckle at Stacia, my closest friend since our freshman year at UCSD. Assigned as roommates, we shared a two-hundred square foot dorm room and a wicked fight three weeks into our first semester—who knew that turning my hair dryer on and off, on and off, on and off, as I readied for my 7:00 a.m. class rather than leaving it on until my hair was completely dry, hovered her on the edge of sanity? The following day she bought me a sleek, quieter hair dryer and we hugged it out. We’ve been tight ever since.

“Gotta get to the office,” he says.

“Be prepared, Nixon,” I say, “the woman I choose will count past six.”

“I’ll bring my abacus.”

Once he’s a few feet away, Stacia whispers, “He’s smokin’ hot. One of those silent but deadly guys.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s the kinda guy that’s aloof and guarded just enough to be sexy, but not conceited.” She watches Nixon leave. “You don’t see it?”

I follow her gaze.

The paperclip is stuck to Nixon’s butt.

That’s what he gets for calling me
old.

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