Mister O(85)

Which means . . . ding, ding, ding . . . Harper Holiday has every reason to believe I’d do anything for work. I’d go anywhere for my show. She has no reason to think anything else.

Charlotte confirms this with her next assessment. “She knows that your job—understandably—has been the center of your universe for all of your twenties.”

I nod again, and Fido takes the opportunity to stretch across Charlotte’s lap and flop to his back, offering her his belly for petting. He is such a manwhore.

“But,” I say, shaking my finger as I trot out more evidence, “I told her I loved her and she said ‘I can’t tell you not to go to L.A.’ She didn’t say she loved me.”

Charlotte waves off my concern. “That’s not the issue. She’s trying to show you she supports you. She doesn’t want you to make the decision based on her.”

“How would I be doing that?”

“By blurting out that you love her in the same breath as you tell her that you’re moving to L.A,” Charlotte says calmly as she pets Fido.

“And that means I’m making her make the decision?”

“Yes, and she cares about you, so she wants you to be free to make the right decision for you,” she says, pointing at me.

I narrow my eyes. “How do you know that she cares about me?”

“When you told her about this new opportunity, she urged you to take it. Yet somehow you think that means she doesn’t care about you? Am I understanding correctly?”

Spencer smiles widely and drapes an arm around her. “My wife is brilliant, isn’t she?” Then to her, “So can you tell us what this all means?”

Charlotte rolls her eyes. “You two are such ding-dongs. And I love you both. In different ways, of course.”

“Better be different ways,” Spencer says with a huff.

Charlotte turns to me. “How did you feel when you were with her? Did it seem as if she felt the same way?”

Spencer covers his ears. “La la la. I don’t want to hear.”

As he continues to hum, I tell Charlotte more than I’d ever admit to him. “Yes, it did. Completely. We were in sync. You know? The way she looked at me. The things she said . . .” My voice trails off. I don’t tell her how I felt in bed with Harper last night, but I know she had to feel the same way.

Tell me you feel it, too.

Just the memory of last night lights me up.

I replay the moments in the cab before she left Manhattan, and how we finally admitted how much we wanted to see each other.

I rewind to what Harper said after running into Jillian. I’d thought she was trying to box me up in the friendship zone. But what if she was trying to do the same thing I was doing—make sure we were something, at least? That we didn’t lose each other? Because something is better than nothing. I replay all the moments we shared—her asking me to take her to the train station because she wanted to see me, her showing up after midnight in a cape, her bringing me ice cream, and giving me detergent and pencils, and taking me to the shower showroom, and coming to Gino’s party, and throwing the bowling match, and giving me my librarian fantasy, and even wearing lingerie for me. My God, the fantastic, heavenly, unholy lingerie she wears that drives me out of my mind. She turns me on, and she makes me happy, and she inspires me and—

Charlotte interrupts my reverie. “I think the question isn’t whether she should tell you not to go to L.A. The question is whether you want to go. If you do want to go to L.A., perhaps you should ask her to go with you.”

She’s brilliant. Totally brilliant. I’ve done this all wrong, and I need to fix the mess I’ve made. I stand. “You’re right. I need to go.”

I kiss her on the cheek, clap Spencer on the shoulder, and scratch Fido under the chin. He arches a haughty eyebrow, but I know he approves because we love the same girl. As I leave, Charlotte turns to Spencer and says, “I won. Gummi Bears are on you tonight.”

When I leave, I cab it uptown to my house, grab some files, then head to Tyler’s office where I tell him to call Gino’s bluff.





37





If this were one of J. Cameron’s romance novels, the hero would hire a skywriter to pen the heroine’s name across the blue canvas above us. Or he’d stop the airplane at the gate and profess his love. Maybe he’d even tell the woman he adores that he only had eyes for her on a Jumbotron at a packed baseball game.

But this is my life, and Harper’s life.

One thing I know to be true about the woman I’m crazy for is that while she might like public kisses, she’s not one for public declarations of love.