did was ask you a simple question.” He released her. “Don’t go reading things into it that aren’t there.”
“Sorry,” she said softly, wiping her salty fingers on a tissue.
“Bad habit.”
“Preemptive strikes?” he said behind her.
She skootched around to rest her back against the truck-bed wall, flipping her skirt out over her legs. “I guess.” She sighed.
“I can’t even explain it.”
Cal looked at her steadily for a long moment, then said, “I’m not looking to judge you. I’m only trying to understand.”
“I know that. It’s just…”
“Honey? Why don’t you try just answering the question?”
His refusal, when they were younger, to let anything get to him used to irritate the life out of her. Now, however, even though his cocksure attitude only reinforced her conviction about how different they were, her battered psyche yearned to inhale his unflappability, like she’d done the Pringles a few minutes ago. Those cool green eyes said, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I won’t let you fall. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.
If only.
Those eyes, and his goodness, were treacherous. And it finally whapped her over the head that this was possibly her only chance to convince him, once and for all, to let her go.
Not only for her sake, but for his.
“To be truthful,” she said, “I didn’t know what to expect when I first got there. An eighteen-year-old hick in the big city?” She smiled. “I thought I’d be eaten alive. My first place was a shared room in a cramped apartment with five other roommates, and it took me twenty-four hours to get up the nerve to go out by myself. But within a week I was hooked.”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been there. I mean, in many ways New York is just like any other place, mostly filled with ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, cooking and shopping and doing laundry and eating out.”
“There’s just a lot more of them.”
“Okay, yeah. It’s crowded. But there’s this…energy that pulses through the city, you know? This sense of possibility, that any second, every second, something exciting could happen.”
His mouth curved just enough to show off the dimples. “Even when you’re doing your laundry?”
“I didn’t say it made sense. And it’s not easy living there, don’t get me wrong. It’s expensive and competitive and, yes, crowded. But God—I can go straight to a major museum from work, or get a half-price ticket to a Broadway show on the spur of the moment. And the music…” She leaned forward, her eyes shining. “The Metropolitan Opera, Cal. Think of that.”
He made a face. “That’s Hank. Opera’s not my thing.”
“Okay, fine. The Mostly Mozart Festival, then. The freaking New York Philharmonic. Live. In person. Free concerts in Central Park—”
“You’re still not makin’ any points here, sweetheart. Although Ryan would be in hog heaven.”
“And then there’s shopping. Bergdorf’s. Barney’s. Bloomingdale’s.”
He just stared at her.
“So maybe that’s not working for you, either. But just think—our child would be able to go to some of the world’s greatest museums on a regular basis, see shows and go to the ballet and…” She paused. “Wouldn’t your mother have been thrilled to know her grandchild would get to hear one of the greatest orchestras in the world on a regular basis?”
Cal pulled himself up to sit across from her, stretching out his legs so she could feel his sun-warmed jeans against her calves. “Did you know she spent a year studying at the Manhattan School of Music?”
“No! Wow. No wonder she was so good.”
He got this funny look on his face then, one that made her insides pitch, made her ache to put her arms around him and lay her head on his shoulder and comfort him, somehow. But comforting was what got them into this predicament to begin with. So instead she nudged his hip with her foot. Which was bad enough.
“I know this isn’t an ideal situation,” she said, talking through, over, around another kind of ache, “but once I make partner, I’ll be making pretty good money. And I can work from home at least a couple days a week, if I need to, so I’ll be there for our baby. And we’ll come back a lot, I promise.”
He sat there, silent, staring straight ahead, then suddenly scrambled out of the truck bed, reaching out to help her down, as well.
“Guess I’d better get you back to Ivy’s,” he said. “Gotta lot of work to do this afternoon.”
He said nothing else until he’d deposited her a few minutes later in front of her mother’s house, and then only to ask when she was leaving.
“Saturday. Cal—”
“Don’t make it worse, okay?” he said, then took off, leaving her standing on the sidewalk feeling like sludge.
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