I turn the knob on my door.
“Are you going to be all right?”
That has just become my least favorite question ever.
“Yeah,” I answer. “I’ll be fine. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I’m half-expecting her to say something else, but she’s silent. So I push my door open and can’t get it closed behind me fast enough.
Well, at least I have something to tell Wrigley, although I can’t imagine this is going to be the best first day of a relationship she’s ever had.
Chapter Fifteen
Coming Down
Leila
Mrs. Weinstock didn’t fire me after everything that happened yesterday, so I guess I’m here until I give them some kind of notice. That’s not really what’s on my mind, though.
Work is a blurry mass of emotion, none of which stays in one place long enough to really sink in. I wanted to tell Dane that I felt the same way about him, and I guess I kind of did, but that doesn’t change anything.
On the bright side, I’m so distracted that I barely notice it when Kidman asks me if I’d like to grease up his paper tray, and before I know it, I’m done for the day.
I don’t want to go home, but I can’t stay here. Knowing Dane, little, though I do, I can only imagine that if he is home, he’s probably got company.
I’m just going to have to get over that, though.
I would call Mike, but I can see that only making things even less comfortable with Dane.
Why would he wait until the last possible minute to tell me that he has feelings for me?
By the time I get home, I’m too emotionally drained to worry about whether Dane’s in there or not.
I get into the apartment and, if he’s home, he’s in his room.
That’s fine by me.
Drained, though I am, there’s no doubt that seeing him right now would be enough to send me off some kind of edge.
I can’t think about that right now, though. I only have a couple of weeks before I start at my new job, and I need to find somewhere to live.
If worse comes to worse, I can commute for a while, but that’s going to be a long drive. Like most people in Manhattan, I don’t have my own car, so I’d have to rent one; it’ll be so much easier if I can find somewhere before then.
I pull out my phone. If there’s one thing Mike knows, it’s how to annoy the crap out of me. If there are two things he knows, they’re how to annoy the crap out of me and how to find a killer deal on an apartment.
“Hello?”
“I got the job.”
I go on to tell him the finer details and before I can even ask, he’s already installed himself as head of the apartment-finding committee.
Now Mike: Mike has a car. It’s a beat down hunk of junk, but it runs. Tomorrow is Saturday, so the planning section of the conversation goes by quickly enough.
It’s when he asks what I’m going to do about Dane that things start to unravel, or rather, that I start to unravel.
I make a quick excuse and hang up, but just hearing the name has me in a tailspin. I don’t know why I’m crying so hard.
* * *
It’s six in the morning when my phone rings.
I let it go to voicemail and have a brief, magnificent fantasy of falling back to sleep and not waking up again until I’m no longer tired, but that dream is cut short as the phone rings again.
“What?” I answer.
“Rise and shine,” Mike says. “It’s time to find you an apartment. I’m downstairs and ready to go.”
“It’s too early,” I tell him, but I know it’s not going to make any difference.
“I brought coffee and donuts,” he says. “If you’re really nice to me, I might even let you have some, now get your ass outta bed and let’s get going.”
I go on to make a very compelling argument about how nobody’s going to show us apartments this early in the morning, but he’s already hung up.
Grumbling, I get out of bed.
Mike didn’t leave me time to take a shower, so I put on some deodorant and hope I don’t feel too disgusting by the time the day’s out. I don’t really like my chances.
When Mike said he was here, he meant parked in the garage down the block. It’s a bit early, but there are already people on the sidewalks, nearly all of them talking on phones. I can’t help but wonder how many of them are actually talking to someone and how many are just talking into the air, trying to appear like they’re a lot more important than they actually are.
I might be a little cranky.
I’m not even to the parking garage when I hear Mike’s voice echoing through the structure. He’s arguing with someone about whether parking on the line is “in” or not, and from the sound of it, it doesn’t seem like he’s winning.
I follow the ruckus and eventually find Mike standing at the back of his car, up in the face of the parking attendant, and the problem is easy enough to spot.
Mike didn’t pull into a space and take a little more than his share of the spot; he’s parked behind two cars, blocking them in. He’s trying to advance the argument that because one of his tires is on one of the yellow lines, he’s technically not parked illegally.
“Lei, you’re here,” he calls over the attendant’s shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out!”
I hurry to the car and get in. The parking attendant is still shouting profanity at Mike through the window, but as soon as Mike starts the car, the man backs off.
“Yeah, I didn’t know how long I was going to hold him there with that bullshit,” Mike laughs. “Your coffee’s in the cup holder on the right. You drink it black, don’t you?”
“I don’t even care right now,” I tell him and pull the lid off the cup.
I pour about half the cup of coffee down my throat. It’s a good thing the coffee is cold.
“So, I stayed up until four in the morning looking at places, and we’ve got some options. There are a few in town and a few out of town. Which would you like to check first?”
“You didn’t make any appointments?”
“Who’s going to take an appointment in the middle of the night?” Mike asks. “It’s Jersey. People there don’t have plans. They’ll be so thrilled that a New Yorker is in town they’ll roll out the red carpet.”
Mike’s one of those New Yorkers. He’s of a special breed that thinks no one outside of the five boroughs has anything important to do. That, mixed with the already sizeable god-complex, and they just might kick us out of the state.
We’re on the road for a long time, longer than I would have thought.
I made sure to look at the clock as we were leaving, and it’s already been almost three hours. There’s no way I can make this kind of commute.
“What kind of brokerage houses do they even have in Jersey?”
“They have brokerage houses everywhere,” I tell him. “The only difference is that in New York, if someone on the floor pisses you off, you can hunt them down before they’ve had a chance to leave the state.”
“So, what’s the deal with you and Dane? I kind of got a vibe from you last night.”
Mike and his stupid vibes.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Just drive. You know where we’re going, right?”
“You know the guy’s in love with you, right?”
I look over at him, my eyes wide.
“What?” he asks. “It’s not like it wasn’t obvious the way he was carrying on the other night when he walked in on us kissing.”
“You didn’t seem to have any useful theories on it then.”
“Yeah, I had a little time to think about it and the more I did, the more I realized that he had the same look on his face when I found my date for senior prom under the bleachers getting felt up by Bill Rodman.”
“I’m moving,” I tell Mike. “That kind of trumps everything else.”
“You’re not into him, then?” he asks.
I don’t answer, but that’s an answer in itself.
“You like him, too,” he says. “J’accuse!”
“J’accuse is back, huh?” I ask.