It’s because she’s pretty. And forbidden fruit. That’s all it is. Combine animal attraction with something you can’t have, and anyone would feel drawn. But it’s only an impulse. My higher mind knows better. It’s ironic that Bridget, of all people, is usually the first to tell me I’m thinking with my dick. Isn’t that what she’s telling me to do now? To ignore my brain and aim lower?
“When do you go back to work?” I ask.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I thought we were done with the old one.”
“Ha,” Bridget says. “You wish.”
I actually tip my head a little. Only Bridget can make a conversation sound like a threat.
Bridget hands me my phone, which I’d left on the counter. “Call her.”
“Why?”
“Call her!”
“I’m not going to call her. There’s no reason to call her.”
Bridget shakes her head and rolls her eyes. I manage to see the latter even while she’s doing the former. It’s like a condescension sandwich.
“You came here to talk to me. You told me all about what happened. She came to you, it looked like you might hook up, then she got mad. But only after you each had an idea how the other really felt.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“She defended you to her father, which is why you’re still in the running. You defended her to him, which is why she now has some responsibility. Trust me, Brandon. She was saying thank you, and you were saying she’s special.”
“I think I can decide for myself what I said.”
“You’re like kids. Two stupid kids.”
“Thanks, Bridge.”
“You might as well be passing notes. Jesus, you’re both fucked up.”
“I’m not fucked up.” I pause. “Okay, I’m fucked up. But I still know what I’m saying. I don’t need you to interpret my encounters. I just wanted to check on you and bitch.”
“And yet you told me every detail, just like you yammered on and on about her before dinner. I don’t know why you won’t just admit that you’re into her.”
“I was plenty into her. But I can’t keep screwing my boss’s daughter. And why are you so interested, anyway? You’re a girl. Girls aren’t supposed to be all about getting it on.”
“Yeah. You know so much about women.”
I’m a little offended. I know plenty. I know what women want and what they seem to need. I’ve been with dozens, and have never to my knowledge left one unsatisfied.
Bridget nudges the phone again. “Call her.”
“And say what?”
“Tell her you want to go out.”
“She made a point about how we can’t keep doing what we did. Her father will flip.”
“She needs you to hit the ball back, Brandon. You’re an idiot, so you didn’t volley. You wanted my advice, this — ”
“I very much don’t want your advice.”
“ — is it. All she wanted was some sort of sign that you feel what she feels.”
“She feels ambition.”
Bridget rolls her eyes again. “She came to see you, Brandon.”
“To see my job site.”
“Which she didn’t need to do. And then she stayed behind.”
“To set the record straight. About how we’re through.”
“Do you know how you’re through with someone? It doesn’t take an announcement — you’re just done. That poor girl came to you and put herself out there, but you ignored her.”
Bridget is twisting all of this. She wasn’t there, so she doesn’t know. I know much better than her. Maybe I should describe it all again. I already told her everything we said and did, right down to how Riley was dressed and how her face looked and …
“You’re so full of shit.”
“Call her,” Bridget says. “Just call her, and I’ll leave you alone.”
I pick up the phone. I have Riley’s number because she gave it to me that first night, and I haven’t deleted it because, you know, I might need it sometime. Her contact entry on my phone seems to have pulled her photo from somewhere online, and I look at it for several seconds, remembering how she was that first day, then at dinner, then meeting my lips. In that thing we can’t do again. In those moments we can’t have more of. But that raises a strange sensation within me, and I don’t like the way it feels.
It’s not the sex that’s bothering me.
It’s the dinner. It’s the morning in the meadow.
I realize how much I’ve been thinking about those two intervals of time. How I’d been checking the Overlook’s schedule, more curious than ever to see what its lineup will be when it reopens. Bridget doesn’t love live music, so I guess I’d thought of inviting Mason and Riley, since I know Riley is into that. And maybe Mason wouldn’t want to come. Maybe Riley and I could go alone. And we could grab dinner again. I could make her laugh, and hear that unique kind of vocal music, too.
Something must shift in my expression because when I look up, Bridget is giving me her most obnoxious grin.
“What?” I say, thinking I might already know, afraid of what it might mean.
“Call her,” Bridget repeats, “and take a chance for once in your life.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Riley
I FEEL MY PHONE VIBRATE in my purse, but stepping out of the financial meeting to answer it is the kind of thing a silly teenage girl would do. Having turned the phone entirely off or putting it into Do Not Disturb, I suspect, is what a proper businesswoman would do, but it’s too late for that. So I let the phone vibrate a few times, reasonably sure that nobody besides me is noticing anyway, and eventually it stops. Thirty seconds later, I feel a single vibration and know that the caller left me a message.
I forget the call, refocusing on my father. Recalling my college classes. Squaring this real-life discussion of profit and loss with what I learned in the classroom. It’s the same stuff, applied to actual business. The business I’ll inherit and run someday, as my legacy.
The fact that I’m in the meeting at all is a coup. Our going out to lunch together — just Dad and me — is an even bigger one. The idea is for us to just hang out as father and daughter, but I know that what’s being discussed here will linger in our minds. Neither of us is particularly left-brained; Dad and I are both creative first, analytical second, but we love the creation aspect of running a business because it’s just another form of art. A little-known company fact: Before he started Life of Riley, my father used to draw quite a bit. You’d never know it today, but it’s true. I was never into stuff like that. But I like music, and am damn good on a guitar.
Like Brandon’s friend, Gavin Adams, that night at the closed Overlook club.
Like Gavin, who sang such a sad song.
The memory, even in the middle of this dry meeting, warms me. I want to know more about that song. I want to hear more of that music. I want to see more of how that soft melody is able to crack the armor of a man like Brandon Grant.
Whom I shouldn’t be thinking of.
Because that can’t happen. Not that it would happen, so why am I even considering that it might? I don’t need to remind myself not to do something that was never going to happen because it’s so obvious. It isn’t worthy of mention. I was ridiculous to allow thoughts of Brandon to enter my mind when we were together earlier. He’s one of Life of Riley’s project leads, and soon he’ll probably be our vice president of Land Acquisition. Good. He’ll be an asset to the company.