If You Only Knew. Kristan Higgins
me a beer next time,” I say.
“Buy your own beer.” He smiles as he says it, and damn, he’s just too adorable. “How’s your sister?”
Right. I sigh and sit down. “She’s… I don’t know.” I grab a throw pillow and smoosh it against my stomach. Rachel had texted me a picture of the girls earlier, all of them on the slide at the park. No note. “She says she’s good.”
“But she’s not good?” Leo says.
I pause. He was awfully nice last night. Caught Rachel, scooped her up in his arms and set her on this very couch. As I was saying, “Rachel? Rach? Rachel!” in a panicked voice, he got a damp dishcloth and put it on her forehead, then stuck around to see if she was okay. I guess he has a right to ask.
“It seems her husband has no idea who sent it,” I say.
“Ah. It was all a mistake, then?”
“That’s what we’re going with.”
He shrugs, a Gallic gesture that belies his very Irish name, a shrug that says, Ah, poor kid, people are stupid, whatcha gonna do. “She seems sweet.”
“She is.” I pause, not wholly comfortable with the topic. “So why the suit, Leo? Do you have a date? Those flowers aren’t really for your mom, are they?”
“Yes, they were. I don’t date. I’m strictly for recreational purposes.”
I feel an eye-roll coming on. “Then were you giving a performance?”
“Nope.”
“Shall I keep guessing, or does your dog need you and you really should be leaving?”
“I visit my mom every Sunday.”
“You sure you’re not gay?”
He laughs. “You’re all right, Jane.”
“Jenny.”
“Whatever.” He looks around my apartment. “So you like the apartment?”
“Sure. It’s beautiful. Bigger than what I’m used to. And Cambry’s my hometown, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Did you grow up around here?”
He looks at me carefully, taking another drink from his beer bottle. “Iowa.”
“A corn-fed Midwestern boy, huh?”
“That’s me.” He takes another pull of beer. “So what did you do today? You’re a wedding planner?”
“We need to work on your listening skills,” I say. “I’m a wedding dress designer. I just opened Bliss here in town.” This fails to elicit any reaction. “I had a fitting in the city for a very irritating bride, and then I took a walk in Central Park, and then I went to see my, uh, friends.”
He gives me an incredulous look. “Not the ex-husband and his lovely wife?”
“How did you—Yes.” He cocks an eyebrow. “And their beautiful new baby,” I add.
“Are you shitting me?”
“Not that it’s your business, but we’ve stayed friends.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Yes, we have. Your dog growled at me, by the way. While I was covering you with your blankie.”
“You put Mother Teresa to shame. Back to the ex… Why would you stay friends? Isn’t that torture?”
“Are you married, Leo?”
“Do I look married?”
“Divorced? Separated? Are you a therapist? In other words, do you know anything about me or Owen or Ana-Sofia or marriage and divorce? Huh? Do you?”
“No on all fronts, and Ana-Sofia, sweet. That is a smokin’ hot name. Is she beautiful?”
“Some people find her attractive.”
He smiles. Just a little, but it works.
“Yeah, she’s gorgeous,” I admit. “As for why we stayed friends, maybe he was so devastated by our breakup that he couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing me anymore. Maybe we still share a very special bond and despite marriage not working out, we want to stay in each other’s lives. Maybe I really admire and respect his—”
“Stop, stop, I can’t stand any more.” Leo gets up and glances at the ceiling. “Call someone about that light. I just moved here myself and don’t know anyone. Oh, and could you have him stop down at my place? My toaster doesn’t work unless I plug it in the hallway.”
I look at him for a second. “You blew a fuse. That’s probably why my light won’t go on.”
“Ah. Fascinating.”
“Where’s the fuse box?”
“What’s a fuse box?”
“Are you serious? How did you get this job?”
“I already told you. Good looks and charm.”
“I can’t wait to meet the charm part. Come on, I’ll show you what a fuse box is, pretty boy. Take me to your cellar. Do you know where that is?”
We go out my front door, through the gate, where I earn another snarl from Loki. “That dog is really good-looking and charming,” I say.
“He’s old. Be respectful. The cellar’s through here.” He lets me into his apartment, into a tiny foyer, which opens into a large living room. There’s an upright piano topped with piles of paper and music books. It’s too dark to see anything else.
“This way,” he says, pointing toward the small, sleek kitchen. He opens the cellar door, and we go down. It occurs to me that I’m going into a dark place with a stranger, and even as I think the thought, I know this guy is no threat to me at all.
“You’re surprisingly quiet,” Leo says, clicking on a light.
“I’m assessing the odds of you murdering me down here.”
“And?”
“I hereby deem you harmless.”
“How emasculating,” he says. “What are you looking for again?”
“This, my son. Behold the fuse box,” I say, pointing to the gray box on the wall. I flip open the panel and, sure enough, a switch is over to the right instead of the left. I push it back. “Modern technology. Show me your toaster.”
His toaster is plugged into the same outlet as the coffeepot, which is on the same circuit as the microwave. “Just move the toaster in over there and you should be fine,” I tell him. “This is an old house. You might get an electrician in here to update the amperage.”
“Did you learn all this in wedding school?”
He’s tall. The kitchen light makes his hair gleam with copper, and the line of his jaw is sharp and strong.
“The eye-fucking, Jane. It has to stop.” But he smiles as he says it.
“So you teach down here?” I ask, stepping back. Since he made himself at home upstairs, I do the same, flipping on a light and wandering through the living room. A gray couch and red chair complement the red-and-blue Oriental rug. There’s a bookcase filled with tomes about the great composers. A bust of Beethoven glares at me next to a photo of a lake surrounded by pine trees.
The place is very, very neat and, aside from Beethoven, oddly devoid of personality, which isn’t what I’d expect from Leo, not that I know him well, obviously. But still. I’d expect sloppy and welcoming, not sterile and…well, sterile. It looks like a model home, aside from the sheet music.
“So