Lindsay woke up aware that she wasn’t alone.
The snorer beside her was clearly Brad—well, and Fred Astaire the cat, who was also snoring softly near Lindsay’s head—but she was trying to remember how they’d gotten here.
Well, he’d come by Pop the night before. The whole gang and their significant others had all been there. Brad had just shown up, but it was probably Lauren or Paige who had invited him. He’d been stuck working late at the café because most of the baristas were out sick, but he hadn’t seemed resentful at all.
They’d had a lot of cocktails, though. Lindsay knew that much. She had, anyway. She’d taken advantage of Pop’s two-for-one martini happy hour. Not for any real reason besides that she was in a good mood and everyone else was in a good mood and they’d laughed and chatted and the waitress kept the refills coming.
And then around the time Lauren and Caleb left to relieve their babysitter, Brad had complained of being tired on account of being up since four in the morning, and Lindsay had said something provocative, and now here they were, in her apartment, in her bed.
Probably it was time for both of them to admit that they were in a relationship.
Lindsay’s throat was dry and her head throbbed, sure signs she’d overdone it on the martinis, so she got out of bed to get a glass of water and whatever headache pills were in her medicine cabinet. When she climbed back into bed, Brad stirred. His eyes shot open, and he looked around before his gaze landed on Lindsay and he seemed to understand.
“I wasn’t going to sleep with you again until we had a serious talk,” he said. “Whoops.”
“I can’t help it if I’m irresistible.”
“I wish you understood how true that was.” Brad yawned. “I had this whole plan for us to talk before we had sex again, but then I had too many manhattans.”
“What did you want to talk about?”
“What? Here? Now?”
Lindsay didn’t want to talk, but she wanted to get whatever he was going to say over with. She was tired of talking. She wanted to just…be in this relationship. She knew relationships took work and hard conversations sometimes, but she was tired of dancing around Brad, of trying to work out the getting-back-together choreography.
Well, she knew they had to have a serious conversation. She just didn’t want the bubble to pop.
She ran a hand over Brad’s bare chest. “We can do something else if you want.”
Brad frowned. He put a hand over hers where it rested between his pecs, right next to the sun tattoo. “All right. Let me just ask you this, though. Are we back together?”
“I want to be, yes. You wore me down.”
That only made his frown deepen. “I didn’t mean to ‘wear you down.’”
“Come on, Brad, I was kidding.” Lindsay took her hand back and lay on her back. “What I actually mean is that I have come to realize I made a mistake in leaving you the first time, and I want to get back together because we’re good together. And I trust you, which believe me, is not something I say to anyone, really. But it is truly, honestly how I feel.”
“I know.” Brad rubbed his eyes. “Fuck.”
“What?”
“You know what the real kick in the teeth is in this situation?”
“Tell me.”
“I love you, Linds. I do. I did five years ago and I do now. You were always the one who got away. And hearing you say you want to be together again should be exactly what I want to hear, but…it isn’t.”
Brad delivered this entire monologue with one arm thrown over his eyes, not looking at Lindsay. It was like he was just talking to a room.
Still, he loved her. He loved her.
That was big. Lindsay understood it was a big deal. This was the thing he’d been trying to tell her all along, wasn’t it? Since the first moment they set eyes on each other a couple of months before, he’d been trying to tell her that he loved her and she was the one for him, and she hadn’t wanted to hear it. She was his one who got away.
Well, that was true for her, too. Her friends were right. She’d had kind of an unhealthy fixation on Brad. She’d never been able to let go of him. But love? Did she love him?
She cared about him, yes. She trusted him. But love?
“I should have trusted you then. I didn’t. I’ve learned that lesson now. You’re worthy of my trust.”
He lifted his arm and looked up at her.
She took a deep breath. He needed more. “I never opened my heart to you, not really. I kept it guarded, and I waited for something to go wrong. You were 100 percent right about me. And the fact that you know me so well should probably have told me something. So I’m telling you now that I trust you. I hope you believe me when I tell you that.”
He sighed. “I do, it’s just… Did you ever spend time imagining what it would be like when we got back together?”
“Sure.”
“What did you imagine our reunion would be like?”
Lindsay turned her head to look at him and found he’d moved his arm away from his face and was looking at her now. She took a deep breath. “Well, if I’m honest, in the time we were apart, I put a lot of energy into convincing myself that I hated you. We probably could have run into each other sooner than we did if I weren’t trying so hard to avoid you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I… Well, I canceled going to a few events because I thought you might be there. I kept tabs on your career in part so I wouldn’t accidentally eat in one of your restaurants.”
A smile played on Brad’s lips, which was nice to see considering how unhappy he’d looked for most of this conversation. “That does seem in character for you.”
“Don’t you see how insane that is? My friends all teased me about it. Evan accused me more than once of being obsessed with you. I of course denied it, but… You don’t put that much effort into avoiding someone unless you’re worried about what will happen if you see them again.”
“And what were you worried would happen?”
It had taken some work for Lindsay to get over herself and her own carefully constructed walls to recognize the truth. She had to open herself up and let him in and put her soul in his hands and trust him to take care of that. She wanted to take a real risk, to show that she could put it all on the line, but only for one very special person. She’d never done that before. She wanted to now. “I worried I’d take one look at you and forget why I hated you and fall in love with you all over again.”
He nodded. “I mean, I knew that’s what would happen.”
“What did you imagine?”
“That I’d know the exact right thing to say and charm your socks off and you’d forgive me for everything.”
Lindsay laughed. “Uh-huh. I’m sure that would have worked.”
Brad laughed with her. “Yes. That was the fantasy version. I knew that in real life there’d be a fight. Because I know you. I know how you operate.” He sighed. “Pretty sure we were meant to be together, Linds.”
“I know. It’s so stupid.”
He barked out a surprised laugh. “Well, yeah, it is that. And if all that’s true, I can’t get over that we wasted five years apart.”
“Well, maybe you could see those five years as the time I needed to get over myself.”
He put an arm around her and she thought they might have reached an understanding, but something he’d said still nagged at her. “What is it that you want to hear?”
“What?”
“Before, you said me trusting you should have been the thing you wanted to hear, but it wasn’t.”
***
What did Brad want to hear? Well, he wanted her to tell him she loved him. But he wanted her to get there on her own. He never wanted to feel like she was anything but completely, enthusiastically with him.
He held her now and enjoyed the press of her naked body against his in her pink and purple apartment. Since the last time he’d been here, she’d replaced her duvet with a crisp white one with a swirly black floral pattern on it—not any less feminine, but it felt more adult and less teenage girl. He wasn’t sure why he cared, except that he was surprised that Lindsay would decorate her apartment like the inside of Barbie’s Dreamhouse.
But that was beside the point.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said after what he knew had been an unacceptably long silence.
“I don’t think you have to know right this minute,” said Lindsay.
“Sure, but… Don’t you think about what our future will be?”
Lindsay rolled slightly and Brad copied her movement so that they both lay facing each other. Lindsay said, “So you pictured our reunion as a fight, huh?”
“I always figured it would be, well, not very different from what happened, actually. I figured you’d still be mad but I could charm you into falling in love with me again.” He grinned.
But the truth was, he’d never imagined it would be this hard. He knew he’d have to persuade Lindsay to give him another chance, that he’d have to explain what had happened all those years ago that made her leave. He’d thought Lindsay would be quicker to forgive him. He hadn’t realized that the core of their issue was trust. She said she trusted him now and he believed her, mostly. But the longer this reunion, if that’s what it was, dragged on, the less faith he had that everything would work out.
Lindsay stared at him for a long moment. “So, okay, where do you see us in the future?”
He closed his eyes and thought for a moment. “Well, you and I will live together in an apartment with a big kitchen. I don’t want to bake cat treats forever, so I figure I’ll get a new job once I’ve got the assistants fully trained. I’ll probably still bake the cat treats myself, though. We’re not selling enough that I need to have a big production machine going or anything, and I think people like the novelty of small batches anyway. I could make them and then work out some kind of arrangement with the cat café where I get a cut of the profits. But I’m rambling.” He sighed. “I don’t know. What is my dream job? I don’t think running a bakery because there’s no real challenge in making cupcakes all day, but doing patisserie at a high-end restaurant could be really fun.”
“Sure. But that’s your job. That’s not us.”
Brad opened his eyes and looked at her. Lindsay’s expression was wide-eyed and earnest, vulnerable maybe. “Well,” he said. “Like I said, we’ll live together.”
“Would we get married?”
“If you want.”
“Do you want to?”
Brad was starting to hate this line of questioning. He understood that she was trying to ascertain if he had any future plans beyond his career. Did he want to get married? He was ambivalent. Did he want kids? Lauren’s daughter, Hannah, was pretty dang cute, but Brad wasn’t sure about that, either. Not right now, definitely. But he said, “I want to be with you. I want to live with you. I don’t feel like we’re on solid enough ground to get married tomorrow, but that could be in the cards someday if it was something we both wanted. Do you want kids?”
“I don’t think so. Not right now, anyway.”
“Sounds like we’re on the same page there. And what about this potential restaurant job?”
Lindsay let out a long breath. “I have to let the guy know by Monday, and I’m still not sure. You know what I picture, though, with us? Yes, living together. Your apartment is big but needs someone to decorate it, and I’d be happy to take that on.”
Brad laughed. “Your taste seems very girlie.”
“I like purple. So sue me.” She let out a breath. “I’m just saying, I’m still kind of stuck on this fantasy of us running a restaurant together someday, and it was something I didn’t even know I wanted until you showed up back in my life.”
“I’d like working with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’d have fun.”
Lindsay smiled. “The idea first popped into my head when you and I hosted that dinner party to celebrate your deciding to switch to pastry. You remember that?”
He did remember. It was almost a silly question to ask if he remembered any particular moment with Lindsay because they were all etched clearly on his memory. “I remember my souffles didn’t work because I got a little big for my britches.”
Lindsay laughed. “You had those cookies as backup.”
“I did, but I was so embarrassed.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well, sure. You made a beautiful dinner for everyone.”
“No, I mean… That night was so much fun. Sharing a kitchen with you, cooking with you. Do you remember how much we laughed? And how everyone forgave you for your souffles falling because the cookies were perfect?”
“I suppose that’s true.” He reached over and touched a lock of her hair. “I want so much for you to be able to do what you really want to do. You were such a talented chef. I still can’t get over that you quit.”
“It wasn’t fun anymore.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“It wasn’t fun because you weren’t cooking with me. When we were in school and we had the space to mess up and experiment and learn, when you and I used to goof around in the test kitchen after hours, I felt so much joy in what I was doing. I loved cooking. But when you weren’t in my life anymore, I just… I didn’t feel that joy anymore. And probably I shouldn’t have let that get to me. No, I definitely shouldn’t have. Because I blamed you for all of it without taking the time to reflect on what I had done wrong, and I realize now that I never let you in. I should have. I want to now. I want to fix what I did wrong before. I want to find that joy again, and I want us to cook together, and that’s what I want our future to be.”
Something in Brad broke then. “Linds…” But he didn’t know what to say. God, he loved this woman. She hadn’t said she loved him, too, but he knew she felt something. He leaned over, cupped her cheek, and kissed her, wanting to convey something but not sure what to say. She hooked a hand around his wrist and continued to kiss him.
She pulled away slightly. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. You and me teaming up to take on the culinary world. Do you think… Do you think something like that is possible, or is it still a fantasy?”
“No. I think you and I could do anything if we teamed up.”
She nodded.
She was saying all the things he wanted to hear, but this conversation had left him feeling uneasy. Why didn’t he completely buy what she was selling him? Did he believe she changed? Could she make herself vulnerable for him? Could she take a big leap into the future like this without self-sabotaging again? He wasn’t sure she could.
“I guess,” Lindsay said, “back when we were dating, I didn’t need to have our whole future planned, but I did need to know we had a future. And you seemed incapable of thinking farther than a week ahead, and I guess if we’re really going to do this, I need to know not exactly what the future holds, just that we’re thinking about it.”
“We are. I am. And same. I just want you to be happy. For us to be happy.”
She smiled. “Good.”
That should have been satisfying, but Brad still felt unsettled. There was something here she wasn’t saying. This job offer she was considering seemed odd, and she was only talking about it in the vaguest terms. Was it even real, or was she just trying to get him to react to something? “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
“I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Let’s just say, I have an opportunity, but I haven’t made a decision about it just yet. I will tell you as soon as I do.”
“Is it something I can help you decide?”
She gave him a long look. “No, I think I have to decide for myself.”
For some reason that bothered Brad. He glanced at the clock. It was still pretty early, closing in on 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Brad wasn’t working today, but he had errands to run and he was neglecting poor Hamilton. He’d called his neighbor and asked her to put some food out, but that poor cat had just been home alone for more than twenty-four hours.
He was curious about what she wasn’t telling him, and a little miffed that she wasn’t.
Brad got out of bed and started looking for his clothes, which were still strewn across the floor from the previous night. “You know, I meant to have a conversation with you about what we were to each other. Are we back together officially? Are you my girlfriend?”
“I thought we’d gotten past that.”
“You’re not answering the question.”
“Yes, fine. We’re back together. Why are you mad at me?”
Brad blew out a breath and pulled on his jeans. “I’m not mad. I’m…confused. It feels weird to me that you’re not telling me about whatever this opportunity is.”
“It’s not something that has any bearing on you or us. It’s just a decision I’m trying to make.”
“Do you not trust me?”
“Of course I do! Can you please respect that I’m not ready to talk about it yet? I promise I’ll explain everything in a couple of days, I just need some time to make sure I’m making the right decision for the right reasons.”
“All right.” Brad pulled on his shirt.
“You are mad.”
“I just… I need some time to think, okay. I feel like we’re still kind of talking past each other. And I really do have a lot to do today, so I have to go.”
“All right.” Lindsay climbed out of bed. Still completely naked, she walked over and put her arms around his shoulders. Then she kissed him. It was a long, lingering kiss, the sort of kiss that made his skin tingle and his toes curl, the kind of kiss that made him forget he was annoyed and instead prompted him to put his hands on her back and run his fingers over her smooth skin.
Because he was in love with her. He cherished Lindsay. He wanted them to just get past whatever this weird tension between them was so they could get to that future Lindsay kept talking about.
“I gotta go,” he said.
“Okay. Are you working Monday?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ll come by the café at the end of your shift. We can talk then.”
“All right.”
She pressed a kiss to his cheek. Then she stepped away and grabbed a robe off a hook on the back of her bedroom door. “I’ll walk you out, I guess.”