THE THURSDAY MORNING after she’d run into Quentin in the hallway, Cat tossed her gym bag over her shoulder and headed out. By the middle of (the blessedly glorious) summer break, she would be able to sleep in. But less than a week in, she was still naturally waking up early and searching for things to fill her days with, which was why she loved New York City. There was literally always something to do. She’d gone to the beach the last few mornings, but not today. Today she was working out.
But first, pie.
This neighborhood had a pie shop that was famous city-wide. It was a cute little establishment with long, wooden communal tables and myriad pies in sparkly glass cases. There were more kinds of pie than Cat had ever even heard of before she’d first become a patron. They had the classics, of course: apple, cherry, pecan. But then there were also chocolate chess pies and salty honey streusels, black oat pies with crust as thick as the September issue of Vogue.
It was a dangerous, dangerous heaven.
In the two years that Cat had lived in this neighborhood, she’d seen plenty of employees come and go through the pie shop, and almost every single one of them quit a few pants sizes larger than when they’d been hired. Cat herself attributed her soft belly and more than a handful of ass to their lemon custard pie. She didn’t mind. She considered every pound a worthy trade for the ambrosia they were selling.
She was just polishing off her slice of pie, standing at the counter in the window of the shop, when she looked up and saw Jared and Quentin walking by, chatting to one another. Quentin was wheeling a bike as they walked, and they paused at the corner, obviously about to part ways.
Here was her chance!
Cat tossed her plate and bolted out the door, but she wasn’t three steps toward them when they waved at one another and Jared headed off in the direction of the train and Quentin started putting his bike helmet on.
Dang! She’d wanted to catch them together because Quentin was easier to talk to than Jared and if she chatted with both of them maybe Jared would see how charming she was. But it was not to be. Should she follow Jared and risk some more of their slightly awkward conversation that they’d occasionally had when they’d run into one another in the laundry room? Or should she catch up with Quentin?
“Hey, Quentin!” she said, coming up beside him on the street corner.
“Cat! Hi.” He was surprised to see her. “Um, on your way to the train?”
“Yup, just stopped by the pie shop for a morning slice.”
He laughed. “You say that like a slice of pie for breakfast is a perfectly normal thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
He laughed again and then spied her gym bag over her shoulder. “So, slice of pie and then you go work out?”
He looked cute this morning in his slacks and button-down, carefully put together for work. His coppery hair, usually very neat, was messy from where he’d put his bike helmet on and then slid it off when they’d started talking. He wasn’t as tall as Jared was, but something about seeing Quentin out in the world, standing next to this man-sized bike, made Cat realize that he was bigger than she’d thought he was. He was wide in the shoulders and probably six or seven inches taller than she was.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Which gym do you belong to?”
“Oh, I don’t. I don’t really work out in the traditional sense. I’m headed to a pole-dancing class.”
He went instantly, adorably, pink in the cheeks. He was obviously trying to school his features into a placid look. “I...didn’t know they offered those kinds of classes.”
“Oh, sure. They’re really popular. The dance studio where I take them offers them all day. I’ll take the nine and then probably stay for the ten o’clock as well.”
Now he couldn’t stop his eyebrows from raising even higher. “There’s something slightly, um, incongruous about a 9:00 a.m. pole-dancing class, no?”
Cat burst out laughing. “Totally. It’s kind of like taking a biology course at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. Just doesn’t quite fit the aesthetic.”
Silence descended for a moment while he scratched at the back of his neck, obviously searching for something to say.
“You, uh, been doing it long?”
She leaned in, wanting to make him blush again for some reason. “Are you asking if I’m any good?” She waggled her eyebrows.
“No! God.” He did that cute thing he sometimes did when he was flustered where he dragged a hand down his face as if he were trying to wipe away any evidence of whatever embarrassed expression wanted to make a home there. “I was just making conversation.”
“To answer the question you didn’t ask, no, I’m not any good. It’s really freaking hard and I’m still pretty much trying to figure out how to slide around the pole without getting major pole burn.”
“Pole burn,” he repeated dimly. He looked a little dazed.
Deciding to cut him some slack, Cat changed the subject. “I’ve never seen you ride before.”
She often rode her bike to and from the elementary school where she worked a few neighborhoods south, and she was pretty sure she knew all the bike riders in their building because there was one big room in the basement where they all locked their bikes. She’d never seen Quentin down there before.
“I don’t really,” he confessed. “I’m doing it for work right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m working with the city on reconfiguring the bike lanes in a few key places and we needed some more hands-on experience to really be able to answer the questions we have.”
“That’s so cool!”
“In theory. In practice I’m hoarse by the time I get to work because I’ve been screaming for half an hour.”
Cat laughed again. “What, you’re not a fan of cars sideswiping you and pedestrians with strollers jumping into your path and the doors of parked cars swinging open to smash you into the pavement?”
He groaned. “I’ll be glad when I can just take the train again like a normal New Yorker. Bikers have a death wish.”
“Your roommate is the craziest biker I’ve ever seen, did you know that? I watched him cut off a semitruck on Third Ave. Like it was no big deal. Just zoom, weaving in and out of traffic.”
He blinked at her for a second and Cat realized that she was grinning at him like a crazy person. He was so easy to talk to. She could have stood on that corner and chatted with him for another hour. But he was putting his helmet on, straightening his bag over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t want to make you late for your, uh, class,” he said after a second.
“Right. Those poles won’t slide around themselves.”
He was decidedly pink again. “Uh-huh.”
“It was nice to run into you, Quentin,” she said. “Twice in one week.”
He suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Right.”
Was it her or was he backing away from her?
“Maybe we should do it again,” she suggested. “On purpose? Hang out, I mean. I don’t have many friends in the building.”
“Right,” he repeated. “Sure. Okay. See you later.” He waved at her and hopped on his bike.
For someone who claimed to hate being on a bike, he certainly looked natural on one. He’d done that one-leg-swing thing to get on and now merged smoothly with traffic.
It was the second time in a week that he’d pretty much run away from her. Maybe she’d have to do something about that.