RICH
We landed at a small private airport a few minutes from the restaurant. After a short drive, we arrived at the seaside restaurant with time to spare.
It was an older building on a rocky stretch of the coast. We were taken upstairs to an open rooftop full of seating. A live band played quiet jazz, and a few other couples were already drinking wine when we arrived. The view was incredible. To our right, the ocean stretched out wide, giving us a perfect shot of the waves and the miles of beachfront mansions. To our left, we could see the charming little historic city where people on beach cruiser bikes were almost more common than cars.
“This wasn’t the kind of place I expected,” Kira said after the waiter set down two glasses for us and a pitcher of cold water.
Kira looked incredible. I could tell she’d made a point of not dressing too fancy. She didn’t want me to think she’d been anticipating our evening together, and she definitely didn’t want me to think she was trying to impress me. But Kira probably could have rolled out of bed with her hair plastered to her cheek by drool and I’d still be impressed.
She was real, more real than the women I’d wasted my time with since leaving West Valley seven years ago. The fact that she was making such an effort to push me away told me as much. If she cared about my money or my fame more than who I was, she would’ve given in that first day outside her classroom. And if she’d given in, I think I would’ve lost interest immediately. I wondered how that would infuriate her—if she knew the fastest way to shake me off would’ve been for her to act like she wanted to date me. But that ship had sailed. I didn’t know if there was anything she could do to make me lose interest now.
“I’m glad it’s not what you expected,” I said. “What were you thinking? A dingy, dark room with a guy in a cheap suit telling jokes?”
“Something like that.” She looked around the patio, turning in her chair to look behind us. “I don’t see a magician.”
“Voilà,” I said, spreading my hands. “He’s very talented.”
Kira smirked. “Funny. Seriously, though. Where is he?”
“He circulates around the tables. It’s a casual kind of thing. Sometimes he barely does anything with you and your group. Other times he’ll practically be glued to your table.”
“Wait. You’ve been here before? This is only, what, an hour drive from West Valley?”
“Hour and a half, depending on traffic.”
“Why come all the way out here before now?”
I shrugged. I had an answer, but it wasn’t one I was about to share with her. “A man isn’t allowed to get homesick?”
She narrowed her eyes. “This is an hour and a half from home.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to cause a stir.”
“For some reason, I find that surprising.”
“Oh? Do I strike you as an attention seeker?”
She leaned back in her chair and sipped her water, giving me a few moments of quiet to drink her in even more. She had matured, and she’d done it in all the right ways, and not only above the neck. Letting my eyes wander would be a recipe for disappointment, but I couldn’t quite contain them. She looked good. Damn good. I wasn’t sure if it was just knowing that she’d sooner knee me in the balls than let me put my hands on her, but the mere thought of stealing a kiss had me feeling like a hormonal teenager again.
“You strike me as someone who thinks the world is a competition,” she said finally.
I felt my eyebrows pull together at that. In a few quick words, she’d managed to pluck something from the depths of my own personality that I immediately recognized as true, even though I’d never seen it in myself. “Damn.” I laughed. “Let’s say you’re right. Is that a bad thing?”
“I am right, first of all.” The shadow of a smile was pulling at her mouth, and the effect was mesmerizing. “Second of all, that depends. Can you turn it off?”
“Maybe not,” I admitted. “I don’t know. If you want the truth, I—”
“What else would I want?”
I laughed again. Damn. It had been so long since I’d spoken to someone who wasn’t trying to kiss my ass. Trying to keep up with her made me feel like I was using a long-neglected corner of my brain. “Fair point. The answer is I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way I’m wired.”
“Then maybe you can understand why I have no interest in accepting your half-assed apology. It’s just a game to you. One more contest you want to win.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not true. Maybe at first. Yes. I’ll admit that much. I think I initially wanted to check a box off. The way things ended with you felt like a mistake, and fixing it would’ve been like housecleaning. Once I saw you again, it changed. Apologizing to you isn’t just an item on my to-do list, Kira. It’s—”
As if he were the magician of shitty timing, a man with his black sleeves rolled up his arms appeared at our table. He was in his thirties and had long hair pulled into a ponytail. “I dreamed about the two of you. Look,” he said, pulling out an index card covered in writing. “I woke up last night and wrote all this down. I wasn’t sure who it was about until I saw you two.”
Kira was watching him skeptically. I couldn’t blame her. In the past, the magician had come to my table and twisted the forks like they were putty and made our glasses seem to pop straight through the tablecloth. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this act, but it felt cheesy.
“Does anything on here mean anything to you two?” he asked. He set the card down on the table between us.
I frowned at the numbers and letters on the card. At first glance, it all looked like nonsense. Then I noticed the numbers scribbled in bold black ink were my birthday. I grinned. “How’d you do that? This is my birthday.” I tapped the date.
Kira was looking very intensely at the card as well. “That’s the name of the band Iris and Miranda always said we’d start when we were kids. Lampshade Confessional Phone Booth.” She saw the look I was giving her and smiled. “Don’t give me that look. We were like twelve, and those were the kind of band names that were popular.”
I laughed. “No. Lampshade Confessional Phone Booth is not the kind of band name that will be popular. Ever.”
She gave me a sour smile but then looked up at the magician. “Seriously,” she asked. “How did you do that?”
“I told you. I had a dream about the two of you.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, the real magic is the kind nobody else will believe, so I still have to do this to earn a living.” He picked up a spoon from our table, ran his thumb and forefinger down its length, and set it back down. The handle was twisted in a neat curling pattern.
Kira looked at him with openmouthed astonishment. “You didn’t tell me we were going to see real magic.”
I laughed. “I doubt it’s real.”
The magician leaned back and raised his eyebrows. “Doubt isn’t certainty, though, is it?” He walked off, leaving me to wonder if any of the other scribbles on the card had significance.
“Seriously,” Kira said quietly. “I think that was a real-life wizard.”
“He probably overheard us talking about some stuff and wrote it down when we weren’t looking.”
“You don’t think you’d remember if I told you what we wanted to name our band when we were twelve? And I know you didn’t tell me your birthday.”
I sighed. “I actually feel a little bad I didn’t let Cade come now. Seeing this probably would have been the highlight of his life.”
The waiter came a little while later and took our orders. Kira and I occasionally dropped our eyes to the card and tried to figure out what any of the other random numbers and words meant but couldn’t quite puzzle it out. I should have thanked the magician, though. The greatest magic trick had been that his stunt momentarily made Kira forget to have her guard up.
“So what happens after tonight?” Kira asked suddenly.
“Tomorrow.”
“Smart-ass. I mean with you and me.”
“Well, next you’ll have to teach me how to help you direct your play.”
“This is really your plan? Force me to be around you and hope that I’ll eventually forget I hate you?”
“So you’re saying it won’t work?”
She shook her head slowly, then grinned. “I hope not.”
“Hey, all evil plans aside, I really do think it’d be kind of fun to help you direct a play.”
“Pardon me for having trouble imagining that’s true.”
“Seriously. I always thought if I’d chosen another line of work, maybe I would’ve done something where I got to work with kids. Teaching wouldn’t have been so bad.” I was a little surprised by my own admission. I realized what I was saying was true, even if I’d never seriously considered it.
“I think your students would get too distracted. Particularly the female ones.”
“Oh?” I asked. “And why would that be?”
Kira’s cheeks flushed red. “Because they’d wonder how such an ass managed to make it through an interview?” She let out a soft laugh and shook her head. “You know, I’m sorry. I take that back. Besides your utter bullheadedness in trying to force your way back into my life, you haven’t been an ass. You’ve actually been pretty decent.”
“I’ve been on my best behavior. It’s only once you let your guard down that I’ll allow my true colors to show.”
“Oh, I’m sure. But now I’m supposed to believe your true colors involve dreams of teaching high school and helping direct low-budget plays?”
“Correction. Your play now has as big a budget as it needs. Smoke machines. Laser shows. Pyrotechnics. Whatever we need.”
“It’s a play, not a concert.” She laughed. “Seriously, though, you think you would like teaching? Are you saying you don’t enjoy what you do?”
I shrugged. Her question wasn’t something I’d even begun to unpack myself. “It’s not that, exactly. I think I enjoy the result of what I do, but not the process.”
She tilted her head but nodded. “I think I know what you mean. That’s how I feel with the, uh, sweaters,” she mumbled.
I smiled. “The rodent sweaters.”
“Those,” she agreed. “Sometimes working on something so small makes me grind my teeth. I almost dread the process of putting it together, but once I’m done, I’m happy that I did it. I feel even happier when I see the pictures some customers will send of their pet wearing it.”
“Yeah. That’s what I mean. To do what I do, I have to step on a lot of toes. A lot. But in the end, I believe in what we do as a company. We take failing businesses out of the hands of people who can’t run them properly. We streamline them and make them more effective. It’s better for the customers and for the employees, but we also have to break the whole thing apart before we can put it back together. Being a teacher just seems like I’d be building people up instead of having to knock them down first all the time.”
Kira looked thoughtful. “That’s a good way of looking at it.” She narrowed her eyes. “I need you to be honest. Is this the real you, or is this some conversation you scripted to make me like you?”
I sighed in mock relief. “So it worked?”
“A little.” Her finger was running an idle circle on the table, tracing and retracing a line through the ring of water her glass had left. “In the end, I don’t think it matters how I feel—how either of us feel. I made a promise to my friends, and that has to be more important than anything else.”
The damn promise again. While I understood that it had made sense seven years ago, the fact that Kira and her friends still treated it like some sacred oath today bordered on ridiculous. But I knew saying so would be a mistake. “Has to be. It sounds more like you’re trying to convince yourself than me.”
She breathed out a soft laugh through her nose. “Is it that obvious?”
“Hey,” I said, leaning in a little until I caught her eye. God, she was beautiful. She looked so vulnerable, but I knew there was a solid, unshakable core of strength in her. The combination was sexy as hell. She was soft enough to hold, but hard enough that she could stand on her own. “Despite what you may think about me, I’m not looking to rush you into a decision you’ll regret. So take your time with it.” I grinned a little mischievously. “Besides, I’m pretty sure the longer you delay the inevitable, the sweeter it’s going to taste.”
Her cheeks reddened again. “The inevitable, huh? And what exactly is so inevitable?”
“Us,” I said simply.