Hot and Bothered Page 16

  Elisa shrugged. “Good-looking guy. Could use a shave. I’d lose that jacket—does anyone actually wear denim jackets? And those shoes look like they’ve seen better days.”

  “Seriously,” Mark said. “Seriously, look at me and tell me you can see us together.”

  Elisa did exactly what he’d asked. She gave him a full-fledged, unrestrained, once-over. Before Haven had come along, getting such a look from a woman like Elisa would have been sexy, but now it felt as remote as an army sergeant’s inspection.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is why you came here? So I could look at you and tell you to lose the jacket and buy a better pair of shoes?”

  “No!”

  “Then why?”

  All at once he felt totally defeated. His head hurt because after he’d left the fund-raiser on Saturday night, he’d gone out and played blues and gotten stinking drunk, and he’d stayed stinking drunk for the better part of three days. His heart hurt now that he was sober, and he missed Haven in a way it hadn’t occurred to him you could miss someone you’d known only a couple of weeks.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I guess I wanted you to tell me I was wrong. I wanted you to tell me to fight for her, or—I don’t know. I wanted some hope, I guess. When you look at us, do you see two people who can make things work? I guess I thought if anyone would know if it could work out, it would be you.”

  Elisa ran the pad of her thumb over the clip on a pen, a back and forth motion that was, somehow, soothing. She had a way about her, a professionalism, that he could see would inspire faith in her clients.

  “No one knows if it’s going to work out,” Elisa said. “And when I look at you, I see two people who have whole entire worlds hidden inside them that I know nothing about. I can’t do what you’re asking. I can’t look at the two of you, as if the answer is written on your skins, and say what will happen.

  “I will say this. I think you’re comparing your insides to her outside. People make that mistake all the time. You look at someone else and you think, I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, they’re so much more together than I am, or whatever you tell yourself. But you’re comparing the mess on the inside to the neat and tidy package they present to the world.

  “The real answer to the question is what happens when you finally stop trying to keep everything neat and just let the messes mingle. Do they add up to more than the sum of the parts? Here,” she said. “Let me show you something. I don’t think Haven would mind. Well, I’m sure she’d mind, but she’ll forgive me someday.” She turned her laptop around so he could see the screen. “Here are all the men I’ve fixed Hav up with.” She began scrolling through them.

  His first reaction was sheer envy. They were those men, those Don Dormers that Haven belonged with, neatly groomed, tidily dressed. He could see bits of their profiles rolling by, president of this and CEO of that, this big investment bank and that big corporation, well-known philanthropists. Men he wasn’t. Men he couldn’t be. Men he didn’t want to be.

  But when the screen kept scrolling up, he started to get what Elisa was telling him.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Twenty? Thirty?”

  “And why doesn’t it work out?”

  “Different reasons. No chemistry, usually. They’re boring. They’re self-involved. She doesn’t like their taste in ties. Never lasts past the second date, by the way. Make of that what you will.”

  No sex, Elisa meant. Twenty or thirty men who should have been perfect for Haven, and no sex.

  She had never taken off her clothes for them. She had never taken down her hair or cleaned her apartment. She’d certainly never left it uncleaned because she was in a heated, hungry rush. And no one had to tell him that she had not jacked them in the backseat of a cab or let them lick her to orgasm in a dressing room.

  She had never told them why those things were so hard for her.

  She had never let them in.

  He thought of how it had been at the fund-raiser. He’d seen panic overtake her when Suellen had asked her for the truth and the way she’d covered it up with that peculiar expressionless face, the Haven mask. That was what had hurt the most, the lack of emotion. It had said to him that her public self was still in charge. She was still going to protect her image before her own heart—or his.

  But over the past few days, he’d started to see it differently, started to hear her words, the ones she’d spoken on the curb, in his head. Is that what you’re afraid of?

  He saw now that he had answered Suellen for her, to keep her from having a chance to answer. He’d answered for her, just as she accused him, because he was afraid that she couldn’t possibly want the man he really was.

  Deep in his heart, he knew otherwise. She, of all people, saw who he was and had helped him find his way back to himself.

  And he knew who she was. He knew her, and he knew that, as Elisa had said, for all the time she spent thinking about people’s outsides, she spent at least as much thinking about their insides.

  If he’d only given himself the chance, he could have helped her see her own insides as clearly as she saw his. He could still help her see that messy wasn’t dangerous, that her mess plus his mess equaled something vastly greater than one plus one, that somewhere in all that chaos was truth and home and love. They could have something that would carry them as far as they needed to go.

  “Mark,” Elisa said.

  He looked up from the screen. He’d been staring blankly at it for he wasn’t sure how long.

  “You aren’t the man she thinks she wants.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You’re the man she knows she needs. That’s not an easy job.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Elisa was regarding him with an expression of deep sympathy. “How do I fix things?” he asked her.

  “Ah,” she said. “To quote one of my favorite movies, ‘I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.’”

  14

  HAVEN TEXTED ELISA. I’m early. Send me pic so I can see if he’s here?

  Haven was sitting in Charme, waiting for her date. A week or so after she’d cried herself sick on Elisa’s couch, her friend had emailed her to say she had a new match for Haven to try out. I think you’ll like this guy, Elisa had written. He’s your type.

  Now Haven’s phone buzzed in her lap, and she peeked toward the entrance of Charme again to see if she could spot a man who looked like he was in search of a blind date. Nothing. She read Elisa’s text.

  No pic. He has yours.

  Elisa had been cagey about this guy from the start. She’d refused to show Haven his profile, saying that she thought it would cause Haven to “make assumptions” and “have expectations.” Instead of giving Haven the guy’s contact info, she’d made the plans herself—a late-ish dinner at Charme, followed by dessert at a new off-Broadway cafe that featured appetizers and sweets.

  On paper, it sounded great, and Haven had dressed herself up obediently, putting up her hair, making up her face. But she had felt as if she was slogging through the process. There was no pleasure in any of it.

  What she wanted to do was lounge on her couch and eat Cheetos.

  If things had worked out with Mark...

  Mark would sit on the couch with her and eat Cheetos. He would wear torn sweats and he would look hot as sin in them. He wouldn’t care what she wore, either. She could wear one of his T-shirts and a pair of granny underpants and he’d think it was the sexiest thing on Earth. Maybe he’d do her up against one of the big street-facing windows of her apartment.

  Heat—desire—flowed sweetly into her lower belly and welled in her sex. Tears filled her eyes. She had been the biggest idiot in three counties, and here she was, sitting and waiting for anothe
r of Elisa’s dud guys to show up and bore her to death. She hated the too-tight foundation garment she wore under her uncomfortable dress, and the thong panties and the sharp pain in her scalp from where she’d pulled her hair too tight.

  She removed a bobby pin, hoping to relieve the pressure, but somehow that made it worse. The weight of the twist now yanked harder on the spot that was too tight, and her head started to hurt. More tears flowed. In a moment her mascara was going to run right down her face, and when this new guy came into Charme looking for his date, he would find a crying raccoon.

  Mark wouldn’t care if she looked like a raccoon. He would just want her to be comfortable, as he’d said. She wouldn’t have to worry about whether she was cheerful and put together and ready for this date. She could just come as herself.

  She pulled another hairpin out. And then another. Her hair tumbled down onto her shoulders. She felt a tear slide down her face and knew it had painted a dark streak.

  She crossed her arms, feeling defiant, though there was no one here to defy. She looked around the room as if daring anyone to give a shit that her hair was a collapsed, tangled heap or that her face wore twin stripes of misaligned war paint.

  Then she realized who she was defying. Herself. Her own rules. She was telling that little voice in her—the one that was almost never silent, the one that constantly monitored the situation to make sure she was doing everything she could to keep everything tidy—to shut the hell up.

  She didn’t want to keep everything tidy. She was done with neat.

  She could just come as herself.

  She wanted to be her real, messy self, the one that cried in Charme and hurt—hurt like hell—because she didn’t want to be here, she wanted to be with the one person in the world who had seen her lose control and hadn’t turned away.

  Who had seen inside her and wanted to stay a while.

  She grabbed her phone out of her lap. Call it off, she texted Elisa. Tell him I couldn’t make it. Tell him horrible stomach flu.

  What??? I can’t do that now.

  Please.

  Her phone buzzed. Elisa, of course. Haven picked up the phone and hurried out to the sidewalk, answered Elisa’s call with a swipe.

  “He’s on his way!” said Elisa, without preliminaries. “Haven, come on. Buck up.”

  “I don’t want to do this.” She was surprised at her own voice, flat and steely.

  “Hav.”

  “I gotta go. I gotta go find Mark.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Haven, come on. Just stay put. Just do this for me. Just this one date. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Don’t try to talk me out of this, Lise. I’ve been an idiot. I’ve gotta go talk to him. Right now.”

  Elisa made a sound Haven couldn’t interpret. And she didn’t care. It didn’t matter any more if Mark was the right or the wrong guy for her on her paper, or whether Elisa thought she was stark raving mad. She didn’t care if she looked crazy, if her hair was a nightmare, or if her makeup was streaked. Waving one hand she told Elisa, “I don’t care how hot this guy is. Or how expensive his clothes are. Or how good his job is. Or how sexy his car is. Or how good he is at making small talk. Or how nicely his tux fits. I know I chose all those guys so they wouldn’t reject me for being shallow. I know I broke up with them after one or two dates so they wouldn’t have a chance to reject me. But I’m done. I don’t want those guys anymore.”

  “Hav?” Elisa murmured, her voice as gentle as a feather settling in the grass. “It’s okay, baby.”

  “Mark,” said Haven, because she seemed to have used up all the words, and that was the only one that came out when she opened her mouth to speak again.

  But Elisa seemed to understand. “Say it, Haven. You’ll feel better.”

  Haven took a deep breath. Then forced it out through a throat tight with emotion. “I love him. I was sitting in there, and I realized I only want Mark. He might not want me any more. I was a jerk, but I have to try. I have to tell him. I have to give him a chance to see who I really am, and if it’s not enough for him—”

  “It’s enough. It’s more than enough.”

  That wasn’t Elisa’s voice. That was another, much deeper, very familiar voice, and it was coming from just above Haven. Slowly—so slowly, because she didn’t want to discover she was hallucinating or dreaming or otherwise fabricating him straight out of thin air—she lifted her head, and there he was.

  Mark.

  Standing there.

  Wearing a very nice suit.

  Smiling down at her.

  “Oh,” said Haven. She blushed, because even though she’d meant every word she’d said, and even though she’d wanted him, passionately, to know it was all true, she would have presented it a little more...romantically...if she’d had time to think it through.

  He didn’t seem to mind, though. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him smile that much, for so long, as if he was being lit up from inside. What a glorious smile he had. What a way of looking at her, like she was all that mattered, ratty hair and streaked face and all.

  “Did he show up?” Elisa asked.

  “Yes,” said Haven.

  “You’d better go, then,” said Elisa.

  “Yes,” Haven repeated, and she didn’t even try to find the right button to end the call, she just held down the off button on the phone and tossed it into her purse. And then she said, “You’re my date.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I was going to stand you up,” she said. “Because I didn’t think it was you. I thought it was another guy. And I didn’t want another guy. I wanted you.”

  She seemed to be saying the most obvious things in the most obvious ways, but that didn’t seem to bother him, so she kept talking.

  “That would have been funny, I guess. In a missed-connections, hopefully-we-would-sort-it-out kind of way.”

  She felt as though the more she talked, the less she was saying what mattered, but again, he just nodded, and his smile grew a little.

  “What were you going to do?” he asked.

  “I hadn’t gotten that far,” she said. “I was going to find you. Wherever you were.”

  “And when you found me?”

  “I was going to kiss you,” she said.

  “Like this?” he asked, and leaned down to press his mouth against hers.

  “More like this,” she said, and grabbed his head and really, seriously, kissed him, stroking his tongue with hers and biting his lower lip, feeling him already hard against her belly.

  A car honked.

  “They’re saying we should get a dressing room,” Haven said, and Mark laughed, a deep, unexpectedly rich and uninhibited sound.

  “I went to see Elisa,” Mark said, taking a step back from her but leaving his hands on her waist. “I needed to know how you felt about me. But then I realized I already knew. The problem was that I didn’t know how I felt about me.”

  “You felt like you were a burned out, has-been, scruffy guy with shit taste in clothes,” Haven said.

  “Is that a verbatim quote?”

  “Pretty much,” she said. “I think I missed a few. I think you also said drunk.”

  “So I realized something,” Mark said. “You helped me realize it, whether you know it or not. I am a burned out, has-been, scruffy guy with shit taste in clothes. Which is, like, the essential definition of a blues musician. I’m a blues musician. I’d just completely lost track during my years of Sliding Up, and then believing what Lyn said—”

  She started to protest, but he said, “You were right. Lyn was wrong. And I was wrong to listen to her. I let her derail me for so long. I’m ashamed of how long.”

  “You were very young when she said that to you,” Haven said gently. “
And it was a very vulnerable moment. Things like that have a way of sticking.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. Thank you for saying she was wrong and making me look at myself again. And for making me hear myself again. I’m working on putting together a band—so I won’t just do jams. I’ll do gigs, too.”

  “That’s great!” she said, and she couldn’t help it, she grinned a huge dorky grin at him, and he grinned right back. “But I hope—”

  He was already nodding. “And I’ll be a music teacher. I owe you more thanks for bringing that back to me. I had twelve calls this week from new students, Hav, and I’ve already had to turn someone down because I just couldn’t fit her into the schedule.”

  “Oh,” she said, her heart too tight with emotion again to speak. But not panic this time. Joy.

  “I’m not a pop star.”

  “No,” she agreed.

  “But I also realized that these are all costumes we put on. I can be a pop star for a few months, if that’s what it takes to help my dad. I can go to fund-raisers and wear tuxes and give speeches. I can wear a suit and take you on a really romantic date.”

  “Yes,” whispered Haven, feeling as if it was a superhuman effort to hold her whole body together and keep her feet on the ground, when she wanted to fly apart and float away. “And I realized—”

  “That you can let your hair down and cry mascara streaks on your face, even in public?”

  For some reason, that made her start to cry again, and he put his arms around her and held her while she got it all out of her system.

  After a few minutes she was done, and she wiped mascara off her cheeks with the back of her hand, tidying up as best she could. Someone was going to show up any minute who knew her, and she was still Haven Hoyt. And Mark was okay with that. He would put on tuxes and suits and go where she needed to go and be who she needed him to be.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s go on both our dates.”