Carrick comes out. "There you are."

  "Sorry to keep you waiting."

  "I think you mean the other way around."

  Coco looks on with veiled interest.

  "I'm Miss Carring-whatever, the coffee girl. It's my job to run and fetch and wear a smile."

  "I like your smile," Carrick says.

  I shove the coffee in his hands.

  "Coco," Carrick says in his smooth, charming voice. "Do you mind if I borrow Navy for a few minutes. Promise to bring her back."

  Coco starts to answer, but I say, "No, thank you."

  "You'd rather run and fetch and—" he starts.

  "I have work to do."

  He palms the cup of coffee, the rim meets his lips, and he swallows long. Not even Coco can resist the show. As though surprised I'm still standing there he asks, "I thought you had to help Mr. Douche with his dry cleaning?"

  Coco lets out the combination of a gasp and a giggle and then breezes into her office, obviously flustered.

  I barricade myself with crossed arms in front of my chest. "What are you doing here?" I ask.

  "I told you, I had a meeting."

  "Here?"

  "Yes, here. With Coco—" he says with amusement.

  "Why?"

  "Miss Cartoonton—" Mr. Bouche calls from his office.

  Before I storm off, Carrick mouths the words Mr. Douche.

  I'd like to sleep through the next day so I don't risk seeing Carrick at the office. Fortunately, he's not there, but every time someone addresses Mr. Bouche, a laugh bubbles on my lips, making it so I can almost tolerate him butchering my last name.

  I scrape through Wednesday, finding myself whirling around every time heavy footsteps approach down the hall. I startle when the phone rings. My stomach cartwheels when the elevator doors suction open. But I don't see him. Thank goodness.

  That evening, Katya, not only my best friend with my best interests in mind, but also my roommate, meaning I can't escape her, reminds me of my pending yoga and dinner date. She'll have none of my excuses or wanderings around the house as I procrastinate going out with Spencer—the Hottie in 7G.

  "I'm not meeting him until six. For a couple's yoga class." I brush my hands down my face. "How did I let myself get talked into this?" I ask, edging my way back to my room.

  "Have you seen Spencer lately?"

  "Of course. He lives down the hall. I saw him yesterday in the elevator. Awkward," I sing song. "There'll be no avoiding what's sure to be more of those moments in the foreseeable future unless one of us moves."

  "Let's hope not." Her lidded eyes suggest reverie. "He's going to put you right tonight, Navy."

  My eyes widen at the suggestion.

  "Oh yes." She licks her lips.

  "Did you sneak over to his apartment and submit an indecent proposal?"

  "No, but not a bad idea. Spencer is a deal maker. A closer. Everything he does is done to get results. You might say he's the kind of man who appreciates a return on his investments."

  I shake my head. "We're adding sex to the pressure of tonight? Isn't it enough just for me to keep from farting in class?"

  She tries not to smile and then says, "Not just sex. Sex with Spencer." Her words are italicized and punctuated.

  "What does that mean?"

  "You'll be telling me in the morning."

  Kat has me bathed, moisturized, and dressed in the sexiest yoga clothes in her closet. She primes me on conversation starters and responses. "Do you remember how to kiss?"

  "Kat!" My mouth falls open.

  "No, not like that."

  I rehinge my jaw. "I wasn't demonstrating." It's been a long time, but the brief brush of my lips against Carrick's the other day, reminds me I haven't forgotten the way it makes me feel. I swallow.

  "Why are you smiling like that?" she asks.

  "Like what?"

  "You were about to bite my head off and now you're dimpling."

  "Dimpling?" I ask.

  "The rare, dimpled smile I've only seen a handful of times."

  "I am not smiling," I adamantly refute.

  She grabs her coat.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I have to teach a class, but I want a full report. See you later. And be safe," she says, chucking a condom at me before whisking into the hallway. "It's like riding a bike," she calls after the door bangs shut.

  How did this happen?

  Copious amounts of alcohol.

  Peer pressure.

  A weak resolve.

  Loneliness.

  A check mark in all four boxes.

  I pace around the apartment.

  Are Spencer and I supposed to go over to the class together? It would be weird if we both left from the same building, but didn't meet up first. Maybe he's leaving from the office? Or perhaps he forgot a change of clothes and will knock on the door? My palms sweat. My throat is dry. My leg jitters and I feel like I might bounce out of my skin.

  How do adults do this dating thing without a massive dose of tranquilizers?

  Kat texts me, reminding me to leave, or I'll be late. My pacing carries me to the door before I can talk myself out of it.

  I'm manhandled twice in the full subway car: once by an octogenarian who almost fell over when the train stopped abruptly and once by a toddler who was fascinated by the metallic stripes on my pants. Even dressed like Katya I don't quite have the same allure.

  I wait in the short line by the sign-in desk at the studio. Hipsters and aging hippies fill the room in pairs. There's one threesome. The guy has a scraggly beard and the two chicks fawn over him like he's their guru. Fingers crossed he's not the teacher or I'm out of here.

  There's no sign of Spencer after I pay so I hurry to the bathroom for a private moment to prevent any embarrassing incidents involving sudden gusts of wind. There's both a man and woman figure on the locked door signifying it's occupied. I wait, glancing over my shoulder for Spencer, being sure not to make eye contact with the hippie ménage a trois.

  The doorknob clicks and I turn around, stepping headfirst into a broad chest.

  "Oh, hello," Carrick says as though running into each other multiple times in the last week isn't unusual.

  "This is starting to freak me out."

  He smirks. Damn that smirk. The memory of the way his lip lifts and his eyes narrow like he's landed on something both fascinating and desirable, may have faded with time, but my body didn't forget. There's heat. A lot of heat. "What are you doing here?" I ask.

  "Yoga."

  My eyes narrow this time. "It's a couple's class."

  "The lady at the counter told me that after I paid."

  "You're not meeting someone?" I ask.

  "You? What are the chances we'd run into each other in Manhattan, what does this make? Four times since I got back?"

  "Strange coincidence."

  "Fortuitous." There's that damn smirk again.

  Katya and the yoga teacher would probably say it has some higher, universal reason, like I need to truly let go of the past. I suddenly sense a presence behind me, like a shadow punctuating this as truth. "Hi, Navy," Spencer says. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

  In the narrow hall, with Carrick on one side and Spencer on the other I'm the mushy filling of a hot man sandwich. I don't know where to look or what to say. Hands, ceiling, chests, lips. You'd think the countless hours I spend reading about situations like this I'd at least know how to handle myself.

  My breath is a choppy mess.

  Spencer extends his hand and introduces himself to Carrick. They're both as cool as a pair of cucumbers. Which makes me think of other, similarly shaped, ahem, things. My cheeks turn a shade pinker, and I stare at my bare feet wondering if I'm headed toward a full body blush.

  The two guys are talking about a golf tournament where their fathers competed for charity—how they made that connection in the two minutes we've been standing here, I have no idea—the moneyed and renowned have radar for each other.

  Thankfully, the yoga teacher calls us in to start. I'm on my mat between Carrick and Spencer. I don't envy the hippie guy and his two women. Not that that's what this is, but my palms sweat, my head sweats, my butt, for goodness sakes, is sweating as we move from downward dog, to chatturanga, to upward dog for the millionth time.

  I push myself into another plank, mostly because the instructor has enviable biceps, but so does Carrick, to my right, and Spencer to my left.

  At last, when the teacher has the good grace to move us into the final resting pose, splayed on our backs, I chant inner peace, inner peace, just so I don't fall asleep, or fart. I feel eyes on me. Like when you're in a car and look over at the passing vehicle and the driver happens to be looking at you—it's like a sixth sense. I blink open an eye.

  Carrick's blue eyes are dark in the low light. My heart thunders in my chest even though we've long since done the cooldown. He stretches his hand toward mine, squeezes, and then gets up and leaves.

  The pinky side of my right hand tingles. It's like he tattooed his name there.

  It's a dot that connects to my lips where his met mine.

  To a dot on my arm where he touched it.

  To a dot on my waist when he lassoed me from imminent peril involving ice and a bus.

  My hand still tingles when we press our palms together and say Namaste. It still tingles after I get dressed. It tingles when I stuff it in a mitten and Spencer and I are out on the street. When we reach the restaurant, my hand distracts me while I browse the menu attached to a cedar plank.

  Focus, Navy. I read Spencer's lips, his voice making sounds like truffle butter, asiago, and sirloin, but I forget what it all means.

  My attention only gels when he says my name. "Navy, tell me what you do."

  "You go first," I hedge.

  "It'll bore you out of your mind." Nonetheless, he gives me an overview of his job at an investment firm and highlights his quarterly trips to tropical islands to hook the whales—wealthy captains of industry, not the mammals—until our drinks come.

  "I work for a PR firm. Albright, Douche, Carlotta, and associates."

  Spencer practically chokes on his drink. "Douche?"

  "Bouche. I meant, Bouche," I say, fighting between laughter, embarrassment, and the vision of Carrick's lips mouthing the word.

  I revert the conversation back to his trips overseas, island life, extravagance, and opulence. It's fun to live in his world for the space of an hour while we dine and sip wine. The greens, whites, and browns in the rustic, farm to table restaurant take on a rosy hue.

  "Now I know what you do, tell me what you like to do." This time my cheeks turn red. That can go down in the books as one of the worst lines ever. I actually groan as I try to recover my dignity. "I mean, in your spare time," I say.

  He swirls the remainder of his oak-aged whisky. "I think we both know what I like to do in my spare time." His eyebrow follows the angle of the corner of his lip, his dark eyes burn into mine, sending a flare through my center that practically splits me in two. "Shall we?" he asks.

  And that's that. I'm drunk. I'm going to get laid. If only life was always this easy.

  He's a perfect gentleman, insisting on paying the dinner bill, opening the door for me on the cab ride back to our building, and making sweetly engaging conversation as we chat on the elevator.

  It's not until we're behind the locked door of his apartment that he turns into a sex-crazed animal. He tears at my blouse, tosses his own shirt over his shoulder, and I'm nearly in his room and out of my clothes, when curiosity about what his apartment looks like distracts me. What does a person with this amount of confidence and appetite live like? Is it as described in books and movies? Masculine and cold? Angular and symmetrical? I glance over my shoulder at moody grays and stainless steel, but before I can get further confirmation, he reels me into his room and tosses me on the bed.

  He's on all fours, hovering over me, planting a hungry kiss here, a lusty kiss there. He strokes and rubs in all of the right places. He caresses and licks. He's dominant, in control, fully aware of what he likes and more importantly, what women like—what I don't even realize I like until he does it.

  He's prepared with condoms and I admire the ease and speed with which he puts it on. He slides into me and thrusts a few times. I groan. I call out his name. I am in heaven. My hands claw his back. The one on the right, in the place close to the pinky, tingles.

  Carrick's image pops into mind just as I explode with the first full bodied, scream out loud orgasm I've had in years.

  Chapter 10

  Carrick

  Damn. All I can think about is that fucking dimple when she smiles. How she used to always smile before my sister, half the school, and I humiliated her by not letting her know that my asshole best friend— her boyfriend—was cheating on her, a lot.

  I've carried the regret of not looking back to boot camp, brought it in the bedroom, overseas, to war, back home, and even now with every beat of my determined heart.

  I have her number. When she changed it, all I had to do was ask her mom for the new one. I don't know if Mrs. Carrington knew everything that happened between us. But she must have known my intentions were honest otherwise she wouldn't have given it to me. I've nearly pressed dial a thousand times over the years.

  I can't erase the disappointment in her eyes, in the way she faded into her armor, into anger and hurt. The letters she sent that I never returned revealed her feelings. She was brave. I was a coward, even as I fought for our country.

  When I saw her the other day, I almost didn't recognize her shadowed, sad face, but then she flashed that dimple. I knew I had to fix things. It was there right before I placed my lips on hers. It appeared when I squeezed her hand. She needs to know she didn't do anything wrong. It was all me. All fucking idiot, asshole me.

  I don't expect her to forgive me, but I'll damn well try. Saying a lame, "I'm sorry" for the hundredth time won't do it. Even if she's happy with the investment banker, she deserves to be free of the burden we share. However, I know guys and he seems to be more the business and pleasure type than to have and to hold.

  And if I know Navy Catherine Carrington and I do, or at least did, then I know she wants to be loved and adored. She deserves to be. She should be treated like a princess and a queen. She's smart, beautiful, creative, and everything assholes like Zach and I don't deserve.

  Spencer seems like a member of my old crew: the players, bastards, dogs. I never had a long-term girlfriend in high school or college and that was to distract me from who I couldn't have. Meaningless sex was easier than to long for the girl who could never be mine.

  While I was in Europe, I used up all the piss and fire from my youth and now prefer a quiet night in, a bottle of wine, a warm fire, maybe a movie, a game of cards, poetry…

  If any of my brothers or buddies caught me right now, sitting alone in a café, daydreaming like this, they'd have the laugh of their lives. Likely, they're off the south coast of France, in the Caribbean, or on the slopes, waiting for a snow bunny or two.

  And it's all because of a girl named Navy won my heart.

  What I want more than anything is to help rid her of the shadows in hers. She has one foot in the past—I've known her most of my life and saying she's stubborn is an understatement. And a good thing too. She wouldn't let us go swimming during a lightning storm one summer. Three trees caught fire that could have been three Kennely boys. She petitioned and picketed when developers wanted to build a brand new high school, demolishing the historic one for condos. It turns out it was attached to a Native American burial site and she saved a beautiful old building and sacred land. Despite everything that happened during her senior year, she offered the most beautiful and moving words at my sister's funeral.

  It's time she live her life, without pain and guilt—and me, but first I have to make it right.

  She's probably still on her date. She's probably screwing the guy. If so, he's damn lucky. I've dreamt and fantasized about her more times than is decent. Yes, even when she dated my best friend, which makes me just as guilty as him. Yes, I imagine the feel of her skin under my fingers, her lips on mine. It's always her.

  But. And it's a big but, not hers—though I do appreciate her backside, especially in those skinny jeans she used to wear—she hates me.

  I don't blame her. I'm not a good person.

  Over the years when it comes up in conversation, people try to explain it away, she was just mad at the time. It was a lot to deal with. Overwhelming tragedy and so on.

  They don't know the full story. I know without a doubt, that she hates me. But what I learned during my time in the Marines, reinforced by my recent yoga practice—helps settle my mind—, and in the wisdom passed along to me from Grandma Kennely before she passed away, is that hate only hurts the person who hates.

  I don't like the fact that she despises me, but more than anything, it's taking away from her happiness. Sucking away her energy and keeping that dimpled smile from her face. I want her not to feel that way. I don't mean to sound arrogant. She doesn't have to love me or like me even, but I want her to have closure. To know that I was stupid, not her. She wasn't at fault even though I know she carries the burden of guilt. I don't want her to avoid holiday gatherings back home because of me. Or the clambakes in the summer when she visits her parents.

  I click on my phone with my thumb hovering over the call button. I've come this close so many times. I have to man up. We're in the same city. We've run into each other repeatedly…

  Without making the call, I walk back to the Airbnb I'm renting while in town for meetings. I'm making it my mission to help relieve Navy of the things that keep her from smiling that amazing, fucking dimpled smile.

  After grabbing a container of leftovers from the fridge, I turn on Sports Center, glancing at my phone every few minutes.

  I move my sorry ass from the couch to the bed, laying on the crisp sheets with my thoughts whirling with what ifs, maybes, and that brief kiss and the brave moment when I squeezed her hand before leaving the yoga class early to spare us further embarrassment when she and her date left together.