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I fight the heat rising to my cheeks and I do comment, but probably not in the way he wanted me to. “I meant the first class bar you’re sitting in,” I say. I nod at the mirror behind the bar. “Or how about that reflection? You’re hot, Nick. You look healthy. You’re obviously wealthy. How are you ‘justified’ that life is shit when you’ve hit the standard-of-living jackpot?”
The smile has dropped off Nick’s face. The teasing glint is gone. The initial attraction that pulsed between us is sucked up by a vacuum of irritation that is now coming from both sides.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Nick says. “You think you can just glance at my appearance and deduce all there is to know? Just because I don’t believe the world is all sunshine and daisies?”
“No, because you, Nick, have a bad attitude. And that’s going to set the mood for your life. Not the city of New York, not the business world, definitely not other people.”
I’m really going in on this guy. Maybe it’s the past month of having to smile and nod and pretend that everything is just perfectly lovely while my ex-fiancé fucks my best friend. Actually. No. It’s definitely that. I’m not naive, dammit. Just because my ex and this sexy, irritating stranger are assholes doesn’t mean everyone in the world is.
I will not fall into misery and pessimism just because every cell in my body wants to.
Nick stares at me hard for a moment, a muscle in his jaw working. I glare coolly back. He stands and at first I think he’s about to leave without another word, but then he pauses and turns back to me.
“Well, you’ve just confirmed my theory,” he states. He drains the rest of his drink, places it deliberately on the bar without breaking eye contact, and strides past me. I get a little satisfaction from the way he slams the train door shut.
So I guess flirty banter with a handsome stranger isn’t how I’m destined to ride into New York. No, destiny instead has fated me for an argument with a sexy stranger, culminating in bad feelings all around.
Oh well. Par for the course, I suppose. I push my irritation down and pull out my laptop. This week isn’t about one-night stands anyway. It’s about work. And I should get focused on that if I want to make a good impression on Monday.
After all, first impressions are incredibly important.
CHAPTER TWO
EVIE
“Every time! I swear, every time I come to this city I get into a fight with a cab driver!”
Mickey slams her purse down on the coffee table of our suite. She crosses her arms, flips her long black hair over her shoulder, and stares me down with sparkling green eyes, almost like it’s my fault she keeps duking it out with cabbies.
I stare back nonplussed. I have my toothbrush sticking out of the side of my mouth and am in the middle of making the bajillionth adjustment to my presentation. Mickey had gone out for bagels over an hour ago and is just getting back now. Without bagels.
“Why were you getting a cab?” I ask, not entirely sure if I want to know the answer or not.
Mickey is my intern. She’s twenty-three, about to finish her MBA, and as open about her personal life as she is intelligent. That is to say, very. She arrived yesterday and I’ve already heard about her last hookup’s Daffy Duck tattoo, what happens to her stomach when she eats too many olives, and about the weird rash she’s developing “just south of the border”.
She’d called me into the bathroom last night to ask my opinion on the latter. I’d politely declined.
Mickey is a ball of energy with zero filter to speak of, the polar opposite of Cheryl who was constantly upping her Xanax dose. I’m finding her presence to be a helpful distraction from worries about my pitch and from thoughts of that arrogant, sexy guy from the train.
After he’d stormed from the compartment, I’d assumed that my Fortune Teller would be relegated to a semi-erotic (and greatly irritating) pit stop on the overall trip. Two days later, I still can’t push him from my mind.
That rumbling laugh. Those deep haughty eyes. His lips, curling both in a smile and a grimace. He’s haunted my dreams, the smell of cinnamon and whiskey wafting about my bedroom even after awakening.
Day One had been torturous. I’d spent a very distracted and sexually frustrated Saturday in the suite my firm had booked for Mickey and me, trying and failing to refine my presentation and replaying our argument again and again in my head.
I always returned to the same conclusion: Nick is a fine specimen of a man but I only would have hooked up with him if he had never opened his mouth. And if I were the type of girl who slept with strangers on trains.
Although now that I’m single for the first time in six years, maybe I could be the type of girl who sleeps around. Why not? Maybe I’ll even have a hookup while I’m here in the city.
That would show Nick!
Why would that show him? And why do you even care about showing him? He’s just a jerk who you’ll never see again! A very sexy jerk who smells like heaven in an oak cask…
So basically my thoughts were a mess for twenty-four hours until Mickey showed up and started entertaining me with her never-ending stream of distracting stories.
While I was getting my master’s, a fun night out consisted of going to parties hosted by Brent’s friends in their multi-million dollar houses in Beacon Hill that would inevitably end with me walking his drunk ass home. Mickey, meanwhile, is living a very different, very single existence, that is equal parts titillating and terrifying.
Last night, at the bar down the street, I’d finally confessed that I’d just gotten dumped mere weeks before my wedding. I almost hadn’t told her, afraid of hearing the pity and judgment that I’d heard so often from acquaintances. Mickey only managed to surprise me yet again.
