Half-Hitched

Argh. She was behind on her morning schedule, which she’d developed specifically to avoid having to rush. From an early age her parents had modeled the importance of routines. Addie had scorned them in her rebellious—mildly rebellious—adolescence and her brother had no use for them at all, but she’d come to realize that routines could save you a lot of time and effort and trouble. You knew what to expect. You didn’t have to think or make decisions, everything was already in the works and you simply stepped in and did your part.

Sarah again.

I told you about that jerk playboy Derek Bates being there? I so wish he wasn’t coming.

Addie rolled her eyes. Sarah was pretty judgmental, but her anti-Derek rants were over the top, even for her. There was definitely something she wasn’t telling.

Yes, you told me. But only about a million times. Gotta go to work. TTYL.

In her tiny apartment’s tiny bathroom, Addie turned on the shower spray, counted to seventeen to make sure the water was hot enough and stepped into the iron claw-foot tub where she washed her hair and scrubbed up, thinking about…

Kevin Ames.

Who could help it? Not that he’d been all that remarkable looking. Handsome, sure, but not striking. Bland all American good looks, brown hair and eyes, straight teeth and an athlete’s lean body. But he was so magnetic that women went nuts over him as if he were a knockout. Both Sarah and Addie had been smitten.

When Kevin Ames smiled at you, it was like no one else in the world existed.

Of course since Kevin was a really fun, friendly and popular guy, he smiled at a lot of people, including a lot of girls who were more beautiful and more stacked and more whatever-else guys found essential at that age. He’d always been big-brother sweet to Sarah and Addie, so they contented themselves with worshiping from afar.

Then that one August night, almost exactly eleven years ago, when Kevin was about to start his sophomore year at Brown, someone had told Addie that Kevin was interested in her. Addie couldn’t remember who. But she sure remembered the feeling when he asked her out. Stunned, then euphoric, then terrified. She and Sarah had immediately started planning: clothes, makeup, attitude, everything he’d be sure to say and every way she should respond when he said it…

Get going, Addie.

She yanked the water off and dragged her towel briskly over her body. Back in her bedroom, she pulled on the clothes she’d ironed and laid out the previous evening, giving an exasperated groan when her first attempt at pulling on nylons ended in a run—and now she had no precious cushion of time left for disasters.

This was why she got up at the appointed hour every day and had everything prepared. Because she hated this flustered perspiring mess she got herself into when she deviated from the plan.

Great-Aunt Grace, her mother’s aunt, had been even worse—or better, depending on your perspective. Since she’d died, sometimes Addie went crazy, like she had cereal on Thursdays when Grace’s cereal day was Friday.

She giggled, pulling on her black pumps. Wild woman!

The smile faded. She hadn’t felt like a wild woman in a long, long time. Maybe never.

Kevin Ames.

The night of their date he’d picked her up in his gold Nissan sports car. He’d chatted easily with her beaming parents then they’d gone out for pizza on Nassau Street, and driven to Marquand Park, where she’d played as a child. Kevin had switched off the engine and produced a surprise fifth of vodka Addie had felt too intimidated to refuse, ignoring the voice that told her drinking was not a great idea for either of them.

At the fizzy height of her buzz, he’d taken her face in his hands, looked deeply into her eyes and kissed her.

Oh, that kiss…

She relived it until she realized she was standing on one foot, clutching her other shoe, and it was not getting any earlier.

“Time.”

“Seven forty-five.”

Eek!

Addie raced to the living room and snatched up her briefcase, stomach growling for breakfast she’d have to grab at work, headache demanding coffee. She let herself out of her apartment, snatched up the New York Times, which she usually read over breakfast, and ran down the hall, punched the button for the elevator, punched it twice more, as if that would do anything. Slowest elevator in Manhattan. While she waited, she checked her work schedule for the day.

Hey. She grinned at her phone. It was her half birthday. Addie Sewell was now officially twenty-nine and a half. In another six months she’d be thirty. Still at the same job. Still living alone…

No, no, she liked living alone, loved the independence and the freedom. Though sometimes she wondered about venturing out to the humane society and adopting a cat. Cats were supposed to be good company, and more suitable for a small apartment or condo than a dog. Dogs were a lot of work.

The elevator doors opened to a good day getting better. He was in there, Mr. Gorgeous, the guy from the tenth floor, one of the most good-looking guys Addie had ever seen. In the three years she’d lived here, she’d never once had the guts to say anything more than hi.

So…she would again. “Hi.”

Mr. Gorgeous nodded. “Hey.”

The door closed, leaving that peculiarly charged silence in elevators that Addie tolerated with this guy because saying something and then relapsing to silence would be even more charged and peculiar. But if she started a conversation that lasted all the way to the first floor, then what, would they walk together into the street? What if he were talking to her only to be polite? Better not to say anything. So she stayed silent, watching the lighted numbers at the top of the door descend.

Kevin Ames.

He’d kissed her again, and again. His hand had traveled inside her top to stroke her breast, which felt wonderfully intimate and very hot. Except then Addie had started thinking about his last girlfriend, Jessica Menendez, and the size of her you-know-whats, and the girlfriend before that, Isabella Tramontina, and how she had a body that made men fall like dominoes when she walked down the hall.

Addie had compared them to her own pudgy smallchested big-butt body and virgin status, and panic had erupted. Was this all he wanted from her? To make out in a car drunk on vodka in a public park?

Then came the part that still had the power to bring the sick burn of humiliation to her stomach. Words slurring, she’d told Kevin she loved him. She’d told him she wanted their first time to be on a bed. But not just a bed. A bed of white linen strewn with roses.

Oh, God. She was blushing even now.

Addie would never forget the look of utter bewilderment on Kevin’s face. He’d mumbled some kind of apology, said something about a misunderstanding, and had driven her home in a silence even more painful than the one on this slow, slow elevator. Kevin had gone back to Brown. Addie had gone back to high school. She’d heard about him now and then through Sarah or Paul, but hadn’t run into him again.

Okay, for a few years, she ran away from him so as not to relive that mortification.

But she had enough self-confidence now to laugh about the incident with him when she saw him again next week. She was no longer a virgin and she no longer confused sex with love. Or at least she understood that for most guys they were separate entities.

The elevator door opened and she surged out ahead of Mr. Gorgeous so as not to burden either of them with forced contact.

On E. 53rd street at the offices of Hawthorn Brantley Insurance Company, she grabbed a bran muffin and cup of coffee from the cafeteria then met with teams to design a new life insurance plan and to work on storm damage models, then she formulated spreadsheets dealing with expected drunk driving deaths in Wisconsin the following year.

At lunchtime, back in the cafeteria, New York Times crossword puzzle section tucked securely under her arm, she selected her usual sandwich, carrot sticks and apple, then threw caution to the wind and picked out a cookie. Special occasion! Her half birthday!

Eating the same thing every day meant she knew how many calories she was getting, and that they’d last through her workout and that she’d be healthily hungry for dinner.

Unfortunately she was a little late and her usual single table was taken. Heading for her second choice, Addie noticed Linda Persson, assistant director of Human Resources, seated by herself at a table for four. Linda was a lovely woman, but a little…well, she wasn’t very attractive or very funny or very talented or very interesting, and at age sixty wasn’t likely to become so.

Addie couldn’t bear to see her sitting alone in her beige suit and ivory blouse, forking chef salad into her mouth, trying to look as if she’d chosen to be without a friend in the world because she so enjoyed the experience.

Sigh.

Addie put her tray down on the table. “Hi, Linda.”

“Hey, Addie!” She smiled with such obvious relief that Addie banished the doomed feeling and put herself in the Glorious Martyr column.

“May I join you?”