Jane Sullivan - One Night In Texas

The light turned red and the Walk sign came on. Alyssa had just stepped off the curb when she heard a voice behind her.

“Alyssa! Wait!”

She turned to see her sister, Kim, hurrying down the sidewalk toward her, moving clumsily in her too-tall heels, the breeze swirling her hair into a copper cloud around her head. She stopped in front of Alyssa, breathing hard.

Alyssa looked at her incredulously. “Kim? What are you doing here?”

“I was sitting in the coffeehouse across the street from the restaurant, waiting for you to come out. But you left so quickly I had a hard time catching up.” She wiped a strand of windblown hair from her face and flashed Alyssa a big grin. “So? How was your date with Tom?”

Oh, Lord. That goofy smile again. Ever since Kim had gotten engaged, she’d become The Stepford Sister, with a mission to make Alyssa as ecstatically happy as she was. Unfortunately that meant setting her up with anyone she could find who was male and had a pulse. Since Alyssa had been transferred from Seattle several months ago, Kim had talked her into four blind dates, and every one of them had been a disaster. And this guy—a neighbor of Kim’s fiancé—had been the worst one yet.

“How was it?” Alyssa said. “Well, let’s see…have you ever listened to somebody talk about himself?”

“Sure.”

“For an entire hour?”

Kim’s buoyant smile sank into a frown. “Oh, come on. He couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Do you know what he does for a living?”

“Yeah. He sells luxury cars. Jeff says he makes a lot of money.”

“Oh, yeah. He told me he made big bucks last year, but—hush, hush—what the IRS doesn’t know won’t hurt them.”

Kim winced. “Well, if he sells cars, he probably drives a nice one, right?”

“Sure he does. It’s very expensive and classy and prestigious, you know, and he told me if I’m very, very lucky, he might take me for a ride in it someday. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Kim’s expression grew progressively more pained. She shrugged weakly. “Okay. But at least it sounds as if he likes to talk. Beats the silent type.”

“Only if we’d had an actual conversation. It was more like pontification. I got to hear about The World According to Tom. Religion, politics, sex, the stock market—I heard it all. I’d be willing to bet he couldn’t even tell you my name.”

“Come on, Alyssa. There must have been something good about him.”

“Kim,” she said sharply, “the man could barely eat because he was so busy patting himself on the back!”

Kim held up her palm. “Okay. I get the picture. I just thought you two might get along, you know? After all, you went to the same university.”

“So did ten thousand other people.”

“So you have nothing in common?”

“Yes. We do. We both have opposable thumbs and walk upright. But I’m looking for a little more compatibility than being part of the same species.”

“But opposites attract. Everyone knows that.”

“No, they don’t. That’s a myth perpetuated by people who screwed up and married somebody totally wrong for them and now they’re looking for a way to explain the dumb choice they made.”

“Okay, so this one didn’t work out. But there’s still that other guy Jeff works with. The one who—”

Alyssa held up her hand. “No. No more blind dates. Just let me make my own choices from now on, okay?”

“So the men you pick will be better?”

“Yes!”

“Like Mr. Wonderful in Seattle? The man who had an affair with you for a week, lied to you about who he was, then disappeared without a trace?”

Alyssa cringed. Whenever she thought about that time in Seattle, she tried very hard to edit out the way it had ended. The week they’d spent together had been incredible, and not just because of the sex. He said he’d never been to Seattle before, so she’d shown him the sights, taking him to museums and parks and restaurants and enjoying his company more with every moment that had passed. She’d shared more intimate details about her life with him than with any man she’d ever known. She’d told him about her family, her job, her volunteer work, and he’d listened with rapt attention, as if she were the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. She knew she couldn’t have been. Not even close. She didn’t consider herself to be an unattractive woman, but fascinating she wasn’t.

Still, in spite of her rational, reasonable nature that told her how crazy it was, she’d begun to imagine what forever with him might be like. Then she’d awoken one morning to find him gone, with only a cursory note left behind. It’s been fun, but I have to go. Derek.

She’d told herself to let it drop, to forget him, to pretend the week had never happened, because it clearly hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to her. But she couldn’t stop herself from trying to find him. And that was when she’d made the most painful discovery of all: every word out of his mouth had been a lie.

Derek Stafford didn’t exist. Not in Kansas City, anyway. He’d never worked for Primus Engineering, because it didn’t exist, either. He hadn’t attended the University of Kansas and Oak Park High School had never heard of him. And slowly she’d realized that while she’d told him everything about herself, he’d offered her almost nothing in return aside from a few basic facts, all of which had turned out to be lies.

She’d felt like a fool. How could she have fallen so hard for a man who hadn’t cared about her in the least? Of course, she was acting like an even bigger fool now for wasting time thinking about him at all.

Kim was right. Anything beat a man who was there one day, gone the next, with no goodbye, not even a halfhearted attempt at the old “It’s not you, it’s me” excuse. Just a note on his pillow and a trail of lies to remember him by.

“He was probably married, you know,” Kim said.

“I know.”

“Or just a world-class jerk.”

“I know.”

“Or both.”

Alyssa sighed. “I know.”

“You need to stay away from guys like him. Go for ones who’ll offer you some kind of future.”

“Who are also self-important snobs?”

“Okay, then, tell me. If Tom was a dud, what are you looking for in a man?”

She didn’t know, exactly. It was so hard to describe the man she saw in her head sometimes that it would sound stupid to say it out loud. She wanted a man who was interesting. A man who was exciting, who knew how to excite her.

Her mystery man in Seattle.

He lied to you and left you, and you’re still obsessing? What’s the matter with you?

Kim sighed. “Look. All I’m trying to say is that you may be looking for something that’s just not reality. If you’re still waiting for that dashing man to ride up on his white horse and sweep you off your feet, you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life.”

Intellectually, Alyssa knew her sister was right. Still, something inside her said it was better to be alone than with a man who demanded everything and gave nothing.

“After all,” Kim went on, “you’re pushing thirty. You need to be thinking about settling down.”

“I’ve got a good job. I don’t need a man to take care of me.”

“You’ve got a job that requires you to work twelve hours a day and pays you for eight. Lawrence Teague is a gazillionaire, but does he pay you what you’re worth? If you didn’t get an apartment out of the deal, it’d be slave wages.”

“I make enough. And I like my job.”

“Right. Running in circles for a bunch of rich people. Sounds like a real blast to me.”

Kim just didn’t get it. Yes, the people who lived at the Waterford were wealthy. After all, it was arguably the most prestigious apartment building in the city of Dallas, one of seven identical buildings owned by Starlight Properties in major metro areas across the country. It climbed twenty-three stories into the North Dallas skyline, offering housekeeping services, a state-of-the-art security system, an on-site spa and hair salon, as well as a health club. As Tenant Relations Manager, it was a challenging task for Alyssa to keep everyone in the building happy and life running smoothly, but she thrived on it.