Isabel Sharpe - Take Me Twice

He pulled on shorts and a cotton shirt and prepared for his morning commute to his office—a converted bedroom on the second floor. Given his and Chuck’s start-up company’s cramped and only semiprivate office space at 1841 Broadway, opting to call from home had been a no-brainer.

He sat at his desk and brought up the week’s schedule on his monitor. Meetings in the city nearly every day this week, which meant he’d get into the office fairly regularly, but spend too many back-and-forth hours on NJ Transit trains. Damn shame he couldn’t afford a studio for overnights. But with the price of real estate in N.Y., a midtown, one-room apartment would set him back more than his entire three-bedroom house here. And Princeton wasn’t exactly bargainsville.

He opened his e-mail program, scanned the messages, deleted ads promising him a larger penis or a chance to earn thousands at home.

Good. Carson Industries wanted a bid for their Web site; he’d send an e-mail to Chuck to let him know. And he’d managed to sell Granger Healthcare on the idea of redesigning theirs; they wanted a bid, too. Excellent. Other than that, more calls to make, trying to put Jameson Productions on the map in the Web design business. They’d done very well so far—he’d brought in enough jobs that they’d had to hire a second programmer, and Chuck had finally gotten his dearest wish—an assistant to spare him paperwork.

So it looked as though he’d be on the phone most of the day. Just not to Judy.

He picked up the receiver, made a call to Ralph Scannell, V.P. of Marketing at Office Mart, who was not Judy and who knew nothing about Laine. Ralph wasn’t interested in a new Web site or any other promotional material. Grayson shrugged. Rejection was part of the job. He made another call, strangely enough also not to Judy. Managed to chat with the office manager, but was stalled trying to get someone higher up in marketing. Three more calls, then three more, none of them to the woman known as Judy or anyone who could possibly tell him anything about his sexy ex-girlfriend Laine Blackwell.

In fact, he was going to sit here, with his butt parked in his overpriced ergonomically correct chair and not call Judy all damn morning long.

“YOU’LL NEVER GUESS who called me.”

Laine glanced up from her menu at Clark’s Diner, her and her oldest friend Judy’s regular Saturday lunch spot. She had a pretty good idea. The same person it always was when Judy said, “You’ll never guess who called me.”

“Who?”

Judy leaned forward, one dark brow lifted, brown eyes sparkling behind her narrow, aqua-framed glasses. “Grayson Alexander.”

“No kidding.” Laine did a quick internal scan of her emotions, noting with triumph that she wasn’t feeling even a hint of that crazy thrill his name used to provoke in her without fail. Nothing but friendly, affectionate warmth. “What’s he up to?”

“The usual.” Judy sat back, watching Laine entirely too carefully, so Laine continued to explore the menu she knew practically by heart. She wasn’t in the mood to be psychoanalyzed. She’d been trying to find a roommate for an entire week, in fact had interviewed her sixth candidate this morning. A woman named Shadow, who hoped it would be okay if she burned incense every day. Oh, and her pet rat would be welcome, wouldn’t he? Worse, Shadow had been the most promising candidate.

“He and Chuck Gartner—do you remember him? He was a year older than us at Princeton. Charming geek, about twenty feet tall…”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He and Chuck are making a go of their interactive media business. They have an office on Broadway by the park. And Grayson bought a house in Princeton on Knoll Drive.”

Laine nodded. “Sounds like he’s doing well.”

“I know. Huge sigh.” Judy patted her ample chest. “He still makes my heart go pitter-pat. Killer looks, perfect body and enough charm to sink the Titanic. Not that he’d look at a lonely, overweight doormat like me.”

“Oh, will you stop.” Laine glared and held up a finger. “One, you are not overweight and—”

“Ahem.” Judy raised her hand to interrupt. “I weigh what you do and I’m a foot shorter.”

“Eight inches. And I’m a beanpole. Two—” she held up a second finger “—you’re only lonely because you don’t get out there and find people to—”

“So shoot me, I’m shy.”

“Three, you—hey!” Laine let her hand smack down on the table. “Why don’t you find a Man To Do, too?”

Judy scrunched up her face incredulously. “Me? Are you kidding? I walk into a bar, men run out screaming.”

Laine rolled her eyes. “Utter crap. What about…whatshisname? At that bar we went to the night you—”

“Roy?” Judy pointed to her chest. “He was just into boobs.”

“Well…there’s a start. I mean they’re part of you.”

Judy let out a snort of laughter and shook her head. “Men To Do is not for me. I can’t screw a guy for the hell of it. I have sex once, I want to wash his socks for all eternity. It’s just who I am.”

“Nonsense. I used to be that way, too, but I evolved. You can, too.”

“Evolved?” Judy scoffed. “You mean you got massively hurt by Grayson and are scared to try again.”

“No.” The casual denial came out not so very casually and a strange, angry feeling invaded her stomach. “You’re always romanticizing our relationship. I was twenty. He was my first love. At that age, I thought if you fell in love, that was that, you had forever all sewn up.”

“It can be that way.”

Laine put down her menu and pressed tense fingers to her temples. “Trust me, I know. I hear it every time I go home. That’s how it was with my mom forty years ago and my sister ten years ago and what’s the matter with me that I can’t hang on to a man? I say they were just plain lucky meeting Mr. Right the first time. Nothing is ‘forever’ for sure. Not marriage, not career, not anything.”

Judy waved her off dismissively. “Gloom and doom.”

“It’s not all gloom. Look at all the stuff I’ve done in my life. I’ve had four jobs, dated six men, tried two different grad school programs and am headed for a third, met tons of people—I’ve had a blast. I’ve really lived, unlike my parents and sister who’ve done the exact same thing every day of their lives since birth. If I’d married Grayson I’d probably be at home now in the same house I’d lived in forever, in the same bathrobe and slippers I’d had forever, trying to keep track of about a hundred children.” She shuddered. “Now that is gloomy.”

“I don’t know.” Judy sighed and fingered the necklace of colored-glass beads at her throat. “Sounds pretty great to me.”

“Instead.” Laine picked up her water glass and toasted her friend. “Instead, I’m totally free and about to embark on my next great adventure.”

“Right.” Judy’s cynical eyebrow crept up the left side of her forehead, even as she hoisted her water glass and clinked with Laine. “He’s not seeing anyone, you know.”

“Who?” She knew damn well who. She just didn’t want to admit that he’d stayed in her mind even this long.

“Grayson.”

“And?”

“Neither are you.”

“And neither are you, Ms. I’ll-always-love-Grayson. Why don’t you try to go out with him?”

“Ohhhh, no. Oh, no. Ohhhh, nononono.” Judy turned a lovely shade of pink to match her cotton sweater. “Not me. This guy will always belong to you.”

Laine threw up her hands in surrender. “How can you think that? You were there for the entire fiasco in college. We weren’t meant to be. What’s the point of drumming all that up again?”

“Let’s just say that as much as it would make my life, I am under no illusion that he wants to know how I am when he calls. He always mumbles for a while then gets to the real point—‘How is Laine doing?’”