“Hey, I resent that.”
“Yeah, but you know it’s true. You’re the one who’s always warning me that I’m kidding myself if I don’t think men have sex as a primary motivation even for the simplest hello,” Eleanor countered. Jimmy shrugged sheepishly. She laughed. “And I was just as mercenary when it came to Trey,” she added, her amusement fading. “But all that was before.”
“Before what?”
“I actually knew him.”
“You think he’s that special?” Jimmy asked her quietly.
It suddenly hit her then, how far out of her depths she’d swam. She couldn’t even see the shore anymore.
“I know he is,” she admitted with a hopeless sigh.
“Don’t overthink it,” Jimmy murmured after a pause.
She sat up straighter. “Is that what I’m doing?”
Of course it’s what you’re doing. It’s what you always do.
“I think that you’re very attracted to Riordan and he’s extremely attracted to you. You guys couldn’t take your eyes off each other last night. I think you should just take it one step at a time. And, Eleanor? Try not to get in the way of yourself having a good time.”
—
She and Jimmy went to a movie that afternoon and had coffee afterward. By the time she got back home it was dark. The condo seemed even larger and more shadowed than usual. As she got dressed in some workout clothes, she mentally acknowledged a fact she’d been trying like hell to avoid. This was the weekend she and Caddy would have usually put up their Christmas decorations in both of their apartments.
A sharp pang of loss went through her. She sat down heavily on the bed in her room. It took her several minutes to catch her breath and gather herself.
This year, she couldn’t bear to do it alone. She suddenly doubted she’d ever be able to put up a Christmas tree for herself again.
She forced herself to rise out of her bout of grief and stand. It was a good thing she didn’t believe in ghosts, because otherwise, the empty condo and the ringing silence would have struck her as more than just oppressive.
She returned a phone call to her mother. Afterward, loud music and exercise seemed like a great way to eclipse her worrisome thoughts about her parents, about the absent Christmas tree, about what Jimmy had mentioned about Caddy . . .
About what she’d realized at lunch about Trey being so special.
Would she see him again before the reading event Monday night? About thirty seconds after she’d come out of the spell from his good-bye kiss yesterday, and the door had closed behind him, she realized they still hadn’t exchanged phone numbers.
She’d just turned down the music from her aerobics and exercise routine when she heard the house phone ringing. She raced to pick it up.
“Hello?” she said breathlessly into the receiver.
“Eleanor, there you are.”
“Hi, Harry,” Eleanor said, recognizing her doorman’s voice.
“You’ve got a Trey Riordan here to see you. I saw that you’d filled out a permission form for him to enter for the next month, but you filled it out with Alan last night. I don’t trust that guy,” Harry stated bluntly, referring to his relatively new night replacement at the security desk.
Excitement shot through her veins, but embarrassment chased quickly behind it. Trey was undoubtedly standing right there at the doorman’s station, listening to Harry on the phone. And Harry had just blabbed that Eleanor had checked the category “one month” on the permission to enter form, not “one time only.” For a second, mortification choked her. What was Trey thinking of her naïve, wishful impulsivity?
“Eleanor? Is it okay if he comes up?” Harry prodded.
She should make an excuse. She didn’t want Trey to see her all sweaty like this.
“Uh . . . yeah, of course.”
Great. Apparently, it wasn’t in her makeup to deny him.
She hung up and stared around her kitchen wildly. Although she was typically a neat freak, the kitchen was a bit of a mess. Plus, she wore shorts and a perspiration-damp Northwestern T-shirt.