Catch

Keats smiles at my roommate. “Hey, you must be Arietta.”

“That’s me,” she affirms with a nod of her head.

“I’m Keats.” His hand drops to my ankle. “Stellar recommendation on the pizza the other night. Thanks for that.”

Her eyes travel over my face before they hone in on Keats. “You’re welcome. What exactly happened to Maren?”

I notice the tremor in her hand as she grips Dudley’s leash tightly. I reach out to touch her. “The heel of my shoe broke. I twisted my ankle. Keats carried me home.”

She lets out a deep breath. “He carried you home?”

“Down a flight of stairs to his car and then inside to this bench.” I grin.

With the slightest smile on her face, she looks at my boss. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

“It was my pleasure,” he says in a low tone.

I glance at him. He tilts his chin in my direction. “Rest well, Maren. Thank you for tonight.”

I slide my foot from his lap and reach to Arietta for support as I stand. “Goodnight, Keats.”

He rakes a hand through his hair. “If you need anything, call me.”

I need him. I need to kiss and touch him, but I watch as he walks out of the lobby toward his waiting car and driver.

“Let’s get you upstairs.” Arietta wraps an arm around my waist. “Lean on me, Maren.”

I do, but as we near the elevator, I take one last look over my shoulder, wishing that Arietta hadn’t hurried to the lobby so that kiss with my boss would be a memory instead of a moment stolen away from us.Chapter 36Maren“I wish Mr. Calvetti was more like your boss.” Arietta places a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in my lap. “If I twisted my ankle, he’d tell me to suck it up, and then he’d want me to book him a table at Nova. His grandmother owns the best restaurant in the city. Why the hell does he eat dinner at Nova when he could be eating spaghetti with his grandma?”

I can’t hold back a laugh.

My boss is a lot different than Arietta’s.

Keats sent me a text message early this morning asking how my ankle was feeling. I responded quickly, telling him that it was much better and that I’d be at work on time tomorrow with flats on my feet.

He replied that he was heading home. He’d spent the night with another client. This time it’s a hockey player who was arrested for being drunk in public. Keats went to see about bailing him out and then took the player home to his wife and kids.

I secretly hoped he’d bring up what happened in the lobby.

Maybe the almost kiss meant almost nothing to him.

It kept me awake.

I was close, but yet so far, to tasting my boss’s lips last night.

“Are you daydreaming?” Arietta takes off her glasses, looks at the lenses, and then puts them back on.

“About how great this breakfast looks?” I quip. “Who wouldn’t daydream about it?”

She sits down on the corner of the coffee table next to me. She adjusts the waistband of her red sweatpants. “I didn’t get a chance to ask how dinner went. Did you have fun?”

I abbreviate the evening for her. “It was good. Keats thinks he’ll sign Fletcher Newman to a contract soon.”

She silently skims her fingertip over the logo on the front of the white T-shirt she’s wearing. “Did I interrupt something in the lobby, Maren? I thought you two were talking, but I think you might have been leaning in to kiss him.”

Innocence has always been wrapped around Arietta like a blanket. I know she has some experience with men. She admitted one night that she’d lost her virginity to her high school boyfriend before graduation.

There wasn’t any fondness in her tone when she spoke of him, and when I asked how many men she’d slept with in college, she shut me down with the middle finger.

It was all in jest, but there was something about how she avoided the question that made me wonder if her past lovers are few.

“I think we were about to.”

She jumps to her feet. “I fucked that up, didn’t I?”

I can’t help but laugh. “You didn’t.”

I don’t want to blame her for my missed opportunity. Maybe it was fate’s way of stepping in to wave a bright red warning flag. I kissed a co-worker once, and I not only lost my heart but my job too.

I’m not a proponent of believing that history always repeats itself. My last roommate couldn’t pick up after herself, and she constantly left the apartment door unlocked whenever she left.

Maybe my luck is changing.

I couldn’t ask for a better roommate than Arietta, and I doubt that I could find a boss I want to kiss as much as Keats.

“You should try and kiss him again tomorrow,” she states with a grin.