Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. She remembers my details, too.
“Was it?” I feign ignorance like the great feign-er I am. “I don’t even remember that. How would you remember that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs smooth bare shoulders and scrolls through the phone for her next choice. “Just popped in my head for whatever reason.”
“Ahhh. The way I remembered your dryer sheets?” I ask innocently. “Just popped in my head, too.”
Silence. She sits back to enjoy the Pacific bordering the road. I opted to take PCH, which is a little longer drive, but Banner in the car for more time is no hardship. Gives her something to look at while she regroups. We go back and forth on songs for the couple of hours in the car. I deliberately avoid shop talk, not wanting to remind her that I’m supposed to be the opposition.
“Okay, here’s my judgment-free pick,” she says after a while, giving me wide eyes and twitching lips. “Don’t hate on my jam.”
“You calling it ‘your jam’ already has my Hatorade out.”
“And you using the word Hatorade has mine out.”
We both laugh, and I wait to hear just how bad her song sucks.
It’s pretty bad.
“Seriously?” There’s a slow-down up ahead, so I can look at her fully while we idle. “One Direction?”
She turns up the volume so “What Makes You Beautiful” soaks the interior of my car. I’ll have to hose it down later, but watching her dance beside me, the most carefree I’ve seen her since our laundromat days, is worth enduring a British boy band that is not the Beatles.
“Okay.” She hands me the phone. “Now you choose your craptastic song so I don’t feel so bad.”
“I told you I don’t listen to shit music,” I remind her.
“Oh, come on. You’ve got one. Everybody does.”
I mentally flip through the songs I listen to, struggling to find something that isn’t great.
And then I have it.
One eye on the road, one eye on my phone, I search until I find it. Never have I looked so forward to a ball-busting as when the soft, melodic strains of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” fill the air.
“Oh my God!” Banner doubles over in her seat, head pressed to her knees, shoulders shaking. “No way you get to judge me. This is . . . awful.”
I don’t mind never getting to live this down. It’s worth it to hear Banner’s full-throated laugh. I haven’t heard her laugh like that since college. Completely uninhibited and honest and free. And because of me.
“I guess we should at least talk about our strategy for recruiting sponsors at this party,” she says when we’re about thirty minutes from Kip and Karen’s Santa Barbara home.
“Right.” I couldn’t care less. “Very important.”
Half these potential sponsors have already committed from an email Kip sent the day we had lunch, but she doesn’t need to know that one detail. She might not have come.
“I say we divide and conquer.” Banner pulls down the visor mirror to check her makeup and add more red to her lips.
“Divide” sounds like it might defeat my purpose, which is to spend as much time with Banner as possible.
“Maybe we should stick together,” I suggest.
“I’ve memorized the list of potential sponsors you sent.”
Of course you have.
“And pulled up photos,” she continues blithely.
Overachiever . . . but we knew that already.
“So I think I have faces and names matched and will be fine on my own,” she says. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
It’s not.
“Okay,” I say, resigned. We turn down the long private drive leading to the Carter estate. “Divide and conquer it is.”
“How lovely,” Banner says with a gasp when the house comes into view.
I consider the Carter’s Cape Dutch estate with fresh eyes. I’ve been coming here since freshman year. In the beginning, of course, I’d visit with Bent, but especially now that I live on the West Coast and Bent is in Boston. I come here without him all the time. I was dumbstruck the first time I drove up, too. On one side, moss-colored mountains overlook the vast estate. Aquamarine waters border the other side. Truly the best of both worlds.
I can tell Banner thinks the interior is as impressive by the way she peers up at the cathedral ceilings and reverently approaches the priceless paintings dotting the walls.
“This home is as lovely as your other one,” she tells Karen after a quick hug. “So warm and beautiful.”
“I could say the same of you,” Kip says, turning on Old World charm like he originally hails from Italy, though he grew up in Detroit. He grabs both Banner’s hands, kisses both cheeks.
“Thank you.” She smiles sweetly and accepts his elbow.
“I have several people for you to meet.” He leads her out to the sprawling oceanside backyard already packed with about a hundred guests.
“Kip likes your friend,” Karen says, taking my arm and following at a discrete distance. “He was very impressed by her.”
“You mean at lunch?” I ask wryly. “Or afterward when he dug up information about her?”
She chuckles, slanting me a knowing glance. “Mostly what he dug up after. He loves ambition and drive and intelligence. She has all three.”
“That she does,” I say, hoping I do a good job hiding the touch of pride I feel about the woman Banner has become. She’s far exceeded even what I thought she would be when I knew her in college.
“I can tell you like her, too,” Karen says slyly, catching and holding my eyes. “A lot.”
“I’m that obvious, am I?” I affect a frown. “Need to work on that.”
“I know you well. You’ve never brought a woman around before.”
“She’s a colleague, Karen,” I deflect. “She’s around because we have business that intersects with Kip’s interests.”
“Oh, tell me another one,” Karen scoffs, smiling at her guests in that way she’s perfected: I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for coming. I’ll deal with you later and can’t you tell I’m in the middle of something. “I see the way you look at that girl.”
“How?” I ask, certain that I’ve disguised my hunger for Banner.