Layover Rules

Chapter Three



When we landed in Atlanta, I managed to wait until the last minute to get off the plane. I was trying to avoid Sam. Someone brazen enough to add his info to my contacts list would surely be waiting around to talk to me in the airport, and I wanted to allow enough time for him to be out of the terminal by the time I got there.

And he wasn’t. I’d successfully dodged more interaction with him.

What I couldn’t avoid, though, was Trevor. Before I had a chance to dial, he called me, saying he’d been tracking the flight on the airline’s website, and asking why I hadn’t called as soon as we landed.

“I just got off.”

He made a low groaning noise. “You know you’re not supposed to do that without me.”

It was a good thing he was saying this over the phone and not in person—this way I could get away with rolling my eyes. There was a time when I thought the sexual references in his jokes were hot, arousing, sometimes just playfully cute. But not anymore, and especially not from roughly 800 miles away.

“You know what I meant,” I said.

“And you know what I meant, didn’t you.” A statement, not a question.

“I did.”

“Good, because if you didn’t, I’d have to remind you the moment you get back. I might just do that anyway.”

I decided to humor him. “Promise?”

“Bet on it.”

The late spring chill that was in the air in New York that morning was nowhere to be found in Atlanta, and as I stepped out of the airport to make my way to the store, I was glad I had packed for springtime weather in the south.

I really needed these three days away from home.



. . . . .



My official title is “Visual Merchandising Manager.” When you walk into a department store and see all those displays…that’s what I do. Well, I don’t do all of them, of course. In fact, they’re mostly set up by the people who work in the store. My job is to train the managers and associates so the displays will match the designers’ specifications with precision.

I love what I do. It’s a big step up from the personal stylist position I’d had for a couple of years. The money is decent, but if it weren’t for the fact that I lived with Trevor in his penthouse on the upper West Side of Manhattan, I’d be living in a very small apartment if I stayed in that part of town, possibly working a second job to make ends meet. Even then, I wouldn’t regret my career choice for one second.

At the moment, though, I loved my job even more because it was the one thing in my life that gave me a sense of self. Of independence. Of being something other than Trevor’s f*cktoy.



. . . . .



Arriving at the store, I was greeted by the manager, who appeared to be a little older than I. This always worries me. More than once I’ve encountered a manager who is senior to me in years, but not on the corporate ladder, and it’s caused some friction.

I don’t know if it’s resentment or pride or what, but it happens, and it makes everyone’s job more difficult than necessary. Usually it’s gone after the first day of my visit though, because I don’t wield power like some others from the corporate office. I like to get along, get my job done, and move on. I’m not interested in catty rivalries, power plays, or one-upmanship.

Tanya turned out to be very cool, a major relief. We spent the morning together going over schematics for the floor displays, and I showed her some images of new items we’d be getting in the coming months, along with the plans for their presentation.

I had a meeting with a few of the associates after lunch, covering much of the same material, and then another later when the afternoon/evening girls arrived for their shifts. The entire staff reflected Tanya’s upbeat attitude, which was probably why the Atlanta store was one of our top performers in the region.

When two of the girls from the morning shift were getting ready to leave in the afternoon, I overheard them talking about going out with their boyfriends together that night—a double-date to the Atlanta Braves baseball game.

Sam popped into my head. I knew nothing about baseball, so I just assumed the Yankees were in town. I mentioned it in an off-hand manner, not meaning to start the debate that ensued between them as a result.

“The Braves are playing the Cubs, actually,” one of the girls, Diane, said.

The other, Heather, added, “Plus, the Yankees are in the American league. Braves are in the National. They wouldn’t be playing each other.”

“They could,” Diane said.

“In the playoffs.”

“Or in the regular season. They play a few American league teams. Remember, we saw them play the White Sox?”

They went back and forth for a couple of minutes. These girls really knew their baseball. I couldn’t relate, so I just stood there awkwardly. During a lull in the exchange, I said, “I hope you have fun. See you tomorrow.” I smiled and made my way to another part of the store.

Tanya told me that while I was in town I had to try southern barbeque and recommended her favorite place. It was customary to take the manager to lunch or dinner, so I invited her to grab a bite there after work, my treat. Or, actually, the treat provided by my travel expense account, just one of the perks of my job.



. . . . .



I was back in my hotel room by eight o’clock, full from the not-at-all-healthy and sinfully greasy dinner, exhausted, and really looking forward to relaxing as much as I could while dreading the inevitable bloating that would greet me the next morning.

After a nice hot shower, I sat on the bed drying my hair with a towel, flipping through channels in hopes of finding a good movie. Normally I had no use for ESPN, and being a visitor in Atlanta, I had no idea what the channels were, but I stopped on a sports event when something, or rather someone, caught my eye.

Sam.

He was in a suit, wearing a headset with a microphone, along with another guy. They were in a broadcast booth, with the baseball field as the backdrop. I watched for a few minutes, listening to them rattle off various statistics of the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs.

I had no idea Sam was a sportscaster now. Why was he no longer playing baseball? He couldn’t have been more than thirty-two or so, and to me that didn’t seem too old for the sport.

Perfume Girl had said she recognized him as a baseball player, and he’d agreed. But he clearly wasn’t playing baseball anymore. Had his wife ended up asking him to stop, as he’d once mentioned in Barneys all those years ago, although he’d also said she’d never ask him to do that. Or…

I remembered noticing on the plane that he hadn’t been wearing a wedding band. Maybe he was divorced. But even if he was, why wasn’t he playing anymore?

There was an easy way to find out.

I turned on my iPad and had to go through the steps Sam showed me earlier to get on wi-fi. Without him, I’d probably have done something wrong again. I was typing his name into the Google search field when my phone rang. I cringed, thinking it was probably Trevor.

I was relieved to see that it was Alicia, my best friend.

“Hey,” I said.

“Don’t tell me. It’s 8:20 and you’re already in for the night.”

“Gee, how’d you guess?”

“Because you’re always in your hotel room by 8:00.”

“Not always.” I reclined on the bed, put the TV on mute, and waited to see if they showed Sam again. There was something I thought I’d noticed, but I needed to see him again to be sure.

“Right, not always,” Alicia said. “There was that time you worked in the store until 9:00. I almost forgot. Forgive me?”

“I love you, so you’re always forgiven.”

We had a few minutes of small talk, during which she told me she had met a guy in a Duane Reade supermarket earlier that afternoon, and that he could be “The One.”

I’d known Alicia for almost ten years and in that time she had identified dozens of guys—maybe more than a hundred—as “The One.” She hadn’t dated, let alone slept with, very many of them. The vast majority were guys she met in random situations. Sometimes on the bus, sometimes in line at the grocery store, other times when she was working. Sometimes she’d strike up the conversation, other times she would give off flirt-ready signals like a beacon until the guy she was interested in received the signal and bounced it back to her.

She never had trouble attracting the attention of a guy. She was tall, with thick natural blonde hair that she wore in a cute bob with long bangs. She had what I always thought of as the body of a professional dancer, even though she never worked out and ate whatever she wanted. I always thought she was a dead-ringer for the actress Elisha Cuthbert, without even realizing at first the phonetic similarity of the names. Anyway, her physical appearance wasn’t the problem.

Alicia’s problem, in my view, was that she was too eager. And I was convinced that guys picked up on that very quickly.

She’d never see most of the guys again, but that didn’t stop her from dreaming about them. And the few dates that did arise from those situations ended like all the others had for her lately—not great.

It was actually a running joke between us, but there was always something underlying the conversation that told me she was getting more and more impatient about actually finding “The One.”

“Congratulations,” I said, referring to the guy she’d met in the supermarket. “What does this one do?”

“Me, if he’s lucky.”

“That’s a new one.”

“It just popped into my head,” Alicia said. “I actually have no idea what he does. He was cute and smelled nice. Flirted a little, but I didn’t get his name.”

“Sounds promising.”

“Tell me about it.” There was a hint of disappointment in her tone. “Remember me telling you about that guy I talked to on JDate?” she asked.

Alicia had gotten into online dating a couple of years ago. She’d signed up for all of the popular ones, including JDate, a site for Jewish singles. It’s worth noting that Alicia is Catholic.

“The cop?” I asked, my eyes locked on the image of Sam on the TV.

“Yeah. So he seems pretty cool and I decided to see him last night.”

“It’s only been a week.”

Alicia had gone into the online dating scene with the policy of exchanging emails for at least a week, followed by another week of phone calls, just to scope out the guy and not meet someone too quickly. This was as much a safety thing as it was an attempt not to show her over-eagerness.

“I know,” she said. “I broke my own rule.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Really, really well.”

I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and my response came out in a flat tone. “Seriously...”

“Yeah. Why? You sound like you don’t believe me.”

“I believe that it went well. But, Alicia, this guy’s a detective. He detects things for a living. He’s going to find out you’re not Jewish. You don’t think he’s going to detect that?”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “What does it matter? He’ll get to know me, fall in love with me, and he won’t care what my religion is.”

“He might care that you lied to him.”

She was silent for a moment. I hoped she was rethinking it, developing at least a temporary conscience, and would tell this guy the truth.

“If it keeps going well,” she said, “I could always secretly convert.”

I swiped the screen on my iPad, then opened the browser. “Good strategy.”

“Are you multi-tasking?”

“What?”

“I hear clicking,” she said. “You’re typing on your iPad.”

She was right. I was listening to her, but I was also typing Sam’s name into Google.

“I’m listening. I was just looking up something. Get this…”

I told her about Sam, how I knew him, how we’d run into each other in the airport all these years later, the definite flirting he was doing…

“But he didn’t recognize you?”

“Nope. Am I that forgettable?”

Alicia ran through the reasons it was understandable that Sam hadn’t remembered me—all the ones I had told myself—the weight loss, longer hair, no more glasses.

“Did he flirt with you back then at Barneys?”

The first search results popped up on my screen. Sam had a Wikipedia page.

“No,” I said. “He was married and talked about her all the time. No flirting.”

“Tell me his last name again? I want to see this guy.”

I told her his full name as I skimmed his Wiki page. He was indeed divorced from his wife, Sandra, but there were no details about it. Almost a year and a half before the divorce, Sam had sustained a career-ending injury during a game. That was three years ago. Since that time, he’d been working in broadcasting, providing analysis for Major League Baseball on ESPN.

“Holy hell. Hello, Mr. Vonn,” Alicia said.

“Cute, huh?”

“Cute?” Alicia let out a heavy sigh. “That’s not cute. That’s hot. That’s take-me-to-bed-and-never-leave hot.”

We were both silent for a moment, reading through Sam’s bio. There was a lot in there about his achievements on the field, none of which made much sense to me, other than the fact that it was pretty obvious he was a big deal: twice he’d been named to the All-Star team, and in the season in which he sustained his injury, he was a top candidate for Most Valuable Player in all of baseball.

Alicia finally broke the silence. “I don’t get most of this, but it sounds like it really sucked for him.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“Oh well, too bad you missed out on this guy. Then you wouldn’t be…”

That was Alicia’s way of raising the subject of Trevor. She’d done this from the first time she met him. She later told me she got a really bad vibe from him, even just having met him twice, and her reaction got even stronger as I kept her updated on our relationship. But lately, it was becoming a topic she wanted to revisit nearly every time we talked.

“Oh, God,” I said, closing the browser and clearing Sam from my screen. “I can’t even think about that right now.”

“You’re going to talk to Trevor when you get back, though, right? Like you said?”

“Definitely.”

Later, as I was drifting off to sleep with the baseball game still on the TV, the camera cut to the announcers. I thought I had noticed something about Sam earlier, and had been waiting to see him again to double check.

The suit he was wearing looked just like one I’d sold him years ago.



. . . . .



My phone rang at 6 a.m. I fumbled around the nightstand to grab it, looked at the screen, and wasn’t surprised to see who it was.

“Wake-up call.” Trevor sounded like he’d been up for a while, and he probably had. It wasn’t unusual for him to get up before five, work out, shower, and be ready to start his workday by seven. It was one of the things I had never gotten used to. I preferred to sleep in as long as I could.

“Hey,” I mumbled.

“That voice. I love hearing it in the morning. I miss you, Sweet.”

I heard a knock at the door and sat up quickly.

I groaned. “Who the hell could that be?”

“Answer it.” Trevor urged.

I got up, padded across the carpet, looked through the peephole and saw a guy wearing a black blazer with the hotel logo on it.

This was more than a little intrusive and annoying.

“Hang on,” I said through the door.

“Yes ma’am. Just room service with your breakfast.”

I pulled my robe on and said, “I’m not hungry, Trevor.” Not being a morning person, my appetite didn’t get rolling until at least 10 a.m., and I’d usually have just a piece of fruit or something light. Eating this early made my stomach unsettled. Trevor insisted that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and that I’d get used to it, but I hadn’t in nearly a year, and he wasn’t giving up.

“You have to eat,” he said. “I ordered you two egg-whites, wheat toast, orange juice, and coffee.”

“Fine.” It wasn’t often that I let frustration seep into the words I spoke to Trevor, but this was one of those times.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You know I only want the best for you.”

“Let me get the door and I’ll call you back, okay?”

Off the phone and standing alone in my room with the breakfast tray on the table a few minutes later, I stood there and stared at it, then put it out in the hallway, but kept the coffee.

I sipped it as I called Trevor back. By then, he was in the limo, on his way to the office.

He asked if I ate the breakfast, I fibbed and said yes, then tried to redirect his attention. “What do you have planned today?”

“I’ll be out of the office most of the day. Going to check out a company we’ve been looking at.”

Trevor Baker was the CEO of Baker Capital, an investment firm he had founded with some start-up money his grandfather had given him when Trevor graduated from Yale. He was good at what he did, which is why he was worth roughly seven hundred million dollars.

That’s how he had put it when he told me: “roughly seven hundred million.” Like he might not be sure exactly how much it was.

You know how that can be. Sort of like how we regular people might not be certain how much cash we have on us—is it twenty bucks, twenty-five, seven hundred million?

Anyway, that’s basically all I knew about his business. Early on in our relationship I had asked about it, and he’d been vague—saying simply that it wasn’t that interesting and while he was good at what he did, he wasn’t passionate about it—giving me the sense that he didn’t want to talk about it for some reason, so I let it go. It was easy to avoid, as work never came up much in our conversations. Trevor had little or no interest in my job, outside of my travel plans.

“What time will you be finished today?” he asked.

I started to get moving, laying out my clothes for the day. “I’m not sure. Maybe six or so.”

“What are you wearing, Blair?”

“Nothing exciting,” I said, which was true. I was wearing a t-shirt and flannel pajama pants. During the night, the room had alternated between too hot and too cold, and I decided it was easier to turn the AC on low and put more clothes on rather than lie there in the stifling, insomnia-inducing heat.

“I’ve got a call coming in,” he said. “I’ll text you later.”

“Okay.”

I was glad he had to go. I wasn’t in the mood for sexy talk, which was what he was trying to start by asking me what I was wearing. More than once, conversations like that had verged on phone sex, something I was totally not into.

I debated whether to lie back down again, but the coffee had jolted me awake, so I figured I might as well get a start on my workday.

I took a long shower and turned on the TV while I was getting dressed. It was still on ESPN, and they were showing clips from last night’s baseball game. They didn’t show Sam, but I heard his voice in the background.

I briefly considered texting him. But why? What would I say? And did I really need to start talking to him, no matter how innocently, when I had so much to deal with?

I dropped my phone in my purse and headed out the door for work.