Chapter Four
I first met Bryan in my driveway one summer day when I was seventeen. I’d heard of him; my older brother Nate had roomed with him through most of college at NYU and into business school there too. But I’d never met Bryan myself. He grew up near Buffalo and went home for school breaks. Then, the summer after I’d graduated from high school, Bryan stayed with us for a few weeks to help run Mystic Landing.
My parents rarely vacationed and hardly ever took time off. My mother had spent most of my high school years recuperating from a devastating car accident that had required multiple surgeries and countless physical therapy sessions. She was finally herself again and to celebrate, my mom’s sister had convinced my parents to spend a few weeks at her lake house in Maine. Nate and I would watch the store while they relaxed by cool blue waters and underneath crystal skies.
They packed up, hopped in the car and drove north, and hours later, I met the man who’d become my first love. From the moment he arrived, I was a done deal. I swung open the front door, ran to the car, and gave Nate a huge hug. Then Bryan got out of the passenger side, wearing a white tee-shirt and worn jeans, which is near about the sexiest thing a man can wear. When he slung his duffel bag on his shoulder his shirt rose up, revealing a sliver of his firm and flat stomach. I tried to look elsewhere because otherwise I’d only think about the way his blue jeans hung just so on his hips, and where the cut lines of his abdomen led to.
So I checked out his arms instead. I’ve always thought one of the reasons some men work so hard on their arms is because of what women think when they encounter nicely sculpted ones. You picture the man above you. You imagine running your hands up and down those arms as he moves in you.
But he wasn’t just a beautiful body. He was the whole package. He had a trace of stubble on his boyish face, and the softest-looking dark brown hair I’d ever seen. His eyes drew me in, those forest green eyes with flecks of gold. Eyes you could gaze into, eyes that invited long simmering looks as they saw inside you.
Nate introduced us, and Bryan put his bag down and gave me a sturdy hug, rather than a handshake. I was wearing one of my own necklace designs, a silver chain strung with a lone heart pendant in midnight blue. His chest pressed into the pendant, and I could easily have let my thoughts run away right there.
Then he spoke to me. “I feel like I know you already. Nate says you’re a huge movie fan. That when you’re not making necklaces you’re at the local theater. I’ve always said there’s nothing better than skipping class for a matinee.” Then the grin came, the lopsided smile I’d fall hard for.
“Matinee and popcorn. Doesn’t get any better than that,” I said, and I was sure the words came out all bumpy and clunky, out of sync with what I was saying silently — How did my brother have such a ridiculously good-looking best friend?
The three of us hung out that night, ordered pizza, and lounged on old plastic chairs on the deck, under the stars. I listened as they talked about school, and what was next for them both on the work front. Nate planned to look for a job in the technology industry at the end of the summer, and Bryan had scored a gig in Manhattan that started in a month. They weren’t college boys anymore since they both had MBAs, but they weren’t working men yet either. They were in this sort of in-between time.
I was in an in-between time too. Only I was five years younger, so I figured I should get out of the way of their guy talk.
“I better go to sleep. Since I’ve got the Mystic Landing morning shift and all,” I said, and then went to my room and pulled on a pair of loose shorts and a gray tank top with a pink Hello Kitty across the chest. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and walked back down the hall to my bedroom when I bumped into Bryan.
“Sorry,” he said, then glanced at my tank top, and lingered with his eyes a little longer than he should. I didn’t mind, but when he realized what he was doing, he looked up. “You like Hello Kitty?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, thrown off by his remark.
“That’s really cute.” His lips quirked up.
“Really?” I couldn’t tell if he was putting me on.
He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely. Hello Kitty is totally adorable.”
“Wow. Nate never told me his best friend was such a huge fan of cartoon cats.”
“I’m personally a bigger fan of Bucky from the comic Get Fuzzy.”
“I love that crazy Siamese.”
“I defy anyone who doesn’t find cats amusing to read that comic.”
“That is an awesome challenge. Let’s make posters and start a campaign.”
“I’m so on it.”
“I’ll even break out my Get Fuzzy tee-shirt when we start planning a march to the capital.”
“Generally speaking, I’m good with all cartoon cats, especially when cute girls wear them.”
Then he walked off. That was all he said, and I was left alone in the hall, my mind buzzing, my skin tingling. I didn’t fall asleep right away. I replayed our conversation. We’d hit it off, right? I wasn’t imagining it. There was something in that kind of instant repartee, wasn’t there? Especially when I thought of that last moment — cute girls, cute girls, cute girls.
The next morning, I probably spent more time in front of the mirror adjusting my hair and touching up my lip gloss than I usually did. Then I walked into town and stopped at the local cafe for my regular.
After I left, I was surprised to find Bryan waiting outside Mystic Landing. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, and the ends of his dark hair were still wet. I was near enough to breathe in that clean, freshly showered scent. “I’m a morning person too. Hope you don’t mind if I share the morning shift with you. Nate’ll sleep past noon anyway.”
“Not at all,” I said as I hunted for the keys in my purse.
He tipped his forehead to my drink. “Must have just missed you at the cafe. Coffee, too?”
I shook my head. “Caramel macchiato. Only frou-frou drinks for this girl.” Then, I leaned in closer to him and dropped my voice to a faux whisper. “I even got an extra shot of caramel.”
He pretended as if I’d just the most scandalous thing in the world. “So decadent.”
“And you?” I asked, because I had a theory that you could tell a lot about a guy by his coffee drink. Any guy who ordered soy, chai, or more foam was going to be high-maintenance. If a fellow asked for the water to be extra hot, he was destined to be cold and emotionless because the water at any coffee shop is already scalding; if you needed it hotter, you had no feelings. When boys wanted herbal tea, I’d run the other way because that meant they’d be far too interested in yoga, new-age crystals and feng-shui’ing my life. I had no problem with those things, but their collective by-product was often not enough showering, and I was a big fan of the just-showered look and smell.
Then there was the man who ordered just coffee. Simple, straightforward, knows what he wants.
Bryan tapped the top of the plastic lid on his cup. “Coffee. Just coffee, nothing more. I like my coffee the way —”
I held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear one of those customary guy jokes. I like my coffee the way I like my women — hot, strong, with cream.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Oh. Sorry. How do you like your coffee then?” I turned away and slid the key into the lock.
He lowered his voice, and spoke in a dark and smoky kind of whisper. “The way they drink it in Paris. Black.”
It was a good thing my back was to him. Because something about the way he said Paris sent shivers up my spine. It was as if his voice was caressing my back. “Have you been?” I asked, because it had been my dream to go to Paris. To wander in and out of boutiques and shops and see all the necklaces and bracelets and jewelry. To be inspired by the designs.
To fall in love, by the river, under the lamplight.
“Only once. But the company I’m starting to work for has offices there, so I’m hoping go back,” he said. As I opened the door, I thought: take me with you, take me with you, take me with you.
We worked the morning shift together that first day, and we clicked with the customers. He’d chat up a pair of vacationing sisters about a coffee table picture book, then hand off to me, and then I’d do the same with a couple considering a serving plate. We had a sort of instant rhythm and sense of how to make a store like this work.
“We’re like a tag team,” he said after I rang up another sale, and I smiled in agreement.
Nate arrived in the early afternoon to take over. As I grabbed my purse from behind the counter, Bryan placed a hand on my arm. “Matinee and popcorn?”
My stomach flipped. I nodded a yes, mumbled a goodbye to my brother, and left the store with his best friend. We walked the few blocks to the six-screen cinema, picked a Will Ferrell comedy, and opted to share a medium popcorn. We went the next day to see a thriller, then the next for a sci-fi picture, and after that we saw a silly film with talking animals in it, laughing the whole time. When the movie ended, I told him it reminded me of a film I’d seen a few years back with my mom, then proceeded to rattle off how it compared to every other talking animal flick, as if I were a too-serious film critic opining needlessly. “But the pig in Babe did set the standard for linguistically-capable animals on screen.”
“You’ve pretty much seen every movie, haven’t you?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say every movie.”
“But most?”
I shrugged. “I see a lot of movies.”
“Why? I mean, besides the obvious. That movies are fun.”
“Isn’t that a good enough reason? Just for entertainment?”
“Totally. So that’s the reason?”
“Sure,” I said, but I was smiling the kind of smile that said there was more to it.
“All right, Kat Harper. What’s the story?” He motioned with his hand for me to spill the beans. “Tell me where your love of movies comes from.”
“I think it’s because of what movies have always meant to my family. All these big events in my life were marked by movies. When Nate was in eighth grade and won the election for class president, we all went to see the re-release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it was this great action adventure, and I gripped the armrest when Harrison Ford raced against the boulder. The time I was picked to design the cover of the junior high yearbook we went to see Ocean’s Eleven. That’s just how we celebrated things. I even remember when my grandmother died. We went to the memorial service. I was twelve and I read a poem at the service, and then we decided that we should see Elf. Which probably sounds like a weird thing to do after a funeral.”
Bryan listened intently. “No, it doesn’t. Not at all.”
“It was really the perfect movie to see, because I think we all just needed to not be sad every second, you know?”
“It actually makes perfect sense,” he said. I looked at him and the honesty in his face and his eyes. He understood. He got it. He got me. I kept going.
“But I guess it all started with my mom. She’s a huge romantic comedy fan, so she started showing me all the great ones. Sleepless in Seattle. Love, Actually. Notting Hill. You’ve Got Mail.”
“And do you still love romantic comedies?”
“I make jewelry. I drink caramel machiattos. I wear Hello Kitty to bed. Of course I love romantic comedies,” I said with a smile as we neared my house. But I didn’t just love them. I wanted to live within them. I wanted a love like in the movies.
Bryan cleared his throat. “I think there’s a romantic-comedy we haven’t seen at the theater. Do you want to go again tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said, and I’m sure it came out all breathy sounding.
We saw the movie the next day, and it was the kind where you long for the hero and heroine to kiss, and when they do, near the final frame, you feel this tingling in your body, and you want to be kissed too. I stole a glance at Bryan only to find he was stealing a glance at me.
“Hi,” he whispered in that voice he’d used when he talked about Paris.
“Hi.”
He reached a hand towards me, slowly, his eyes on me the whole time, as if he were asking if it was okay. I nodded a yes. He ran his fingers through my dark brown hair, then his mouth met mine, and we kissed until the credits rolled, slow and sweet kisses. His lips were the softest I’d ever felt, and his kisses were of the epic kind, the kind that made you believe that movie kisses weren’t just for actors or for stories, that they could be for you, and they could go on and on, like a slow and sexy love song that melted you from the inside out.
When he pulled away, he leaned his forehead against mine. “Kat, I’ve wanted to do that since I first met you in the driveway the other day.”
“You have?”
“Yes. You were so pretty, and then you were everything else.”
My heart skipped ten thousand beats. He was a movie kiss, he was the name above the title. He was the one you wanted the heroine to wind up with so badly that your heart ached for her when they weren’t together, then soared when they finally were.
“I think you’re pretty cool too,” I said.
“But we probably shouldn’t tell Nate. You know, since I’m his buddy and you’re his little sister. Not to mention the age thing.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
So it was our summer secret.