After the meeting, I head back to my office and get to work. There are a million tiny details to plan for any exhibit, and right now, I’m still in the sourcing phase—trying to figure out what artifacts and pieces I can actually get in time, and how they can work together so the exhibition is more than just stuff sitting in a room. That’s the real key to a great exhibit—everything needs to tell a story or show a different side to the theme, so that people walk away from it actually having learned something they never knew before, or have their perceptions changed.
I kick off my shoes and start sending emails, trying to track down not only a film print of Casablanca that I might be able to borrow for the show, but Humphrey Bogart’s infamous trench coat and fedora to place in the exhibit. I’m deep in memorabilia dealers on the west coast when a sharp knock comes at my door.
“Wrong place,” I call, without looking up. Nobody knocks around here, which must mean the mail kid is lost again. “Deliveries are at the end of the hall.”
But the door swings open and a guy walks in. Not just any guy, but a drop-dead handsome man looking like he stepped out of a frame of a Bogart movie. He’s got the leading-man chiseled jaw, and he’s wearing a dark, slim-cut suit with the jacket stretching across his broad shoulders.
Hello, lover.
“Um, hi.” I blink. Did this guy take a wrong turn in 1952 and wind up in my office? And can we please close the portal and never send him back?
I flush, suddenly wishing I’d at least had time to take a shower this morning. Deodorant spray covers many evils, but right now, I’d give anything to be fresh and bright and wafting the gentle aroma of a summer night’s breeze. I clear my throat. “Can I help you?”
“I doubt it.” He strides into the room like he owns it. Suddenly he’s standing in front of my desk and holding out a hand for me to shake, his blue eyes sparkling. “I’m the one here to rescue your little exhibit.”
“Little exhibit?” I repeat, tensing. I guess he brought his mid-century chauvinism with him through the slipstreams of time. “It’s the major show of the summer season. And it doesn’t need rescuing, by you or anyone else. Who are you, anyway?” I ask, gritting my teeth.
He looks at me like I should know already. “I’m Jake Weston,” he says.
Wait, Jake?
Condescending Jake. “Well, actually” Jake. Bane-of-my-inbox-existence Jake?
Looks like this?
Damn. Talk about a waste of a gorgeous face.
“Hi,” I answer, cooler now. He’s got his hand outstretched to shake mine, so I reluctantly take it. “I’m Lizzie.”
His grip is cool and firm, but the touch of his palm against mine makes something prickle in the back of my skull. I look at him again, harder. There’s something familiar about him, a sneaking suspicion that tells me that somehow, somewhere, we’ve met before . . .
Holy shit!
It all comes flooding back to me. Whiskey and cold winter air, and the shrieks of New Year’s Eve. I know this guy.
Intimately.
“Good to meet you,” he says, his face friendly but impassive, his tone so nonchalant that he sounds almost bored. I stare at him incredulously, my mouth falling open slightly. Was my face so completely unmemorable? Or the rest of me, for that matter?
Oh my god, I can’t fucking believe it. I look at him in disbelief, my throat suddenly tight and hot.
He doesn’t even remember me.
He doesn’t remember the fact that the last time I saw the man standing in front of me and calling himself Jake Weston, he was passing out . . .
With his face buried between my legs.
3
New Year’s Eve: 3 Years Ago
“Let’s do another one!”
I can barely hear Della’s voice over the pounding music from the speakers overhead blasting “Back That Azz Up.” I pick up another shot glass filled with tequila and knock it back, reaching over to lick a sprinkling of salt off the back of Della’s hand before she shoves a lime wedge in my face, tossing her curly blond hair from her shoulders. We’ve been drinking for around two hours now, and things are starting to get fuzzy around the edges, a welcome change from my heartbroken and excessively weepy state.
The Alibi is our spot, largely because it’s located down the block from Della’s apartment. The ambiance, if you can call it that, is almost nonexistent, just a few rickety tables scattered here and there and a nicked-up wooden bar that stretches across the length of the room. But the music is loud, the lights are low and the drinks are cheap—and strong. Which is crucial when an asshole lawyer has broken your heart and you’re attempting to drown your grief in a vat of tequila before the next worse year of your life arrives.
“Fuck Todd!” Della yells, signaling the bartender for another round. Della, besides being my best friend and partner in crime, is also one of those magical people who can always get a bartender’s attention. It’s crazy—she barely looks at the guy, and all of a sudden, he’s right there at her elbow, attentively pouring tequila into our glasses while she bats her eyes at him gratefully. I have no clue how she does it but she pulls them in like a goddamn tractor beam. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she looks like Kate Hudson’s little sister: all golden curls, wide brown eyes, and clear skin that never needs makeup. It’s a good thing she uses her powers for good, not evil.
With great sex appeal comes awesome responsibility.
“Fuck Todd, and fuck this year!” She picks up her newly-filled glass and holds it out. “You were too good for him anyway. To your new life!” she yells gleefully before tossing it back.
I try to smile.
“You’re not having fun!” Della scolds.
“I am!” I protest. I just can’t seem to forget Todd’s face a few days ago as he squirmed guiltily on the couch while telling me he was leaving me for his assistant, Harmony, who he referred to as a “younger, more ambitious version of you.”
“Harmony,” I repeat. “Just the tinkly, musical sound of her name is enough to drive me out of my skull. Well, that, and the fact that he couldn’t even look at me when he said it. What a snake. No, not a snake.” I pound the bar. “A rat. A SUPER rat, as Holly Go-Lightly puts it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
See, Holly has this theory that you can divide most men in the world into two categories: Rats and super rats, and Todd was clearly in the category of super rat.
Della nods. “I mean, what kind of guy leaves after you put him through law school selling overpriced stilettos at a Madison Avenue boutique?”
“I was on my swollen feet for hours, and the customers treated me like more like a servant than a salesgirl. Like I said, a super rat. Case closed.”
I sip my tequila. “Enough about him. How’s business?” I ask, playing with the gold, heart-shaped locket around my neck.
“Good,” she answers, pushing her glass to the side. “I finished this awesome pillow this afternoon that says EAT ME.”
Della started an Etsy shop about a year ago selling needlepoint designs with lewd phrases, along with knitted dicks in day-glow colors like hot pink and neon green. It’s wildly popular and she can barely keep anything in stock before it flies right back out again.
Kind of like my love life.