Aroused Read online

  “Then maybe I should’ve said that you’d just as soon join the nearest monastery or …” Barry exhales. “Okay. What do you want me to do? Apologize that I put business before pleasure? Not that I was getting any pleasure in Cherry Valley or ever would, but …. All right, man. I’m sorry.” He picks up his martini and mutters, “For whatever I did.”

  This is the closest Barry Aaronson will probably ever come to an apology, but it’s not enough.

  We drink some more as the piano plays over the eerie cellphone-zombie silence in the room. I think of Mandy reading a real newspaper instead of gazing at her phone. Mandy studying behind the counter of Screaming Beans. Mandy smiling at me after I’ve brushed the hair back from her face.

  Everywhere I look I’ve got Mandy on my mind, and it’s been that way ever since that goddamned call that ended everything. I’ve picked up my phone so many times, even just to text her and test the waters. But I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to deal with the possibility of her calling me pretentious again and accusing me of not only screwing Cherry Valley over, but her, too.

  In the end, she was right about everything I still am, and she’s the only other person on Earth who knows it.

  I stare at my empty shot glass. “You do know that you’re going to regret not moving us to Cherry Valley, don’t you, Barry?”

  “I regret that this entire situation has turned you into a shrew.”

  He’s so damned sure of himself. “Okay, maybe you’re right that the place could use some improvement, but the people there have good hearts. The entire town has its own heart, and we’re not going to find much of that,” I gesture around us, “here.”

  Barry scans the cold, cold room with its sleek, modern artwork. I can see on his face that even he thinks it looks like a lobby in Westworld, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “And,” I say, “there’s the cherry pie.”

  Barry picks the olive-laden swirl stick out of his drink. “All right. One point for you there. That cherry pie gets me hard every time I think of it. But you know what else gets me hard? Money. And we’re going to make a lot of it in this town because it already has everything we need.”

  “If you say so.”

  I start to get out of my chair again, but Barry stops me. “Zach.”

  The tone of his voice has changed. He’s not being snarky anymore, so I stay to hear him out.

  He glances at me with those all-seeing eyes, then shakes his head. “I’m worried about you, man. You’re usually more levelheaded than this.”

  I’m usually more pretentious and fancy, too, but those seem like qualities that another Zach owned. With Mandy, something started to change.

  So why am I scared to damned death to hear her call me either one of those things again? Is it because I’m fooling myself, thinking that she made me a better man or something, and without her it won’t take?

  Barry’s been watching me closely. “That’s why I wanted to set you up tonight, so you’d get back to being the Zach Hamilton I know. Remember the easygoing guy who didn’t shoot down whiskey like a stinkin’ cowpoke? The one who knew how to use some gel in his hair so he doesn’t look like a troglodyte?”

  I touch my hair. I forgot the gel tonight, and I don’t even care.

  “You haven’t cracked a smile since—” Barry cuts himself off, then starts up again. “I think you know what I’m going to say.”

  “Since I left Cherry Valley behind.” And Mandy, too.

  Barry shakes his head. “And here I thought you could take the country out of the Montana boy. You never did become all city, did you?”

  “Sure I did.” I push my shot glass away. “I used to enjoy places like this that serve small plates for a small fortune. I liked women who were urbane and polished. I liked being able to order all the games and tech I wanted, then have everything delivered right to my door, pronto. But you’re right — maybe I never stopped liking that fresh air and slow pace. And maybe the kind of girl I always wanted wears …”

  Barry takes up where I left off. “Stupid-ass harness boots and barely a stitch of makeup.”

  “Those boots are hot.”

  “I still like high heels better.”

  Talking about the boots only makes me think of Mandy again. Someday, some guy is going to drag her all the way out of that shell she surrounds herself with, but it won’t be me.

  Goddammit, I can’t think of her with whoever that guy is.

  But business is business, right? Silicon Valley is the place to be, and I lost the fight to go anywhere else.

  Barry checks the time on his smartwatch, and I know he’s doing it because he expects his date and mine any minute.

  I reach for my phone so I can pay the tab through a wallet app.

  “Come on, Zach,” Barry says.

  “Surely a charmer like you can go for a twofer tonight with your dates. Me and my mopey, brooding self would only be in the way of your superhero schlong.”

  But it’s too late. From the look on Barry’s face, our dates have arrived.

  Fuck. I really don’t want to do this, and I take a reluctant glance over my shoulder to find two blondes dressed in the urban manhunting uniform I’ve gotten so used to over the years — little black dresses, high-heeled shoes, manicured nails, and hungry lipstick smiles.

  Neither of them are Mandy, and that makes me feel emptier than ever, but I don’t want to insult whoever my date is by taking off right in front of her.

  It looks like tonight I’ll have to live up to being pretentious once again, and all I have to do is pretend like hell that I’m not thinking of another woman the entire time.

  Chapter 28

  Mandy

  It’s Saturday. I have no classes at school, and I definitely have nothing that even resembles a life lately, so when Tommy calls in sick for his nightshift at Screaming Beans, I volunteer to take it.

  Big mistake, because the day’s final showing of Aroused is just letting out down the street, and not only is the crowd in the coffeehouse huge, but it’s charged with that electric something that brought Zach and I together.

  I try not to vomit as I wait on all these happy, horny couples who’re ordering fancier drinks than usual and then sitting down at the tables to lean toward each other while chatting about the film, as Zach and I once did. A few customers even leave their drinks and pies untouched because they’re so keen to run out the door and get down to business with each other.

  During the only pause in traffic, I go to the backroom and swig some of the Pepto-Bismol in the employee restroom. Then I get back to clearing out the Monkey Sex House.

  Near closing time, I shut off the music and bus the last tables, gathering more untouched plates of pie and nearly-full coffee cups. Now that I’m not knee-deep in customers, my gaze drifts toward Zach’s table, and my heart clenches with the same pain that I feel every time I think of him. Which is always.

  I try to swallow around the ache in my throat. Tears start to swim in my eyes until I hear someone come up behind me.

  “Mandy?” Abby says.

  Last time I saw her, she was camped out at the counter again, clearly taking notes about the Aroused epidemic for her ABCs of Love blog. I quickly dash any evidence of tears away. As I grab the dishes, they rattle in my hands.

  “Hey,” she says, taking the plates from me and setting them on the table again. “Slow down a little. You’ve been in high gear for hours.”

  Nothing like work to make you forget, I think, but I smile at her instead. “Genius move bringing Aroused to the Bijou. But if we’re going to have more hot-to-trot movies there, Screaming Beans needs to hire more help.”

  Abby plops down in a chair and fixes her hazel eyes on me. “This is only a fraction of the crowd you’d be getting if Full Circle had moved to town.”

  It’s as if she’s ripped a bandage away from a wound that I’ve been keeping covered, but as I start to clam up once again, I realize something. I’m so sick of holding everything inside. I’m just p
lain tired of looking and looking at Zach’s empty table and putting another bandage on it, too.

  I sit in the chair opposite her. The only other people in the shop are Gwen and Grace Milton, who took the night off to see Aroused and then sent their dates home before coming over here. From the blushes on their faces as they ordered their coffee, I could only guess at how they both felt: Gwen, shocked. Grace, inspired.

  Abby hasn’t taken her perceptive gaze off of me. “Don’t you find yourself wishing Full Circle were here, Mandy?”

  I surrender. “You’re asking me about more than the firm itself, aren’t you?”

  She shrugs sweetly. “I don’t need any investigative skills to uncover that long face you’ve been wearing ever since the news broke.”

  A few tables away Grace says, “I wish FCT would’ve come here. We need more sophisticated men who pay attention to a good movie and don’t use the opportunity to mess around with a girl while she’s trying to watch it.”

  Abby bites back a smile as Grace giggles at her own comment. I pointedly recall how she almost pinned the blue ribbon on Zach that night at Milton’s Diner. The flirt probably wishes he were here so she could pin more than that on him.

  Something like jealousy rips me up before I remember that I have no reason to feel that way, and no right to.

  He wasn’t the one who blew what we could’ve had together.

  He was right about how I pushed him away because of Matthew and the fear of being left first and … whatever else is clearly wrong with me. Even domestic pigs, the butt of so many jokes, are far more intelligent about mating than I seem to be. They stay with someone for life and don’t sabotage their relationships for no good reason.

  That’s right — I don’t even have the sense of most of the animals I want to take care of.

  Gwen says, “Glad you’ve got your priorities straight, Gracie.” Her twin shrugs while Gwen holds her cup of decaf coffee and adds, “This town missed a big opportunity with those techies. We should’ve made more of an effort to get them here. Do you know how much tax revenue they could’ve brought in? I know the schools and infrastructure surely could’ve used that.”

  “Tech is the future,” Abby says regretfully.

  Everyone goes quiet. They’re waiting for me to chip in with my point of view. I feel their eyes on me, as if I’ve missed out on the most important benefit of all.

  Zach.

  What should I say? Yeah, we should’ve stepped up our efforts to get FCT here. I should’ve stepped them up more than anyone else.

  I look at the coffee counter where my laptop waits behind the register. It’d be so easy to text Zach on the computer he gave me, but what if he doesn’t answer? What if he blocks my number, only adding salt to my wounds?

  Grace pushes a strand of blonde hair away from her face and kicks a leg over her knee. “Well, I suppose there’re reasons to be glad the firm didn’t come here. I can think of one.”

  Gwen rolls her eyes. Then they speak at the same time. “Zach’s partner.”

  “Barry’s a character all right,” Abby says. “But he knows his business.”

  “Zach does, too.” Gwen gestures toward Main Street. “Before FCT decided not to come here, he actually took the time to give a call to Gracie and me and discuss the benefits of having the firm here. He did the same with other members of the Chamber of Commerce.”

  I arranged those meetings, and they glance at me again, waiting for me to comment.

  But my throat is too tight.

  Gwen sighs. “I get the feeling good ol’ Barry’s the one who wasn’t a fan of this town.”

  “Even though he’s an ass, he was kinda cute,” Grace says. “I’d do him.”

  “You’d do a fencing post if it sweet-talked you enough.”

  “Can I remind you that tonight I was with someone whose head was as thick as a fencing post, and he got sent home after the movie just as quick as you send home your dates?”

  “Miracles do happen.”

  Grace tosses her stirring stick at Gwen, who ducks, then picks it up off the floor so I don’t have to.

  Abby softly says, “The thing is, Zach didn’t just care about profits for FCT. He wanted to improve this town.”

  “And he liked the food,” Gwen says.

  Abby smiles. “When he called me with the deal-breaker news, he told me just how much he liked the food here, even after years of eating things like sushi, smoothies, and rolled ice cream.”

  Gwen raises her cup. “To a palette that’s been refined enough to enjoy fried animal intestines.”

  The twins toast to that and drink their coffee as I smile, remembering that night at Milton’s when Zach was initiated into the pleasure of country food. But something Abby said sticks with me.

  Zach never did tell me how much he liked the food in town. And I knew that he was interested in helping out Cherry Valley by bringing FCT to us, yet I didn’t know the extent of that either.

  And I accused him of turning his back on this town, of using us.

  Using me.

  At the awkward end of our conversation, the twins say goodnight, stand from their chairs, and take their coffees out the door. I shrink in my seat, wishing I had enough courage to text Zach, even if it’s just to offer how sorry I am for saying what I said.

  “I never knew how invested he was,” I say to Abby. “He never told me.”

  “Maybe he didn’t quite know it himself until he was back in San Francisco.”

  “Well, once he was back there, everything between us was over and done with anyway. He didn’t even give enough of a crap about me to call before you announced the bad news on your blog. He totally shut me out of that, too.”

  Abby frowns.

  I shrug as if it doesn’t matter, even though it does. The sharp heat in my chest and throat tells me so.

  “I was so angry at him about that,” I whisper, “and I went off the deep end. I accused him of treating this town like dirt, treating me like dirt because he left me in the dark about what was going on.”

  “Mandy, Barry was the one who gave me the scoop, not Zach.”

  I bite my lip hard.

  She goes on. “Barry called me, then I wrote up the blog. Before I posted that morning, Zach contacted me because he’s always been the spokesman. He was scrambling at the last minute to do everything he could to keep the Cherry Valley deal going. That’s the reason he didn’t call you ahead of time with the news.”

  At a flash of pain, I close my eyes. Deep down I already knew that I should’ve believed Zach when he told me he didn’t mean to shut me out. I’m the one who freaked out and said those terrible things to him.

  I really screwed up.

  But he’s already gone, and I’m sure he’s already dating a city girl who’s so much more his type — someone who likes the same food and drinks he does, someone who’s polished to a shine and can impress his new business partners at big dinners.

  Someone who’d never force a perfect guy out the door, making sure he’ll never come back.

  Chapter 29

  Zach

  “Kid, when you know deep in your bones that you’re right about something, you can’t give up.”

  Dawson Crew, my mentor, my man, sits on a sofa in my office. I’ve caught him on the way home from the golf course, so he’s wearing a fleece jacket, double-pleated trousers, and leather shoes. His silver-and-black hair is impeccably styled, and he’s got the face of a movie star from the 1940s.

  I’ve shown him an updated plan for FCT’s move to Cherry Valley, and he’s also looked at Franklin Funding’s plan for our tech firm.

  And he didn’t just give me advice — he gave me an offer.

  “You’re with me all the way on this?” I ask. “You’re agreeing that a Silicon Valley location looks good on paper, but it’ll suck in execution?”

  “I’m with you. I see that you want to execute a plan that’s way bigger than what Franklin Funding is seeing. What you have in mind goes far beyond w
hat this Valley’s equipped to give you.”

  I lean back in my chair, wiping my hands down my face in relief. I’ve been up around the clock putting together the ultimate proposal, and this is what I’ve been praying to hear. “Dawson, you don’t know how your dulcet tones of approval are rocking me right now.”

  He smiles, then goes back to paging through the digital document on my tablet. “This is … damn, kid. I didn’t know the extent of what you had in mind, but now I see that you’re not merely bringing about changes in technology — you want to bring about change in a community, building it up, making it better. It’s almost as if you’re adding layers to it just as you would a virtual reality.”

  “Mixed reality, sir,” I say. “There’s a difference.”

  Dawson waves away my comment. Like Barry, he’s more focused on the bottom line, and that’s why he’s the yin to my yang. We balance each other, just like Barry and I were supposed to.

  “Now that you’ve laid out your vision for me,” he says, “you go ahead and tell Barry that I’ll put together a funding package for FCT’s move to Cherry Valley. My terms aren’t as sweet as they’d be with Franklin Funding, but—”

  “No buts. You’re more passionate about what this company is fundamentally doing than they are, and that’s what matters.”

  Dawson gets to his feet, and I stand and go to him, shaking his hand. He keeps a hold of it.

  “I mean it, Zach,” he says. “If this doesn’t work out like you want it to with Barry, I’m a phone call away. He might not be the partner you thought he was.”

  “I appreciate that, but dumping him is unimaginable.”

  “No, kid. It’s a last resort.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t imagine doing this without Barry.

  Dawson is just about to leave when the sound of the outer office door opening stops him. His gaze strays to something behind me, and that’s how I know Barry’s here. I called him in on the weekend because this is it — a death match between Cherry Valley and Silicon Valley.