The Love Coupon Read online

  She came in after eight when he was about ready to dish his own meal up.

  “Hi.” The door got closed very carefully. Flick stood with her back to it wearing a navy pantsuit. There was a flare of hot pink at her collarbones and she wore the gold hoop earrings he’d found on the hall table. He flashed back to last night when she was all flesh and curves, goose bumps and challenges. The physical equivalent to a discount coupon at a strip club and a thousand percent more distracting.

  “Hi. I’m just dishing up.”

  “Wasn’t sure if you’d want me here. I can make myself scarce.”

  “Stay.” It wasn’t quite I’m sorry. “I’ll be eating this for days otherwise, and I’ve got the ingredients for apple and berry cobbler.”

  She came across the room and dumped a bag of groceries on the counter, along with her satchel. A box of mac and cheese fell out. “Figured I’d be eating alone.”

  “I was half-asleep.” That wasn’t much of an apology either.

  She slipped onto a stool. “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I acted like an uptight dick.” That was at least stating it.

  “This is your home and those rails work for you and I promised to respect them. There is no reason why I can’t put my shit away.”

  “It’s not like you emptied the contents of your bedroom all over the place. There’s no reason why I can’t get used to you living in the whole condo.”

  “I think it’s baked into you.”

  “God.” It was true. “I’ll try not to be such a dickhead.”

  “I bet you had to be all squared away at home. Everything in its place. A place for everything.”

  “We moved around a lot. And when my mom died, I think Dad was terrified we’d end up living in squalor. We didn’t accumulate stuff. If I left something lying around, he’d throw it out or give it away. Didn’t matter what it was. I lost a bike, shoes and a lot of great band T-shirts that way. I learned to put things away, tidy up after myself. I know it’s anal. I got lucky Josh was a neat freak too.”

  “Poor Tom. I offend your very sense of how your home should be.”

  “It’s why I plan on living alone. It’ll suit me.”

  She didn’t respond. But she did take her earrings off and put them on the counter. He glared at them and frowned. “What was the prong you left on the counter?” She gave him a quizzical look. He was going to be sorry he’d asked. “Curved metal.” He held up two fingers to indicate the prongs.

  She put her hand up to the back of her head, and her hair tumbled out of its place. “This.” She held the prong. “It’s a hair fork.”

  “Ah.” Ties and clips he was familiar with, hair forks were a new one on him.

  She put it beside the earrings. “What did you think it was?” She took her suit jacket off and draped it over a stool. “I’m pushing your buttons right now, aren’t I?”

  He made a face. He was ridiculous. He turned away to serve the food and so he didn’t stare at her. With hair everywhere and the hot pink silky shirt held up by little strings, she was nudging his body back to the state of arousal he’d found himself in at 3 a.m.

  “I’ll put it all away, I promise.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Like waking you last night.”

  “That was fine too. What else could you have done?”

  “Taken note of your instructions about the door and worn more clothing.”

  “We were both guilty of that.”

  “It was an emergency. The normal rules were suspended.”

  He smiled at that. He put a plate of the casserole in front of her along with a serving of crusty bread that’d been hot earlier.

  “Thank you. This is fantastic. I can almost forgive your dad for turning you into a—”

  “Eat your tuna casserole.” He forked a serving into his own mouth and pulled a stool from beneath the counter to sit opposite her. “Did you get your thinking done?”

  “Partly. Haven’t told my family about the new job.”

  “And that’s an issue?”

  “You wouldn’t think so, but while your dad was teaching you to be disciplined, my dad was stealing cars and dealing drugs and my mom was busy raising five kids, being domestically terrorized and deep in denial about everything.”

  That was an issue. “I see.”

  “You don’t. My home life was pretty chaotic. I left at fifteen. I had an older friend and I lived with him. I finished school, got a part-time job, worked my way through college. I don’t go home often. Thanksgiving is ugly. Dad went to jail, so did my oldest brother. Mom never left. No one has a steady job. Money is tight. They don’t understand the work I do and they resent me for getting out, being different.”

  He let her eat while he digested that. He’d had order and she’d had chaos. It accounted for their different worldviews. “You were young to make the call to leave home.”

  “It was that or get pregnant young. It’s what everyone in my neighborhood did. I have two sisters. They have six kids between them and three deadbeat ex-husbands, the kind of men who think giving your wife a black eye is reasonable and child support is a scam.”

  Flick’s ambition wasn’t a game, it was her life force. He’d long acknowledged her professional competence, now he admired her will and tenacity.

  “How much older was your friend?” He swallowed a mouthful of pasta trying to imagine what Flick would’ve looked like at fifteen since she could almost pass for that now.

  “Drew was thirty.”

  Tom flinched. Her friend was a grown man. His age now. Jesus fucking Christ, twice Flick’s age. He could no sooner be with a woman—a girl—half his age than he could give up the condo. Flick’s choices were hard. That light and energy inside her wasn’t brittle and fractured, and it might’ve been. If her edges were a little sharp that was nothing on what she’d had to cut through to get where she was.

  “Don’t do that. He was good to me. Gave me a stable home, supported me financially while I went to school.”

  “But you had sex with a guy twice your age.”

  She shrugged. “Are you telling me you weren’t having sex at that age?”

  “You were a kid and he should’ve known better.”

  She rapped her fork on her plate, twice. “You don’t get to judge me, Tom O’Connell. You didn’t have to do what I had to do to get here and to go where I’m going. We never had sex, but we might as well have. It’s what everyone assumed, that I was a fifteen-year-old slut. He lost his job because of me. People spat on him in the street and called me a whore to my face. Drew didn’t rape me. He didn’t abuse me. He wouldn’t sleep with me, even though that’s what I wanted. He supported me when there was no one else who would. He’s an English teacher now. He’s married. He has two kids. We talk on our birthdays and at Christmas, and I still miss him.”

  He didn’t like the way Flick’s words made shame and anger curdle in his gut. He thought he’d begun to understand her, less a whirlwind, erratic and out of control, and more a storm front, deliberate and direct. He had no right to question her choices, but the anger he felt wasn’t only for Flick, it was for all women who had to play by different rules to be in the same game, and for how little he’d recognized that.

  “I’m sorry you had to make those choices. I’m sorry I come across as a judgmental prick. I didn’t have my first real kiss till I was seventeen.”

  “Don’t sweat it. You can make it up with your cobbler.”

  She was going to shrug his fumbled apology off and that was fitting. She didn’t need his sympathy or his approval.

  They ate while Bowie sang “Absolute Beginners.” He’d try to begin again with Flick, starting with this conversation.

  “Why don’t you want to tell your family about your job?” he said. “Sounds like it’s not a new problem.”

 
“It’s not. They won’t understand and I can’t work out if that matters.”

  “See if I understand.”

  She laid her silverware down. “I didn’t tell you about the job?”

  “Only that you got a new one and it’s in Washington.” He took both their plates to the sink, then slid the cobbler into the oven and set the timer.

  “When I was at school we had one of those mock trials. I loved it,” she said.

  He came back to his stool and topped their wineglasses. Flick the storyteller was in town.

  “Thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Later I figured out what I loved was that there was this person whose job it was to stand up for the rights of other people. If someone had done that for my mom, or my sisters, everything would’ve been different. I didn’t want to stand up for one person but for whole groups of people who were disadvantaged or put down or just made to be less than they could be.”

  She took a sip of wine and watched him over the rim of the glass. She had his full attention.

  “I’ve wanted to work at the Coalition for Humanity since I graduated. It’s nonprofit, not aligned politically. It advocates for the rights of people disadvantaged by gender, birthplace and circumstance, and to create the environment and policies that support justice and equality. That probably makes me sound like a cheap superhero to you.”

  “Not at all.” What he’d once thought was razzle-dazzle with Flick was more like burnished gold.

  “I knew I had a long way to go. I had to become a credible communicator first. Learn everything I could about influencing and lobbying. I had to earn my chops to get a chance to play in the big league.”

  “That’s what’s in Washington. Congratulations.”

  “K Street. I’m getting everything I wanted when I was ground down for wanting anything at all. I can’t fix that for my sisters, for the girls I grew up with, but maybe I can fix it for future generations.”

  She had a vision. She stuck to it. She made hard choices. She paid her dues. “You deserve success.”

  “I don’t know how to tell my family all that.” She shifted restlessly on the stool. “It’s another reason for them to resent me and to ask for money. That’s all they’ll see. But I’m going to less salary in a more expensive city. It’s why finding temp accommodation with you was so important.”

  “Don’t tell them.”

  She lifted her glass. “Mr. Straighty-One-Eighty is telling me to lie to my folks.”

  “Jesus Christ, what did you tell them when you moved in with Drew? How is this harder?”

  “That I was moving in with Drew. One less mouth to feed. No one cared, except to use it against me. They will care, but not in a good way, when I say I’m moving to Washington.”

  “The real question is, why do you still care what they think?”

  “And that’s why I was on your balcony in my underwear this morning. Do you still care what your dad thinks?”

  “Not always.” They had a better relationship now that they lived in different states and saw each other less. “He’s a hard-ass.” That made her smile. He hoped this would too. “I put a key in the red pot on the table on the deck. You won’t need to worry about being locked out again.”

  “That’s as good as your tuna casserole.” She put her hands together and bowed her head over them. “I made you talk about your dead mom again tonight.”

  “I made you talk about maybe having sex as a minor with an adult who could’ve been arrested for it.”

  “Does that mean we get cobbler now?”

  It meant something had shifted between them. Not sure what.

  She went to change out of her suit while the cobbler cooled. She took all her stuff back to her room. He unpacked her groceries and put them away while the Bowie playlist morphed into Freddie Mercury. He listened to “Exercises in Free Love” and “Foolin’ Around,” and Flick came back as Freddie sang “Living On My Own.”

  “Your theme song. How appropriate.” She did a little dance while Freddie sang the scat, shifting her hips and waving her hands above her head. “You have an eclectic taste in music.”

  He liked the little dance. The unabashed joy of it. And how she looked doing it in yoga pants. “Freddie Mercury is a classic.”

  “He’s a playlist someone else put together.”

  “Still a classic. Sit down and eat your dessert.”

  She slipped onto the stool and he slid cobbler in front of her, and when he could see she wanted another scoop of ice cream, he had one too, and when she moved to the sectional, he followed. He was pleasantly full and the weight of the week had lifted off him. He sprawled against the cushions, head supported, legs stretched out in front.

  They were at opposite ends of the sectional that was too deep for her and Freddie had become Roy Orbison. With the volume turned down Roy sang “I Drove All Night.”

  “You can put your legs up.”

  She brought her knees and bare feet up and sat on one hip with them tucked beside her so fluently he knew she’d sat like that when he wasn’t here. “Who initiated it?” she asked.

  He rolled his head on the sectional back and raised a brow.

  “Your first kiss at desperate seventeen.”

  He groaned. “She did.”

  “And then?”

  “No.”

  “You made me talk about my sexual predator boyfriend.”

  He sat upright. “You said—”

  “Keep your shirt on. It wasn’t like that.”

  “Hmm.” Twice her age. He slumped into the seat again. No way he could get happy with that.

  “Oh, come on.” She thumped the sectional. “I’m giving you the opening to brag about your sexual prowess.”

  Roy started in on “She’s a Mystery to Me.” It was how he’d felt about women at seventeen. He still felt that way about some of them.

  “No. You’re baiting me for the gory detail of my first tender sexual encounter.”

  “Tender, ouch.”

  If he threw a cushion at her, she would throw it back and he didn’t trust her aim. Something would get broken.

  “First time I had sex was horrible.”

  “You had...” He palmed his face. “I don’t want to know.”

  “You’re not my dad. Lord knows he didn’t care. Drew wouldn’t sleep with me. I chose a guy I knew from school. It was awful. It hurt because neither of us knew what we were doing, and afterward we were so embarrassed we never spoke again.”

  She was disarmingly clever. He uncovered his face and rolled his head to look at her. “You do this. You put yourself out there so your target, your victim, which would be me, feels they have to share too. I’m not falling for it again.”

  She laughed. Roy sang “Crying.” Tom thought about cleaning the kitchen and didn’t move. He should get moving. He was going hiking again tomorrow if the weather didn’t turn. He wanted to make an early start.

  A phone rang. Hers.

  She leaped up. “If that wasn’t all the way in my room, I wouldn’t have to run for it.”

  He heard her laughing on the call and instead of getting up, he waited for her to come back. Roy was singing “Only the Lonely” when she did.

  She sat in the spot she’d been before but on the edge of the sectional with her leg crossed, foot swinging. “So Tom, are you lonely?”

  Should’ve cleaned the kitchen. “I don’t regret deleting Tinder, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not lonely. Too busy. Had a long email from Josh today. My social needs for the week have been met.” Maybe that’s why he felt loose. He was socially overdosing with Flick. “Are you lonely?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  Last thing he expected her to admit. He sat forward. “Is that about your family?” She would grab attention anywhere she went. Never need to be alone. The fact she had no one significan
t was an oversight she could correct with a crook of her finger.

  “No. Maybe. Yes, I feel apart from them. That’s not going to change. I have good friends, mostly made at various jobs, but they’re not coming to Washington with me and I’ll see them more on LinkedIn than in real life.”

  Josh had mentioned he was too busy settling in to feel lonely but he feared it would be an issue once the complexity of being new to the city cleared, that he’d need to find time to make friends outside of the office.

  “It’s why I still miss Drew. Through school, through college, I could tell him anything and know he’d have my back. He was my person. That’s what I’m lonely for. That one person who accepts me unconditionally. You’re lucky you don’t feel that way.”

  Lucky, or there was some deficit in him. Either way, he wasn’t unhappy. He sat back again, let himself sink into the sectional. He’d watched Wren love Josh in a way Josh didn’t need, and what that did to Wren wasn’t something Tom was lining up to experience. He wouldn’t want Josh’s part in that either. To be loved by someone you couldn’t feel the same way for.

  Flick swung her dangling foot. Portions of her toenails were painted bright red. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “In lust.” A few times. “Infatuated. There’s never been anyone I felt I couldn’t walk away from. You were in love with Drew?” Those words felt sour on his tongue.

  “I loved him. I still do. I wasn’t in love with him. It was hero worship. I left when I was nineteen and ruthless. God, that makes me sound like the politician you accused me of being.”

  “It makes you sound like a survivor. Like someone who knows what they want.”

  Roy sang “In Dreams” and they studied each other until she said, “It’s not so weird between us now.”

  It was easier. He was grateful for that. The ride less bumpy.

  “But we have this thing.”

  Here came a corner, a sharp turn sending him back to the vision of Flick in her underwear, defiant and sexy as sin. “I shouldn’t have said what I said about your ass last night. I was half asleep and you were...it wasn’t a—”