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“Yes, yes, it is.” He took a deep breath and pitched his voice low, finally admitting the unsavory truth. “She likes to pretend, Sean.”
“Pretend what?”
“Pretend that I’m not me.”
Sean stroked his chin. “I see. So she’s so revolted by you that she has to pretend you’re someone else.”
“That’s not it,” Gabe snapped and saw heads turn with curiosity. He scowled back.
“It looks like it. Why else would she need to pretend? Unless you can’t satisfy her, of course.”
“Of course I can satisfy her,” answered Gabe through gritted teeth.
“On the basis of the facts as presented before me, I’m thinking that answer is a big no.”
“Screw you, Sean.”
Sean lifted his hands. “Okay, okay. All joking aside, I can see you’re in need of guidance. Did you ever think about ditching her?”
The bartender came over, clearing the glasses. “Another round of juice?”
“Not in this lifetime,” said Gabe. He glared at his brother, feeling uncomfortable. “Hell, a man needs a BlackBerry and a cellphone in order to fit in here. Next time, we’re playing wall ball the old-fashioned way—out in the alley.”
“Sure, if it makes you feel better. But I’ll still whip your ass. Now, getting back to the sex girl—which is much more interesting than how I can wipe the floor with you—why don’t you ditch her? You’re not the obsessive-compulsive type.”
“I can’t ditch her,” answered Gabe, sounding obsessively compulsive.
“Why? Every woman can be ditched for the right reasons.”
“I like her. I’m not going to stop seeing her.”
A big guy in sweats plopped down next to Sean and started talking, completely butting into a personal conversation. Gabe sat for a few minutes while Sean chatted legal gibberish with the other dude until Gabe cleared his throat.
“Do you mind?” he asked Sean.
Sean turned to the other guy. “My little brother. He needs help. Sorry.”
The man held out his hand. “You’re Daniel? I’m Frankie Ryder. How you doing?”
“No, I’m Gabe,” he responded, shaking the meaty paw but shooting meaningful “hurry-up” glances to Sean.
Frankie turned to Sean. “I didn’t know you had two brothers.”
“I’m the brother he keeps hidden up in the attic.”
“Gabe, you don’t have to be rude.” Sean looked at Frankie. “He’s a little edgy. It’s a sex thing.”
“Excuse me?” Gabe coughed.
Frankie blushed around the gills and then sat up. “I’ll see you back at the office, Sean.”
“Sure thing,” said Sean with a happy wave.
“Did you need to drag this out in the open?”
“No, but it seemed like the fun thing to do. And stop acting like you’re the only man in the world who’s ever suffered from blue balls. Do you know that ninety-nine-point-seven-three percent of men’s frustrations come from sex issues? If I didn’t tell Frankie, he’d figure it out. One of the best estate lawyers this side of hell. Great guy.”
“I’m sure Frankie’s great, but can we get back to my problems?”
“Ah, so now you do want to admit you have a problem? Which is an important step because, yes, you do—a giant one. Why do you think she has to pretend?” asked Sean, using his courtroom cross-examination voice, but Gabe was too wound up to care.
Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? Gabe had thought long and hard about why, but he couldn’t come up with anything. “I don’t know why. There doesn’t have to be a why. Why why? I don’t want to think about why.”
“Why goes to motive, Gabe.”
“This isn’t a court case. I’m talking sex. Just sex.”
“But don’t you want to know her why?”
“No, I only want to fix it.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Can’t? What does that mean?”
“What if she can never accept you for who you are or for what you are? Maybe she has issues with dating a bartender? Maybe, for instance, she’s always wanted a more cerebral man. Like me.”
“It’s not that.”
“So you do know the why.”
“I don’t care about the why.”
“Then there’s your problem. She has a why, you don’t care about the why and she wants you to care about the why. Elementary, Gabe, elementary. You just have to understand the female psyche.”
Gabe looked around the club, seeing it through the red haze of his rage. “This is pointless. I shouldn’t have talked to you.”
“Why don’t you talk to Tessa?”
Gabe pretended he wasn’t affected, but, okay, his heart stopped for a second. “What? What do you mean?”
Sean looked completely casual. “Tessa. A female point of view, who conveniently happens to be your roommate, as well. Maybe she can explain the why.”
Gabe hid his sigh of relief. “I’m not sure that Tessa is the right person to talk to.”
“Why?” asked Sean, his eyes narrowed—and suspicious.
Quickly Gabe backed off. “You’re right. I’ll talk to Tessa. I bet she’ll know exactly what to do.”
Sean grinned. “See? Look how smart your older brother is.”
People didn’t realize how difficult it was being the youngest of three brothers. People didn’t give Gabe enough credit for putting up with bullshit like this.
However, Gabe rose above all the crap that Sean dished out. He was the bigger man. “You’re lucky this time, Sean. Next time, I’m going to smash your candy ass into the floor.”
“Empty threats, nothing more. Because it’s obvious that I’m the lover in the family, baby brother, as well as the fighter.”
Gabe eyed the silk tie around his brother’s neck, considered the very real presence of witnesses, and opted to spare Sean’s life. But only because Sean was wrong. Gabe was the lover in the family.
Sean signaled the bartender, and he came over holding the glasses in his hand completely wrong. Poser.
“Another round of juice.”
“Just the check. Sean’s paying.” Gabe slapped his brother on the back. “Thanks, bro.”
Then he left this godforsaken establishment before its wholesome aura started to rub off on him.
Carrot juice? Jeez.
TESSA SPENT THURSDAY afternoon looking at apartments and meeting potential roommates. Some people might call it boring, Tessa considered it depressing. She’d met Stella, a longtime bartender at 87 Park, who was a fifty-three-year-old with platinum blond hair and a rose tattoo on her arm and, best of all, she smoked like a chimney. Tessa mentally did the math. Fifty-three minus twenty-six was twenty-seven. Tessa had twenty-seven years before she ended up like Stella—not that there was anything wrong with that.
But Tessa wanted more.
After Stella there’d been Barry, who was twenty-two, and just starting in the MBA program at Columbia. After ten minutes in the shadow of his type-A personality, Tessa knew she would turn suicidal.
After Barry, there’d been Karen, who was an aspiring Broadway dancer. Everything was fine until Tessa had met Karen’s fiancé, Chaz, who’d slapped Tessa on the butt immediately after meeting her, and then started talking threesomes when Karen went to answer her phone. Tessa hadn’t waited for Karen to get back.
Next Tessa had gone up to Washington Heights, crossed over to the Bronx and then gone south to Bensonhurst. She’d seen studios, one-bedrooms and lofts—and exactly zero that she wanted to live in. The studios were like living in a closet. The first one-bedroom she’d seen had a view over the sanitation facility, the second was directly over the subway, shaking ominously every ten to twelve minutes. And the loft was not even in the same area code of her price range.
All in all, it was true: in the naked city, there was only one building that provided good value and adequate security.
Hudson Towers. Someday maybe the New York real estate market would go bust—possibly Tessa’s great-great-grandchildren would see it—but not anytime before.
For a second she considered moving, moving back to Florida, giving up, telegraphing to the world that, yes, it was true, Tessa couldn’t survive on her own.
Only one second did she consider this defeatist mentality.
No way. No way in hell.
Marisa wouldn’t give up. Marisa would take the deal and not lose any sleep.
That was the thing about people like Marisa. They were connected, knew people who knew people and made it their business to make sure they were always collecting more people.
Marisa wanted to add Tessa to her collection and she wanted to add Gabe, as well. Quid pro quo. The world ran on quid pro quo.
The answer was simple.
Tessa would get her apartment, she’d help out Marisa, and she’d get over this Gabe thing. It was a sexual crush, nothing more. She’d been too long without a man and he’d been the first guy in four years, so it was completely natural that she was a little overheated.
But passion didn’t last. Not like real estate.
No, her apartment was her future. The men would have to wait their turn because Tessa was going to get her own place, pay her own bills, buy her own furniture and possibly get a cat.
Friday afternoon was her accounting class, so she went and listened to Professor Lewis drone on about tangible operational assets and intangible operational assets, which helped cement her own operational decision.
Gabe was right. Accounting was a mistake. She’d just picked a career out of the phone book instead of trying to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. However, to be fair, she’d never had to pick out a career before, and who knew there was a right way and a wrong way to do it?
Well, lesson learned. Considering she had to execute an alternate career plan, like, yesterday she was going to talk to Marisa ASAP. Immediately after class she pulled out the Realtor’s wrinkled card and punched the numbers on her cell.
“Marisa—Tessa. The bartender from Prime? How you doing?”
“Good. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Wow, you work fast.”
Unfortunately Marisa wasn’t interested in Tessa’s life decision. No, she wanted to talk about men in general, Gabe in particular.
Shoot.
“Actually, I want to talk to you about something else. Can you meet me for a drink? Or dinner—I don’t care. I need to ask you a few questions.”
“About Gabe?”
“Yeah,” answered Tessa. “Yeah.”
“Sounds great. I’ll meet you at that new bar on the corner of Bleecker and Grover.”
Tessa knew the place. Chrome, black, cute little colored lights, yet pretentious and expensive, with watered-down drinks. Okay, fine, whatever.
Forty-five minutes later Tessa changed into her best pair of black jeans and dashed into Century 21 to buy a dressier shirt. Attire was something she’d never worried about before, but now appearances mattered. The golden, glittery top looked great in the dressing room, but the frumpy haircut? Tessa glared at her own reflection in the mirror and sighed. She could fix clothes, but hair couldn’t be fixed in ten minutes. Actually, it could, but even Tessa knew that getting a haircut in ten minutes or less was a really bad idea. She’d done that once when she was seventeen. Not doing that again. Later, when she had the time, she would fix the hair thing.
When she got to the club, she scoured the room for Marisa, finally spotting her near the back, dressed exquisitely in some neatly pressed olive-green suit that brought out the highlights in Marisa’s exquisitely styled hair.
Marisa, to her credit, looked over Tessa’s new, improved wardrobe and didn’t say a word.
No, the first words out of her mouth were, “Did you talk to him?”
Tessa, whose last conversation with Gabe had consisted of very little communication, having more to do with groping and grabbing, elected to spin the truth. “The time wasn’t exactly right.”
Marisa looked disappointed.
Tessa realized that disappointment wasn’t how you approached the sole person who could help you on this new career in real estate. “But there’ll be more chances,” she added, throwing in an optimistic smile.
Marisa perked up nicely. “I checked into Hudson Towers for you. I know a guy who knows a guy who has an aunt who’s about to move into assisted living. Her place is going up for sublet in another three weeks. I gave him your name, and he was excited to avoid the whole finding-a-new-renter nonsense. How’s that for results?”
Holy moley. In another three weeks she’d have her ideal place. Solo. Marisa was faster than most cabdrivers Tessa had ridden with. “Really? You’re not just yanking my chain, are you?”
“Cross my heart,” promised Marisa.
Tessa ordered a drink from the waitress, choosing to stick to a diet soda. Better to maintain a clear head tonight. After all, this was business. Marisa, not knowing that tonight was business, ordered a Tom Collins.
