“Just Asher and me?” I ask, in case Flip arranged for a wedding planner to join us in Florida. Preferably a little old lady who carries a small white dog everywhere she goes⏤they’d be the perfect cock-blocking pair.
“Asher doesn’t have a shoot that week, so it’s no problem for him to fly down and help out,” Flip continues. “He’s the one who found us this sweet venue. A client of his owns a mansion on the beach. You two can be around to tell the equipment rental people where to set up. The tent. Chairs. Stuff like that.”
“O-kay,” I say slowly. My mind whirls while I try to think of a good reason I can’t do this, because I can’t be alone with a guy I’m stupidly attracted to. “If I don’t have Rosie that week. Let me do some checking.”
Hannah holds up her phone. “I already texted Bridget to invite her to the wedding. Maybe she’ll bring Rosie down with her, so you can go early and help me.”
“Who knows if Bridget is free, though? I bet she’s busy. Probably has a wine show.”
God, I hope she has a wine show. A wine anything.
But who am I kidding? My ex loves Hannah. She loves Florida, and used to complain in the early days when we couldn’t afford vacations.
She’ll take to this trip like a calico to catnip. I’m so screwed.
When I open the door to my apartment on West Sixteenth Street, my phone pings. I click on the notification.
It’s the dreaded group chat.
And Hannah has dropped in pics.
Nope. I’m not going to look.
I stick to that mantra the whole time I get ready for bed. I don’t so much as glance at those photos as I give Blackbeard a couple scratches on the chin, or while my one-eyed rescue cat watches me brush my teeth from his favorite staring spot on the bathroom counter. Weirdo.
I let the tap run lightly for a few seconds so the orange beast can drink straight from it, then I turn it off. And I still don’t look.
My willpower holds out until I flop onto my mattress, just before I take off my glasses. I leave them on, though, for one moment too long.
That’s all it takes to peek at the last photo.
And, damn. That easy smile. That casual pose. That fucking arm around me.
Yup. He’s annoyingly perfect, and I’m double screwed.
4
THE DA VINCI OF UNDERWEAR
MONDAY, A MONTH LATER
ASHER
I gaze at my forty-two-inch monitor, putting the finishing touches on a photo campaign I shot for UnderKlad.
Translation: I’m staring at photos I’ve taken of the ripped bodies of professional athletes who model underwear on the side.
I love my job. So much.
“Hey Lucy,” I call. “Did we hear anything from FLI today?”
“Negative,” she yells back from her desk across the studio.
Okay. That’s a setback. I’d really been hoping to land a sweet gig with the most influential sports organization in the whole entire world. They told me I’d hear back from them ten days ago.
For the first few days, I’d thought maybe the contract got lost in the mail. Now I think they gave it to someone else.
I’ll be pissed off if they did. The whole campaign was my idea.
But I’m not going to let it kill my vibe today. Whistling along with the Citizen Cope track playing on my speakers, I adjust the color balance of the final shot. Then I deepen the shadows, so that the hockey player’s eight-pack comes into sharper focus. And, wow, it’s perfect now. You can almost taste the tiny beads of sweat on his torso.
Yummy.
“I will be known as the fucking Da Vinci of underwear,” I say to myself as I tap save on the project file.
“You are already,” my assistant says from her desk at the other end of my studio space. “But if you don’t leave now, you will also be known as the Da Vinci of showing up late. Again.”
I whirl around in my chair. “Late? For what?”
Lucy blinks at me from behind her round glasses. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten to check the schedule again.”
“But I thought I was free today before I take off tomorrow for the wedding,” I whine. “I swear the calendar said so.”
She winces. “Check again.”
“Lucy! What did you do?” She probably snuck something onto my calendar. Hell. All I want to do is finish these edits, wipe my own drool off the monitor, and then reward myself with a long lunch of mussels and frites. “Just tell me—what am I almost late for?”
“Your fitting at Angel Sanjay.”
Shit. I open up my calendar and there it is—an appointment at the designer’s showroom, beginning in forty minutes. “This fitting—it’s for the wedding, right?”
“Of course,” she says. “You asked me to book you and a Mark Banks in for, quote, Miami-style beachy wedding attire.”
“Sure, sure,” I babble. The best men need to match their suits. And if I’d let Hannah’s brother pick the clothes, we’d probably end up in some 1955 seersucker disaster.
So this appointment was my idea. But I know it wasn’t on my calendar three hours ago.
Oh, boy. Lucy and I are quite a pair. I’m told that I function as about three quarters of a real adult. Lucy also seems to operate at seventy-five percent. But between us, we’re good for a person and a half. So I figure I’m still ahead.
Plus, even though she dresses head to toe in navy blue Talbots, and her aura doesn’t exactly scream fashionable photographer’s assistant, real talent, though, is telling it like it is to her boss and I need that.
My business has taken off these last couple of years, and before I hired Lucy, I struggled to keep my own calendar.
That led to some regrettable screwups. Just ask my ex-boyfriend. Garrett hated the way I was often late for our dates and all the times I was double-booked, or jet-lagged. It had been a huge transition from the life of a professional athlete in Europe to running my own small business here in New York.
But I wanted Garrett to be happy with me. In a great leap of faith, I’d decided to ask him to move in with me.
I made reservations at the Kimoto rooftop lounge in Brooklyn, left early. But then a truck jackknifed on the Williamsburg Bridge, leaving me stranded for forty-five minutes in an Uber.
When I finally arrived, Garrett was waiting at the corner table in front of the sweeping city views, a designer cocktail in hand. I gave him a big, hopeful smile, fingering the copied key to my apartment that I had for him in my pocket.
But the moment he spotted me, his expression shuttered. The moment I sat down, he said, “Asher, I can’t do this anymore.”
“There was this truck! It will probably be on the news tonight. Seriously—”
He’d shaken his head. “It’s not about tonight. I met someone else.”
That was not what I’d expected. “What? Who?”
When I’d pressed him for details, the breakup turned even worse. He’d met a lawyer, who worked as in-house counsel, and took every weekend off in East Hampton.
“That’s what you want? A lawyer?”
“What I want is someone who’s not a hot mess,” he’d said bitterly.