One Night Stand-In (Boyfriend Material #3) - Lauren Blakely Page 0,11
sweetheart, I’m there.
Lola: Yes. But don’t call me “sweetheart.”
Lucas: Is “darling” better? You don’t seem like a “darling,” but hey, if that’s what you’re into now, so be it.
Lola: I am into helping my sister. I will see you tonight.
I shove my phone into a drawer, turning the traitorous device to silent, in case that man attempts to distract me with another infuriating text.
Wait. Screw that. I refuse to be distracted by . . . pseudo exes.
That’s what he is.
He’s barely even an ex.
He’s a quasi ex.
And every smart, modern, educated woman in the city knows you don’t give an ounce of energy to quasi exes from college.
I draw a deep breath, trying to channel some of my morning workout endorphins to fuel me all day long.
I’m nose to the grindstone for the next eight hours. I stop briefly to have a quick deskside lunch with my friend Baldwin, an editor here.
“Listen, pretty lady, I need to know if I should wear the pinstriped T-shirt when I take James to the Yankees game this weekend, or if I should wear this gray one, which admittedly makes me look pretty edible,” he says, showing me the options on his phone.
“Definitely the gray one.”
He winks as we finish our salads. “Always good advice to look edible.”
We finish and I return to my computer screen, barely glancing away except for one brief lightbulb-flashing moment when I cackle out loud like an evil genius. At the end of the day, I pop into Amy’s office to say goodbye.
“Wish I was joining you and Peyton at Gin Joint,” I say with a pout.
“Le sigh. Me too. But with your brainpower, I bet you’ll have all the items back in a few hours, and then you can put this list behind you.”
I knock on wood, though I’m not superstitious. That’s Luna’s department. We’re both artsy, but we’re on opposite ends. She’s the head-in-the-clouds sister; I’m the get-shit-done one. “And once it’s behind me, I can focus on the design competition. Which brings me to my crackerjack plan,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows.
“I love it already,” she says before I can breathe a word. “But now, tell me everything.”
“Lucas’s design was short-listed for the Design-Off International. So, this scavenger hunt will serve a double purpose. Retrieve Luna’s things and scope out the competition.”
Amy nods approvingly. “I love when you talk spy. Go get ’em, Double-O-Seven.”
“I will,” I say, then head home to spend a half-hour on Peter’s designs—I’m adding some slick graphic elements to snaz up his YouTube channel. Confident he’ll like these, I save the files, back them up in my Dropbox, then confirm a time for our meeting in the morning.
I shower and change into skinny jeans, ankle boots, and a form-fitting black T-shirt. One that happens to have a V-neck.
That might also be a little snug.
That possibly makes me look like a babe, as my last beau, Fabian, declared when he saw me in it. But that was before Fabian turned into a stage-five clinger, and this modern woman doesn’t have time for clingers or for relationships.
So I said goodbye to Fabian, sending him the way of Alejandro and the others. But even though I’m wearing man blinders these days, I can definitely wedge in a little taunting of a quasi ex in the form of a sexy-casual ensemble.
After all, it can’t hurt for Lucas to remember what he missed out on that weekend in college.
Me.
He missed out on me.
Even though his excuse was lame, I did understand how he missed our first date. The issue wasn’t the why. It was the lack of a true apology. I didn’t need to get involved with a man who couldn’t find it in himself to say he was truly sorry for what happened that weekend. I made it easier for both of us by saying, We should just go back to being friends.
Only, we became rivals instead, competing for coveted undergrad assignments, internships, and awards.
I leave my place in Chelsea, pop in my AirPods to tune in to a new podcast drama about a cursed carnival and the eerie enchantments that occur in it at night, and catch the subway to Brooklyn.
When I exit the train in Prospect Park and wind through my sister’s neighborhood, I find my ersatz ex lounging on the steps of my sister’s building, his long, athletic frame stretched out ever so casually, the fading sun casting a sunset glow on his carved cheekbones.