It Started in June Page 3

  “It’s your responsibility, too. Look,” said Grace, “I don’t want to talk about how it happened. I want to talk about how I’m going to face him tomorrow.”

  “We don’t have to talk right now about how it happened,” said Shannon. “But the next time we get together—and I believe that is Saturday night—you are going to spill it, every sticky detail. Tonight, okay, we can solve your tomorrow issue. One more question first: How did it end tonight? What was the transition from sex in your car to tea in your kitchen?”

  “I put my finger across his lips for a moment and told him I didn’t want him to say a word,” said Grace, picking up her mug and heading back into the house. “And so he got out of my car, adjusted his clothing, and walked to his car. He hesitated at his door, looked over at me, and said, ‘Good night, Grace.’ ”

  “That sounds like a good ending.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he said your name. Cads don’t say their conquests’ names.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Now you do,” said Shannon.

  They then talked about Grace’s options, starting with possible conversational openers and ending with the idea of her apologizing for what Shannon categorized as “getting carried away.”

  “Or I could just talk to Paul,” said Grace, “and ask him to pair me with someone else, say that having Bradley as a partner on this is not working out.”

  “Yuck,” said Shannon. “That’s what a man would do.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Grace.

  “A man would avoid the issue. You want to deal with this, Grace,” said Shannon. “You shouldn’t pretend it never happened, and you shouldn’t try to work with someone else. Maybe it happened for a reason.”

  “Don’t get cosmic on me.” Her tea was gone, and her interest in talking with Shannon was waning.

  “And don’t you shut the door on this. Not yet.”

  “Okay,” said Grace. “I won’t shut the door just yet. But I am going to get off the phone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have moved into full lecture mode.”

  “Maybe you need it.”

  “Good night, Shannon.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Grace slept well, waking with a start several minutes before her alarm set for five thirty, and, for ten glorious seconds, focusing solely on the glow of the morning sun shining on the off-white walls of her bedroom. The events of the night before then rushed in like a cavalry into battle, striking down serenity, trampling tranquility. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Grace, what have you done?” She rolled over onto her side and stared at her phone on the bedside table. Resisting the urge to call Shannon, she got out of bed and changed into shorts and a T-shirt and walked out into the cool air.

  Forty-five minutes later she was back at the house, having walked a three-mile loop along the beach and through the quiet streets of Gilton, her residential town, and—in her mind—run through several scenarios (with varying levels of probability) of what would happen when she saw Bradley at the office. She dressed more conservatively than normal, choosing a linen suit instead of a breezy summer skirt and sleeveless blouse. Grace always dressed with care for work, making sure that her hemlines weren’t too high and her necklines weren’t too low. She considered the office to be a no-cleavage, no-thigh zone. She hadn’t yet said anything about dress to the young women in the office, hoping her fashion choices would influence them. However, Paul had recently mentioned two women who needed fashion direction and asked Grace to give it, stating that such a conversation might be less awkward for her than for him. She’d been procrastinating on the assignment and would have to tackle it soon. But Grace was buttoned up that morning not as much to lead by example as to send a clear message to Bradley that what happened the night before could not happen again.

  She drove into the empty parking lot at eight o’clock, a good hour before most of her colleagues would arrive, Bradley included. She walked around the building to the front door and then through the glass doors into the offices of Broadbent & Shapiro. Halfway down the hallway to her office, she could see something sitting on the carpeted floor in front of her door. As she got closer, she could see that it was a small cardboard box from Lisa’s Bake Shop down the street. Grace unlocked the door, took the box and the attached gift envelope into her office, and closed the door behind her. Sitting in her desk chair, she set the box and envelope on the writing surface in front of her. She slowly rotated the box 360 degrees and then opened it, and found that it contained a lemon scone, her favorite breakfast offering from Lisa’s, where Paul routinely stopped on his way to the office on Thursday mornings to pick up treats, as he called them, for the team meetings. Anyone who had watched Grace in these weekly meetings would know she liked lemon scones. And because she was a vice president, no one around the conference table ever took the scone Paul had purchased for her.

  She opened the envelope:

  DEAR GRACE—PLEASE DON’T FEEL BAD OR AWKWARD ABOUT LAST NIGHT. CRAZY THINGS HAPPEN SOMETIMES AND THEY ARE NOT ALWAYS WRONG. IN FACT, I FEEL LIKE IT WAS RIGHT. I FEEL RIGHT WHEN I AM WITH YOU. I’LL COME TO YOUR OFFICE FIRST THING, SO WE CAN PUT ANY FEELINGS OF UNCERTAINTY BEHIND US. BRADLEY

  And as soon as she finished reading the note for a second time, Bradley was standing on the other side of her office door. He knocked; Grace tentatively waved him in. “Good morning, Grace,” he said, approaching her desk.

  “Good morning,” she said, not able to say his name, looking at him for only a moment before her eyes fell to her desktop, to the boxed scone and the handwritten note.

  “Do you like the scone?” he asked.

  “I haven’t had any yet,” said Grace. “But I know it’ll be good. It’s my favorite.”

  “I know.”

  “Bradley . . .” she began, at the same time he said “Grace . . .” They both stopped.

  “Can I sit?” asked Bradley.

  “Of course,” said Grace.

  He took a seat in a barrel chair, swiveled back and forth, and then said, “Please don’t say you’re sorry about last night.”

  Grace offered him a small smile, impressed by his courage in coming to her, in wanting to talk about something that others would have avoided discussing or even acknowledging. “Should I say the same to you?”

  Bradley smiled in return. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’m most definitely not sorry. We worked hard last night, and we got carried away afterward. When’s the last time you got carried away?”

  Grace said nothing.

  “Oh, not that long ago, I guess,” he deadpanned.

  Grace’s burst of laughter prompted Bradley to laugh with her. “This is okay, Grace. What happened is okay.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know that it is okay. One, I barely know you. Two, we work together. And three, I’m your boss.”

  “One, we know each other better now.” This attempt at humor failed, goading Bradley to move on. “Two, we can still work together. And three, yes, you are, for this project anyway.”

  She stiffened in her chair. “I’m not sure your analysis is moving us forward with our discussion here.”

  “I think we are moving forward, Grace,” said Bradley. “What we’re doing here, sitting across from each other in your office this morning, the night after we had fantastic sex in your fantastic car, is moving forward. We’re talking. We’re not avoiding each other. We’re not wishing it never happened—at least I’m not wishing it never happened. And I’m hoping you feel the same way. Because I want to spend time with you, Grace.”

  “That can’t happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because in the real world, Bradley, work colleagues don’t date one another. They draw a firm line between their social lives and their work lives so one doesn’t interfere with the other. I signed an agreement when I started here—you did, too—that I wouldn’t date anyone in the office.”

  Bradley leaned in. “What y
ou signed,” he said, “was an agreement to come clean about dating someone in the office, not a declaration that you wouldn’t date a colleague.”

  His remark surprised her. “You read the fine print?”

  “Every word,” he said. “My aunts are lawyers.”

  Grace fought back a smile. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “There’s nothing to come clean about,” she said.

  “I agree,” said Bradley. “And until there is, I say we continue to see each other, to get to know each other. There’s no need to call it dating or announce anything to anybody.”

  “It looks like you’ve thought this through,” she said.

  “For some reason, I didn’t sleep a whole lot last night,” said Bradley. “That gave me about eight hours to think about what I wanted to say to you.”

  Grace softened at this comment. The several men she had dated since her divorce from Kenny had not been, in the end, thoughtful and honest; they had not been open with her, the way this young man appeared to be. But could she trust Bradley? She hardly knew him. Grace looked down at her hands. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say yes,” said Bradley. “We can start again. I’ll pick you up at your house, and we can go on a proper date. Maybe it’s for afternoon coffee or a morning walk. No alcohol. No sex. Just conversation. I like you, Grace. I want to get to know you better.”

  Grace looked up at him and said, “Let me think about it.”

  Bradley stood. “Yes, think about it,” he said. “I’m ready when you are.”

  He left her office. Grace watched him walk down the hallway, as she now realized she had many times before. She had to admit to herself that she had also, once or twice, thought about him in a romantic way. But she had immediately dismissed and banished such thoughts because she’d thought they would never be returned. He was much younger, and the office was full of age-appropriate good-looking women who all found him attractive.

  Grace’s phone dinged, interrupting her thoughts. She retrieved it from her briefcase and read the text from Bradley:

  Coffee this weekend?

  Grace waited ten minutes before she texted back. Could she trust him? Could she keep her cool?

  Yes

  CHAPTER 7

  Grace invited Bradley by text to her house the very next day for a walk at 8 a.m. and coffee afterward. They could walk along the shoreline and through town before the heat of the day and before the streets filled with summer people. She had just finished eating a yogurt when she heard the sound of a car door closing. Her heart swelled. In that instant, she regretted her decision to ask him to her house. She should have taken him up on his idea to meet in what he called neutral territory, halfway between his apartment in New Haven and her place. But she had wanted him to see where she lived because she was proud of it. Her owning a house on the beach would immediately broadcast her independence, she thought. He would see that she had everything she needed, that she didn’t need a man or anyone or anything else in her life to make it complete. She wanted him to see that she was a success. She wanted to see the look on his face when he stepped out onto her deck. Grace listened as Bradley walked across her gravel driveway, along the paving stones that led to her front door, and up the wood steps. He knocked on her screen door and looked in.

  “Grace?”

  “Hi, Bradley,” said Grace, walking from the kitchen through the living room to the door. She opened it wide. “You’re on time.”

  “I’m on time for everything except work.”

  She smiled at his comment, and then said, “Any trouble finding the house?”

  “No, your directions were perfect.”

  This kind of pleasant exchange of useless information was one of the things that Grace participated in but disliked about dating. She understood small talk with clients, but she sometimes resented the fact that she had to “win over” someone she was not financially invested in. Do we have to do this? She had silently asked herself this question at the outset of a number of personal relationships, when she was supposed to appear confident but not arrogant, nice but not sweet, conversational but not loquacious, witty but not sardonic, just right. But it was never just right at the beginning, because being comfortable with someone was not instantaneous.

  They were standing just inside the front door looking at each other. Grace suddenly felt self-conscious and vulnerable in her running shorts and tank top; she turned her back on Bradley and walked toward the back of the house, to the kitchen, to the deck. “Do you want some water?” she said over her shoulder.

  “I’m good,” he said, following her. And when he reached the kitchen and looked out at the water, he said, “Jesus, Grace. What an incredible view! I knew you were close to the water, but I didn’t realize the house was right on the beach.” Grace filled her glass with water and then watched him as he turned to look at the room they had just walked through, at her sparse, modern furnishings, done in cool blues and whites, with shades of yellow in the throw pillows on the couch and in the abstract artwork on the walls. His eyes met hers. “This place is fantastic.”

  “Thanks, I love it here,” she said.

  “Was this house in your family?” he asked.

  “No,” said Grace. “I heard about it from a friend of a former work colleague, and I had to act quickly—that day, actually—so I saw it in the morning and owned it in the afternoon.”

  “Good work,” said Bradley, shifting his gaze to the sliding screen door behind her. “Do you mind if I go out on the deck?”

  “Of course not,” said Grace, following him out the door.

  “How do you ever leave this place?”

  “I have to pay for it,” said Grace, which made Bradley laugh. “Are you ready to walk? We can start on the beach.”

  Grace set her empty water glass down on the deck railing and led the way down the steps to the beach. As soon as their feet hit the sand, Bradley said, “My parents have a house on the beach, too.”

  And this was the beginning statement in their search for common ground. Bradley’s beach was on the shores of Lake Michigan, in Deer Creek, a tiny town that grew to five times its regular size in the summer. It was a tourist destination, with public parks and beaches, small inns and hotels, and too many restaurants and shops for the year-round residents to support. His parents’ summer house was just a few blocks from the water’s edge and a mile from the center of town, where his mother, a psychiatrist, and his father, a pediatrician, worked in July and August in a clinic connected to the much larger hospital in Ann Arbor, where they worked the rest of the year. Bradley had spent every summer of his youth in Deer Creek, as a child playing on the beach under the watchful eye of his grandmother, and as a teenager working in several of the shops that catered to the tourists.

  They left the beach and were walking on the shaded, maple tree–lined streets of town when Bradley said, “I’ve talked too much.”

  “Not at all,” said Grace.

  “You talk,” he said. “Tell me about you.”

  “I’m a much better listener,” said Grace. “Tell me why you’re working at Broadbent and Shapiro, why you’re not a doctor.”

  Bradley revealed that he had thought about medical school, but not as seriously as his mother had hoped. He realized in his junior year at Yale that he didn’t want to be a doctor, but he also didn’t know what he wanted to do instead. “So my parents suggested I go to work for a while and use whatever experience I gained to figure out whether or not I needed graduate school to get to the next step. I would never have guessed I’d still be working in media relations, but I like it. I like the creativity involved in coming up with the campaigns, and I enjoy the tech side of things, using digital media. I took a lot of computer science courses at school,” he said. “One day, I’d like to start my own business, so I can make enough money to have a house on a beach.”

  “You have a plan,” said Grace, as they walked past the Clay Mug, a tiny, popular diner in town.

  “God,
I love the smell of bacon,” said Bradley.

  “Me too,” said Grace. “I just don’t like the taste of it.”

  Bradley stopped walking. “Wait—you don’t like bacon?”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Nice knowing you!” said Bradley, waving at her and backing away.

  She laughed. “You bacon eaters are all alike.”

  “Yes, we are,” he said. “We all like bacon.” He came back to her side. “Seriously, though, are you a vegetarian by choice or for health reasons?”

  “Both,” said Grace.

  “Well, we can work on that as we go.”

  Grace smiled. “I’ve had a number of people try to change my mind.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that,” said Bradley. “But I can be very persuasive.”

  “And I,” said Grace, “have no doubt about that.”

  They looped back onto the beach and walked the last half mile to Grace’s house, then climbed the stairs to her deck. Bradley peeled off the gray shirt that was sticking to his back and said, “Mind if I take a swim?”

  “Go ahead,” said Grace, looking at the water instead of at his bare chest, which she had already taken in and would describe as toned but not sculpted, firm but not overly defined, inviting.

  “Come with me,” said Bradley.

  “I’m going to make coffee and find you a towel,” said Grace, knowing what a swim with him might lead to. “We can sit on the deck when you’re done.” She turned her back and walked into the kitchen. Once inside, she looked back just in time to see him run to the water and dive under its shimmering surface. Grace wanted the date to end right here, wanted Bradley to somehow disappear before he resurfaced, before the conversation got strained, before one of them would regret saying something, before they would have to make plans to meet again—or not make any plans at all. Instead, she made two cappuccinos in the expensive European coffeemaker she had bought herself at Christmas, and brought them out to the deck, along with the neatly folded towel she had washed and dried the night before.