Another step that leads me away from the only person I’ve ever met who can send my temper from zero to a hundred in the span of minutes. I never lose my cool. Never raise my voice or say things I’ll regret later on. But Mina . . . she’s the black to my white, the heavy rock to my classical, the bungee-jumping-crazy to my downward-dog-yoga.
She drives me fucking insane.
“But—”
“Foreplay’s over, Ermione.” Against my iron-clad will, my gaze sweeps lower than her cleavage. Her black dress hugs her curvy frame, its slinky material glittering under the soft lighting as she darts out a hand to keep the elevator from closing on her face. She’s not classically beautiful—her nose is just a little too big, her jaw a little too sharp, her eyes a little too luminous. But she wears confidence like a second skin, and there’s never been a man I’ve met in the last decade who can turn Mina down. “Find someone else to tango with.”
The elevator whines with its urge to get a move on, and Mina claps her right hand over her left, prolonging our staring contest.
“I actually do really need to talk to you,” she says, that always-there confidence of hers visibly waning. “I got carried away with trying to prove a point. I-I don’t even remember the point, though that’s always the way with us, don’t you think? We each always want the last word. It’s our thing—if we had a thing. Which we don’t.” She laughs awkwardly. “But I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’m having trouble, but . . . I, uh, I bought a place. A hair salon. I’d love to maybe know—if you have the time, obviously—if we could talk about a renovation contract. In private. Maybe. If you have the time.”
I’ve never heard Mina ramble before. Or, at least, not since our school-day years when she sat quietly in the back of the Greek school classroom and stammered whenever the teacher—Kyria Yiannoglou—called on her to answer a question or conjugate a verb.
Learning Greek came easily to me, probably because my parents spoke nothing else in our house while I was growing up. But Mina . . . she’d struggled, and the more she panicked, the more she rambled, and the more she rambled, the more she liked to tap her fingers.
My gaze cuts to her hands now, which are still locked over the elevator.
Her slender fingers curl in and stretch out, as though fighting the urge to tap away to their heart’s content.
My heart gives an erratic thump that might as well be synonymous for, Oh, c’mon, man. Let her squirm a little before you concede the battle. It’d be in my best interest to show that Mina can’t push me to react. For one, she will, and always will be, an annoying pain in my ass. And, second—
“Meet me at my office on Monday. 8 a.m. Don’t be late.”
I don’t wait around to see if she has a comeback.
I’m not a bad guy, but I’d be lying if I said that Mina doesn’t pluck at all my good-guy feathers and make me want to go rogue.
5
Mina
At seven-forty on Monday morning, I’m loitering outside Nick’s office and contemplating my life decisions.
Life decisions that will not be remedied with Tito’s, thank you very much.
Instead, I’ve opted for two cups of coffee—one for me and one for Nick—that I picked up from Dunkin’s on my train ride into Watertown. Only the little cardboard cutouts keep my palms from scorching as I pace the cracked sidewalk and crane my neck back to stare at the white-painted sign hanging over the front window.
Stamos Restoration and Co. is located in the heart of downtown Watertown, a suburb not even ten minutes outside of Boston. Unlike Agape, which takes up the first floor of a nineteenth-century brownstone, Nick’s office is located in a contemporary building with gray-stucco walls. He’s sandwiched between a dance studio and a hair salon, and it takes every bit of self-control not to peek into the salon’s windows and scope out their setup like a peeping Tom.
With the hum of cars rushing down the Massachusetts Turnpike behind me, I juggle the coffees into one hand and ring the doorbell.
Thanks to nerves and a bad habit of losing my mind around Nick, I missed my window of opportunity to talk to him about Agape at the wedding. I could blame my scatterbrain for my inability to close the deal with him—or initiate the deal in the first place, if we’re getting into the details—but I’m not one for pretense.
Nope, I straight up cornered that man in an elevator and proceeded to bust his balls like I was back in kindergarten—when kicking a guy you like in the nuts was the surefire way to announce the two of you were destined for marriage.
Yeah, not my brightest moment.
I’m hoping to make up for it today.
The door swings open a heartbeat later, and I open my mouth to greet Nick—only to realize that the person standing there isn’t Nick at all but rather a guy around my age. His blond hair is a rumpled mess, which is in no way outdone by his wrinkled clothing, the scruff on his jaw (though his upper lip is as smooth as a baby’s bottom), and half-tied shoelaces.
If I’m the Hot Mess Express, then this man is the conductor leading us all to our inevitable doom.
His eyes widen at the sight of the coffee. “You must be Ermionehh,” he says, greedy hands reaching for the Dunkin’s. He plucks one out of my grasp and brings the plastic lid to his nose, inhaling like an addict. “Damn, now that smells like heaven.”
Actually, it smells like my heaven.
I look from the cup now clutched in his big paws to the one still in my possession. This morning I’d hobbled out of bed, ignored my Keurig, and tumbled into the shower and then into clothes. I’m half-awake, in desperate need of caffeine and—
I’m not looking for a reason for Nick to throw me out on my rear end. Pissing off his employee won’t earn me any brownie points, so I offer the coffee thief a big ol’ grin, ignoring the screech of my heart that’s shouting give it to us! like Gollum himself has taken up residence in my chest, and mutter, “There’s milk and sugar in that one.”
Angling my body past him, I step inside Nick’s place of work for the very first time. Call me crazy but it feels like I’m about to see him in an all new light. I’ve known him for my entire life: as my best friend’s older brother, as my teenage crush, as the man who drives me up a wall with his sly wit and quiet reserve.
But I’ve never seen him in a professional setting, and something about that has me . . . eager.
With the sole coffee-left-standing pressed to my diaphragm, I take in the room before me. It looks more like an architectural exhibit at a museum than an office. Miniature wooden structures stand on short, ankle-high tables. I spot a Victorian mansion painted in eggshell blue and trimmed with lavender over to my right, and then, on the far side of the room, what looks to be a church with a half-built spire. More pieces are littered throughout the space, each as intricate and intriguing as the one before it.
Did Nick make these?
For a moment, I let that image settle in, visually projecting him sitting behind the incomplete church. His rough hands molding the wood, his face a mask of concentration as he toils away the daylight until the afternoon sun kisses his olive skin and he breathes out a sigh of contentment. I can only imagine the hours needed to complete each structure, miniature or not. If patience is a virtue, then Nick is the most virtuous one of us all.
Feeling more rattled than I’d like to admit, I spin on my heel to face the coffee thief. “You can call me Mina, by the way. It’s easier.”
“Mina.” The guy’s face sags with relief. He takes a swig of coffee and doesn’t even flinch at the heat. “Thank God. You know how many times I practiced Ermionehh in the mirror this morning? Had to have the boss-man audio record it for me over the weekend ’cuz it was either that or, well, ya know.”
Compared to Nick’s fluent Greek tongue, this guy pronounces my name like his mouth has been stuffed with cotton. Each syllable is all wrong, but I give him a big smile anyway. “I appreciate the effort.”
“I’m all about the effort, Mina.”
He doesn’t wink, but I get the feeling he’s doing it in his head but trying to stick to whatever rulebook has been shoved up his butt from day one. Nick’s a stickler for certain things.
Like buying two bags of popcorn and never letting a woman notice that he’s checking out her cleavage.
“Anyway,” Coffee Thief goes on, “Boss-man’s just wrapping up a meeting, so I’ll bring you in there. As a head’s up, his office looks like my grandma’s after a Family Feud marathon.” At my side-eye, he shrugs, all nonchalant. “Steve Harvey really gets her worked up. Point is, Nick’s office is a disaster since he’s playing catch-up now that he’s back from that dating show or whatever.”
Hold up.
Pause.
Rewind.
My stride careens to a stop as I shoot a wild glance over at CT. “I’m sorry, did you say that Nick was on a dating show?” I refuse to believe it. Nick—my predictable, safe Nick—would rather walk into a room full of clowns than subject himself to TV. And reality television at that. “Was it The Bachelor?”
Oh. My. God.
Is Nick engaged? Married?
My head swirls with the endless possibilities and I’m suddenly grateful to CT for taking hold of at least one coffee because I’m seconds away from pulling a Tower of Pisa and going down, face-first. I talked about foreplay with him. Nick. And hand-tangoing! And I may or may not have prayed for his penis to be leaf-coverage tiny.
No wife deserves that sort of discovery, and I instantly regret the insult, even though it never left my head. And even though I know it’s not true.
I’m going to be sick.
“You okay, Ermiona?”
I don’t even bother to correct CT.
Though I hate black coffee, I bring Nick’s cup up to my mouth and take a hearty swig of the java. For self-preservation. Fortitude. And because I need to do something with my hands besides stand here with my mouth agape and my eyes the size of saucers. The coffee burns on the way down, like a bitter truth bomb that I’d rather not be forced to swallow.