Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (10 page)

So, yes, sophomore year. He'd had a crush on her that long.

And he'd never done anything about it. Never said a word. Never even hinted. He'd spent the past two years seeing other
girls. What an idiot!

Except what would she have done if he'd confronted her two
years ago? Back then, she'd been obsessed with her riding, and
with doing well at her new school, and not making an ass of herself in front of her new classmates. She'd known Ted but hadn't
thought of him as boyfriend material. She hadn't thought of anyone as boyfriend material, really. She'd dated that older boy
Allyson had introduced her to, and the guy who played lacrosse,
but for the most part she'd been just as happy to be accepted into
a group of friends, one of the gang, no complications, no emotional entanglements, no risk of heartbreak. She'd found greater
satisfaction riding Five Star than fending off her first boyfriend's
pressure for sex, and she'd derived more pleasure talking to Five
Star than listening to her second boyfriend recount every play of
every lacrosse game, making sure to emphasize just how indispensable he'd been to the team.

She hadn't had a crush on Ted then. She hadn't seen him
wrestle yet.

Why he would have had a crush on her was a mystery. She
wasn't cute or flirty. She didn't hang out with everyone after
school. All told, she was kind of a nerd. A horse nerd.

But he'd had a crush on her anyway. And all she could say
was Oh.

"You want something to drink?" he asked, which was almost as
prosaic as Oh. She assured herself that if he'd truly had a crush on
her for all those years, she probably didn't have to knock herself
out to impress him with her wit and charm.

"Okay," she said.

Ten minutes later, armed with two bottles of beer, they were
seated on the grass under the arching, densely leafed branches of a maple tree, apart from the crowd. Ted leaned back on his elbows,
his legs stretched out. His shorts ended at his knees and she found
herself gazing at the lacy film of hair covering his calves.

"So what are you doing this summer?" he asked.

"Riding. And heading out to Colorado. How about you?"

"I've got a job at a gas station. And caddying up at Sommerset
Country Club. I've got a caddy gig tomorrow morning. No rest
for the weary."

"You're not weary," she teased. Just because they had crushes
on each other didn't mean they couldn't still joke with each other
the way they used to.

"Not now. Tomorrow morning I will be." He slapped at a mosquito on his arm, then took a sip of beer. She'd seen him at
enough parties to know he wasn't the kind of guy who chugged
down brew after brew and got drunk and acted like a jerk. "Your
toes still look great," he noted.

She stared down the length of her legs to her feet. Her manicure from the prom had long ago chipped, but her pedicure still
looked fresh. "You shouldn't have been checking out my feet
while you were with Kate," she chided.

"I wasn't with Kate by then. Not really."

"You took her to the prom."

"Because what was I going to do, break up with her a week
before graduation? You were at the prom with someone else, too."

"Because you were with Kate. And Peter asked me." She shot
Ted a sly look. "And you didn't ask me."

"Well, that's history now," he said, refusing to let her needling
get to him. "So what's in Colorado?"

"Colorado College, in Colorado Springs."

"Wow, couldn't you get any farther away?" He laughed. "No
school in California would take you?"

She gave him a playful nudge. "I want to experience living in
the mountains."

"We've got mountains here," he said, sweeping his hand
through the air as if they were surrounded by alpine peaks.

"Hills," Erika argued. "We're a lot closer to the ocean than anything that could be considered a mountain." She shrugged. "It
wasn't that I wanted to go far away. I just want to try something
new. I love traveling."

"Yeah? Where do you travel?"

"My mother's from Colombia."

"Columbia? Like the university?"

"No, like the country in South America. She was born and
grew up there. She still has lots of family there. Three sisters and
a brother. I've got about a million cousins down there."

"No kidding. I never knew that."

"Si, es cierto! That means, yes, it's true."

"Wow. So you, like, speak Spanish and everything?"

"It's funny-I sort of don't understand much Spanish when
I'm here in New Jersey. But we used to go down to Colombia a lot
when I was a kid, and after a day or two, I'd be speaking Spanish
like a native. Well, not quite," she added modestly. "But enough
to get around. People understood me. Then I would come back
here and forget it all. Now I sit in Spanish class and knock myself
out trying to keep up with the teacher."

"Not anymore," Ted reminded her, then chanted, "No more
teachers, no more books."

"Not until I get to college." She plucked a long strand of grass
that had sprouted between the bulging roots of the tree, where a
lawn mower couldn't get to it. "You're not going to college, are
you?"

"Not right away. I will eventually. I just need some time off."
He grinned at her. "We can't all be straight-A honors students,
you know."

"No, we can't," she said, meaning herself. She studied hard and
did well in school, but she didn't think of herself as some sort of
exalted scholar, destined for Phi Beta Kappa. "Colorado Springs
is supposed to be gorgeous. Right at the base of Pike's Peak."

"Zebulon Pike," Ted murmured. "I couldn't remember a thing
all through that boring American History class, but now I
remember his name."

"Zebulon is a hard name to forget."

"His parents must've been tripping on something when they
named him."

"That would be my guess," she agreed.

They eyed each other and exchanged a smile. And she felt that
shimmery, quivery warmth in her belly again, that trill of sensation she'd never felt with anyone before. When Ted gazed at her
with his soulful green eyes, she felt it.

She was hungry for new experiences-and she acknowledged
that Ted Skala was going to be an amazing new experience for her.

Sometime well past midnight, she and Ted made their way
indoors to find places to sleep. She was exhausted. He seemed far
too energetic, given the late hour, but he insisted he needed to
catch some z's because of his early morning caddying job. He
sacked out on the plush carpeted floor in the den, and Erika
folded herself up on an upholstered loveseat that would have
been a lot more comfortable if it were about two feet longer. The
room had a sofa, but someone else had already claimed it and was
snoring softly.

As pumped as Ted had seemed, he fell asleep almost at once. Erika lay curled up on the loveseat, her mind yearning to fall
asleep but her heart fluttering, her emotions clamoring, refusing
to let her shut down for a few hours of critically necessary rest.
That Ted Skala liked her-that he'd liked her for years-was too
astonishing. Too bizarre. Too utterly cool.

This isn't love, she told herself. It couldn't be. She wouldn't
allow such a thing. She couldn't fall in love with someone when
in a matter of weeks she would be traveling two thousand miles
away to attend college. She couldn't fall in love when she had so
many exciting adventures ahead of her, waiting for her. She
wanted to live in the mountains. She wanted to learn to ski, and
to sail, and to climb. She wanted to get a degree and make money.
She wanted to have lots of affairs with gorgeous men. She wanted
to see the world, eat exotic cuisine, learn how to tell a good wine
from a bad one. She wanted to live.

She wanted to fall in love, too. But not yet.

However, her heart would not stop sending ripples of heat
through her chest, as if its frenzied beat was Morse code spelling
out the letters L-O-V-E. She thought of Ted slumbering on the
carpet just a few feet away from her and her face exploded in a
smile. She couldn't help herself. Thinking about him did that.

She must have drifted off eventually, because when she next
opened her eyes, a milky dawn light was seeping through the slats
in the wooden blinds covering the windows. Laura was shaking
her gently. She glanced at the floor and saw that Ted was gone.

"Wake up," Laura whispered. The snores of the guy sleeping
on the couch were louder than Laura's voice. "We've got to
leave."

Erika wanted to ask where Ted was, but if the first words out of
her mouth were about him, Laura would never let her forget it.
"What time is it?" she asked instead, keeping her voice as low as Laura's.

"Seven-thirty. I told Ted we'd drive him to the golf club. He's
got to caddy this morning."

"Oh. Okay." So he hadn't left. He was planning to leave with
her and Laura. She hadn't imagined last night. The smile that had
cradled her dreams through the night reclaimed her lips.

"You'll never guess who he's caddying for," Laura continued,
still whispering as Erika pushed herself to sit and tried to unkink
her joints. Sleeping in fetal position might be comfortable for a
fetus, but not for a full-grown eighteen-year-old. Her neck was
stiff, her legs cramped. She wiggled and stretched and heard dire
clicks in her knees as she straightened them.

"Who?" she asked.

Laura grinned. "My dad."

A muted laugh escaped Erika. Small world, she thought, but
she couldn't help believing that Ted's caddying for the father of
her good friend-the friend who had manipulated Ted and Erika
into revealing their feelings last night-was more than a coincidence. It was a sign. A sign that she and Ted belonged together.

Of course, in her drowsy, rapturously romantic mind, anything
would have been a sign. The built-in bookshelves along the far
wall were a sign. The sound of someone clattering around in the
kitchen down the hall was a sign. The fact that Erika had spent
the night on a loveseat was definitely a sign.

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with the heels of her
hands, then stood and tiptoed out of the room behind Laura. The
guy on the couch was sleeping so soundly, they probably could
have stomped out of the room, clapping their hands and bellowing the Mendham High School song, and he would have slept
through it.

After a quick stop in the bathroom, Erika followed Laura into the kitchen. Ted was there, along with an older woman in a camp
shirt and matching shorts in such a bright turquoise they hurt
Erika's eyes. Jennifer's mom, Erika recalled. She'd met the
woman briefly last night. Unlike Ted, who looked as sleepy as
Erika felt, Jennifer's mother appeared sharp and energetic and
ready to embrace the day.

She'd fixed a pot of coffee. A couple of large pink-and-white
boxes from Dunkin Donuts stood open on the counter, displaying an assortment of doughnuts. "Good morning, girls!" she
greeted Erika and Laura cheerfully.

Erika managed to return her greeting, but her attention was on
Ted. His hair was even more tousled than usual, but he wore a
collared polo shirt and khaki slacks, proper apparel for a caddy at
Sommerset Country Club. He was holding a mug in both hands,
lifting it to his mouth as if it were filled with precious nectar.
Given the hour and the job awaiting him, the caffeinated drink
was clearly essential to him.

Yet he apparently believed Erika was even more essential than
coffee. He paused before sipping as his gaze zeroed in on her, and
he smiled. "Hey," he said in a dark, husky voice.

That sexy hoarseness probably resulted from too little sleep,
but Erika decided to believe it was a reaction to her. "Hey," she
said back.

He smiled.

Evidently unaware of the current spinning between Erika and
Ted, Jennifer's mother said, "I've got plenty of doughnuts.
There's fruit and orange juice in the fridge, and we've got cornflakes-"

"Thanks anyway," Laura said, covering for Erika and Ted, who
were gazing at each other like lovesick fools. "Coffee is fine."

"Well, help yourselves. Here's milk and sugar-" Jennifer's mother waved toward a small ceramic pitcher and a matching
ceramic bowl situated near the coffee maker "-and there are
cups in the cabinet." She gestured toward the polished cherry
cabinet above the coffee maker. Her hostess responsibilities complete, she smiled and bounced out of the room, her sandals making quiet slapping noises against the soles of her feet.

"Coffee," Laura said, giving Erika a nudge to snap her out of
her spell.

"Right." She eyed Ted and laughed helplessly. He smiled,
leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee.

"You really should eat something," Laura advised Ted. "My
father's going to run you ragged."

"Is he a good tipper?" Ted asked as he helped himself to a cinnamon cruller.

"Are you a good caddy?" Laura shot back. She pulled two mugs
from the cabinet and filled them with coffee. "You want a doughnut?" she asked Erika.

Erika shook her head. She had no appetite. She was too sleepdeprived, too giddy. Ted looked as good to her this morning as he
had last night. As he had at the prom last week. As he had when
she'd seen him wrestling.

Correction: he looked even better today than he had ever
before. Today she knew he liked her. He liked her.

She should have spent a little more time in the bathroom,
working on her appearance before she let him see her. She'd
brushed the tangles from her hair with her fingers and washed her
face, but she'd looked bedraggled in the mirror above the vanity.
A few minutes of fussing wouldn't have improved things much,
and more than a few minutes might have resulted in Ted's arriving late for his caddying job. So she'd given up and figured that if
Ted really had that much of a crush on her, he would just have to accept her with her eyes a little bloodshot and a faint impression
from the loveseat's textured upholstery branded on her cheek.