Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (12 page)

Or else he had until late August to discover that Erika wasn't
the girl for him, after all. Just because he'd been smitten with her
for more than two years didn't mean she was going to live up to
his fantasies. Maybe they'd go out a few times and he'd learn that
all she cared about was horses. Or that she was mean, or selfish,
or bitchy. He couldn't believe those things of her; after the more
than two years he'd known her, he would have heard all the bad
shit about her by now. She wouldn't be friends with girls like
Laura and Allyson if she was a bitch. They wouldn't put up with
that.

She was a good person. A class act. An old soul. She would accept him for who and what he was. His father's harping about
his lack of college plans couldn't undermine his confidence in
himself, and in Erika. He couldn't let it.

She'd kissed him. She knew he wasn't going to college, and
she'd gone ahead and kissed him anyway. He closed his eyes,
relived that moment in the backseat of Laura's car, the feel of
Erika's lips touching his, and he knew that no matter what
happened, no matter how they both felt about each other after
they'd spent more time together, he was going to kiss her again.

And again.

It wasn't just the college thing. It was that she had a car and he
didn't, and if he couldn't get access to his parents' car, going out
with Erika meant she would do the driving.

He knew she was more privileged than he was. His family's
vacations might entail a weekend at the shore, and hers entailed
flying to Colombia, South America. He caddied at the golf club;
her family probably belonged to the golf club.

But he'd phoned her between his third and fourth golf party
that afternoon and asked to see her tonight and she'd said yes, so
obviously none of that bothered her. And he had all that tip
money burning a hole in his wallet.

She might drive, but he would impress her. He would take her
someplace classy. He'd even tuck his shirt in. If he could do that
for his caddying job, he could do it for Erika Fredell.

"The Black Horse Tavern?" She stared at him. "You really want
to go there?"

He had just climbed into her Jeep Wagoneer, after first circling
it and inspecting all the stickers her father had glued onto its windows and bumpers: a Trinity College decal denoting her sister's
college and dozens of USET stickers. "What's USET?" he had asked as he'd swung open the door.

"The United States Equestrian Team," she'd told him. "My
father gets a sticker at practically every horse show."

"He must be very proud of you."

Erika shrugged. Her father was very proud, period. He was
proud of his daughters, but also proud of how far he'd come in
the world, from his working-class childhood in the Bronx to a
successful career as a stockbroker on Wall Street. And he was
proud of how much he did for his daughters-sending them to
prestigious private colleges, paying for the riding lessons and
coaching that had turned Erika into a champion. The Wagoneer
was actually pretty old, dinged, and mud-spattered, with unfashionable wood siding. But it got her where she wanted to go, and
she wasn't about to complain.

Where Ted wanted to go was the Black Horse Tavern, which
was one of the fanciest restaurants in town. It was the kind of
place one's parents went to on their anniversary or took the family
to when grandparents were visiting. When Ted had phoned and
she'd told him that she was indeed free for dinner, she'd assumed
they would go someplace normal, one of the chain restaurants,
like Olive Garden or TGI Friday's, or a local place. Country
Coffee Shop or Village Pizza would have suited her fine.

She wasn't even wearing a dress. Just some nice cotton slacks
and an airy linen blouse.

"You really want to have dinner at the Black Horse Tavern?"
she asked him.

"It's a nice place," he said.

"I know it's nice. What I asked was if that was really where you
want to eat."

"I can afford it."

She refused to twist the ignition key until they'd worked this
out. "I didn't think you'd want to go someplace you couldn't
afford," she said. "I just ..."

"What?"

She struggled to come up with a tactful phrasing, then gave up.
"I don't want you to think you have to go out of your way to
impress me, Ted. I mean, you impress me just by being yourself."

He gazed across the console at her. In the lavender twilight, she
was acutely aware of the shadows playing across his angular face.
Her gaze dropped to his neck and the vee of chest exposed where
his shirt collar was unbuttoned, and she realized she wanted to
kiss him there, right in the hollow at the base of his throat.

She'd never felt drawn to a boy the way she was drawn to Ted.
Never felt that shimmering warmth with anyone else. It scared
her a little and excited her a lot.

Yet there she was, challenging him. Arguing with him not only
about where they should go for dinner but why they should go
wherever they went. They'd barely gotten together, and they were
already having a real fight.

Only it wasn't a fight. Ted's face relaxed into a smile. "I don't
think I'm that impressive," he said. "But if you're impressed, we
can go wherever you want."

They wound up at a pub on Route 510, ordering thick, juicy
burgers and lemonade. The front of the tavern was the bar, which
was crowded with adults who talked too loudly and laughed even
more loudly. But in the back, where the tables were located and
food rather than booze was the focus, the place was actually
pretty pleasant. Old rock music spilled softly through the ceiling
speakers and the lighting was dim, augmented by glass-enclosed
candles on the scarred wooden tables. It was the kind of eatery
that featured paper placemats and salt shakers with rice inside them to keep the salt from caking. The order of fries she and Ted
decided to share came in a plastic basket lined with a paper napkin, and the portion was so big, fries kept spilling out of the basket and leaving greasy spots on the placemats.

It wasn't the Black Horse Tavern, for which Erika was grateful.

"So what should we do about Laura?" Ted asked after taking a
lusty bite of his burger.

"Do we have to do anything about her?"

"She set us up. She manipulated us into this."

"Ah." Erika saw the laughter in his eyes and grinned.

"All year, she's been calling me and nagging me to go to this
party and that party," he said. "You were at all those parties. I'm
thinking maybe she was trying to play matchmaker."

"Maybe." Erika set down her burger. She'd eaten a little over
half of it and was full. "Maybe it was just coincidence. I mean, you
were dating Kate and all."

"That didn't keep Laura from plotting to get us together. Why
would she care about whether I went to this or that party? She
only twisted my arm about parties you were going to be at."

"Twisted your arm," Erika scoffed. "Like you had to be forced
to go to all those parties." She ran a quick survey of her own
memories and laughed. "She had to twist my arm, though. I'm
not that into parties."

"You're kind of shy," Ted said. That he would describe her so
bluntly intrigued her, especially since he was right. People who
saw her-particularly at parties-wouldn't guess that she was
reserved. But Ted had figured that out about her.

"The thing is, I would never have even thought of you, well,
this way-" she motioned with her hand across the table to indicate that by this way she meant a couple, dating "-because you
were with Kate."

"I'm not with Kate anymore."

She recalled him telling her last night that he'd had a crush on
her from the first time he'd seen her. That meant he'd had a crush
on her before he started dating Kate, and during his time with
her. "Why didn't you ask me out?"

"I did." It was his turn to gesture toward their surroundings.
"Hello? I asked you out."

"I mean before. If you had a crush on me for all that time."

"You were busy," he said, as if that explained everything. "You
were into your horses. And you were kind of exotic. Maybe it's
your Central American blood."

"South American," she corrected him. "There's a difference."

"Yeah. I didn't do so well in world history."

"I don't know why they called that class world history. We
studied Europe, Asia, and a little bit of Africa. We hardly spent
any time on South America at all." She sipped her lemonade and
sighed. "You can't really learn about places by reading about
them in textbooks. I want to visit all those places we read about.
Europe, Asia, Africa. I want to travel around the world."

"I wouldn't mind seeing the world," Ted said. "But I'd kind of
like to see America, too. I've hardly traveled at all."

Erika flashed on a fantasy of the two of them traveling together.
Driving across the continent in the trusty old Wagoneer. Sailing
across the ocean to Europe. Riding a mysterious train to the Middle
East and roaming through northern Africa. Galloping on horses
across the Sahara, kicking up sand beneath a relentless sun. Then
moving on to Asia, hopping from India to China to Japan to
Australia. Winding up on a South Sea island, lying on a white
beach, surrounded by turquoise water and swaying palm trees.

It was a lovely fantasy, and a silly one. First she had to go to college. Then she had to figure out a way to pay for this around-the world adventure. And if Ted started college next year, he'd be a
year behind her and it would take a couple of years for him to
earn enough money to help pay for their trip ... and why was she
thinking about him years into the future? This was their first date,
for God's sake.

"Here," she said, pushing her plate with her half-consumed
burger around the fries basket to his placemat. "I'm full. You can
finish this."

"Thanks," he said. Obviously he wasn't full. And obviously he
saw nothing wrong with eating her leftovers, as if they were
already a steady couple. As if they'd been together long enough
and knew each other well enough to share their entrees. As if he
understood that finishing her burger was an intimate thing to do,
and he was okay with that intimacy.

Maybe they would take that trip around the world someday.
Today, her burger. Tomorrow, Europe.

For the first time in her life, Erika's dream of the future wasn't
about winning another event at a horse show and bringing home
another trophy. It was about Ted.

YOU KNOW THAT EXPRESSION, "poetry in motion," but you never
really understood what it meant until you watched Erika ride.

Ted stood by a painted white fence, resting his arms on the top
rail, one sneakered foot propped on a lower rail and his eyes
squinting in the late-afternoon sunlight. On the other side of the
fence was a long oval track of sand and sawdust framing a grass
field interspersed with wooden structures that looked like highjumper's bars at a track meet. They were painted white and red,
and he could tell from the structure that if Erika's horse caught
one of its hooves on the bar, the entire barrier would simply fall
over and not tangle the horse up or endanger the beast or the rider.

Erika's horse didn't catch its hooves on any of the horizontal
bars. She spurred it to gather speed as it approached each fence,
and then, with ballet-like grace, the horse sprang into the air,
leaping over the fence and landing on the other side without a
thump or a jerk or a missed step.

The horse was beautiful, but Erika was even more beautiful.
Despite the speed and power of the animal, her upper body
seemed perfectly still, posture straight, arms bent symmetrically
at her elbows, eyes and chin pointing forward. A form-fitting black helmet with a little visor covered her skull, but her hair,
pulled back into a pony-tail, streamed behind her like a rippling
gold-brown flag.

He wanted to draw her.

He had already drawn plenty of pictures for her. He'd drawn
some before they'd become a couple, when he'd been secretly
nursing his crush. But now that they'd been together for a few
weeks, he'd started giving her his drawings. Not drawings of her;
they came nowhere close to capturing everything he loved about
her. But drawings of Greta and Garfield, the geese who shared the
barn with Ba Ba and Bunky. And the ducks, Donald and Donna.
He'd drawn a great caricature of Spot, his randy golden retriever,
with his tongue drooling out the side of his mouth and his eyes
glazed with lust. Ted had been a bit leery about introducing Erika
to Spot, afraid the dog would try to hump her leg or something.
But Spot had behaved well, nuzzling her knees and using his
snout to direct her hand wherever he wanted scratching. Spot
could be bossy, but Erika hadn't seemed to mind.