She pretends to zip her lips. “I would never.”
“Good.” I exhale, attempting to cut through my steak with the dull end of my knife. I flip it over after making sure no one saw.
“I told him he should take you on a date or something. You two would be so cute together.”
“Topaz.” I scold her with my tone, placing my fork aside.
“He said he’d think about it.”
“Topaz.” I bury my face in my hands. She knows how I feel about her meddling with these sorts of things. I’m sure he was just being nice and telling her what she wanted to hear. Guys like Ace, professional athletes, date super models and actresses and long-legged European socialites. Plus, like I told her last night, he’s too moody. I’ve made it my life mission not to take life too seriously, and Ace acts like it’s physically painful to smile.
We’re oil and water. Clearly.
“What?” Topaz scoffs, acting as though she’s done nothing wrong. “I was doing you a favor.”
“You know I don’t have time to date.”
“If you have time to Instagram thirty-second makeup tutorials that take you hours to edit, you have time to date.” Topaz lifts both of her palms and lifts her brows. “Just saying.”
“Those are for work,” I say. “For my business.”
“Anyway, you think he’s hot, he thinks you’re hot, I was just doing the two of you a favor,” she says. “You’ll thank me someday.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Back up. He thinks I’m hot?”
“It was implied.” Topaz shrugs, sipping her mojito and smiling at a handsome suit that passes by and checks her out.
“Implied how? I need you to be specific. I need details.” This is the most frustrating part of being Topaz’s best friend. Trying to extract information from her is a strategic endeavor. You have to be careful and know when to fill in the gaps because she can be flighty and forgetful and her stories are all over the place.
She laughs. “Implied like . . . I don’t know. We were talking about you, and I said that you were one of the first friends I made when I moved to the city and how you’re so sweet and funny and how there are a lot of social climbing assholes in New York and you’re not one of them.”
“Okay, and then?” I sit up and lean forward, impatient because she still hasn’t answered my question.
“And then I said you had inner and outer beauty, and he said that was a rare combination in this day and age.”
My shoulders fall. “He was just making a general observation, Topaz. He wasn’t necessarily implying anything.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she says, winking. “So then I said, ‘Don’t you think she’s absolutely stunning, by the way?’ to which he said, ‘Undoubtedly.’”
My heart flutters hard and fast before settling to a moderate pace.
“He was probably being nice,” I say.
“Aidy, now’s not the time to be modest.” Topaz rolls her eyes. “Anyway, you act like I’m arranging a marriage here. All I did was get him to admit you’re a sexy little thang and then nudged him in the right direction.”
“If he doesn’t call, I’ll know he was just being nice,” I say. “Just promise me you won’t hound him about it anymore, okay? God, you’re worse than my mother trying to set me up with all her friends’ sons every time I go back home.”
Topaz laughs. “Not a problem. Anyway, I probably won’t see him again. His guest spot ended today. Antoine is back on Monday.”
There’s a slight sinking feeling in my stomach that I can’t deny if I try. Picking up my utensils, I return to my filet and change the subject.
Up until now, I hadn’t considered what I’d say if Ace asked me on a date because until this moment, the likelihood of him randomly calling me up and asking me out was pretty much nonexistent. Besides, the whole prospect of dating anyone, let alone him, has been completely off my radar. I’m too busy with work, and I’m not necessarily lonely or looking.
And yeah, Ace is an outrageously beautiful specimen of a man, but there’s also something dark and tormented about him, and I’m fully certain we’d look ridiculous together.
Topaz checks her phone after we pay our tabs. “Ugh, that guy I went to Aruba with won’t stop texting me ever since we got back.”
“That guy?” I ask. “I thought you two were dating? Now he’s just that guy?”
She rolls her eyes. “Shit got weird in Aruba.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? Weird like how?”
Topaz tucks her lavender hair behind one ear and leans forward. “He got really drunk one night, I mean hammered. He told me he loved me. Aidy, we’ve been seeing each other for two months. There’s something wrong with him if he already thinks he loves me and we’re still not through the open-bathroom-door-policy part of our relationship.”
“Could be that he just knows?” I ask. “I mean, when you know . . . you know.”
“Or he’s loco?” Topaz rises, pushing out her café chair and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Besides, he’s too touchy feely for me. I need space. He encroaches.”
“And you wonder why you’re always single.” I brush my shoulder against hers as we exit the restaurant and hit the sidewalk.
“Nothing wrong with being single,” she says, grinning. “Life’s too short. There’s an ice cream smorgasbord of eligible bachelors out there all dying to show me a good time, and I want to try all the flavors before I die.”
“What flavor was this last one?”
Topaz lifts a finger to the side of her mouth, staring to the left. “Vanilla. No question.”
We come to the familiar street corner where I turn south and she turns north, and I throw my arms around her.
“I’m going to feel like the biggest dweeb if he doesn’t call. You know that, right?” I say into her ear.
She squeezes me, hard, and laughs. “He’ll call.”
“I don’t even know if I’ll say yes. He’s not really my type.”
“You will.”
Fourteen
Ace
* * *
I can’t remember the last time I asked a woman out on a date. My memory fogs the further back I try to go, and for the longest time, there was only ever Kerenza. Everything before Kerenza is static and noise, and everything since her is darkness and void.
I allowed her to break me.
It isn’t something I’m proud of.
Clutching my phone and hunched over in my leather chair Saturday night, I swipe my thumb across the screen and recall my conversation with Topaz in the makeup chair this morning. Topaz is unusually bubbly for a native Brooklynite. She’s the kind of person I can only handle in small doses because she’s just . . . too much. But in the midst of one of our many conversations earlier, she mentioned Aidy, and I’ve found myself thinking about her ever since.
I’ve been around enough women in my day to know that they rarely speak kindly of each other, especially when men are concerned, but Topaz rambled on about how kind and beautiful Aidy was, inside and out, and then she caught me off guard, telling me I should ask her on a date. Not wanting to be rude, I told her I’d consider it.