Beautiful Mistake

“That’s better than a no. I’ll take it.”

Somehow we managed to get back to regular conversation and enjoy the rest of our…date? Were we even on a date? I’d called it that to Professor Pink, but just in an attempt to rile up Caine. What were Davis and I doing, actually? I hadn’t really thought of this as a date date—I was simply meeting him for dinner.

Although it definitely felt like a date toward the end of the evening.

When dinner was over, I was glad I’d driven to meet him at the restaurant instead of letting him pick me up like he’d suggested. It saved us from the awkward moment where I’d have felt rude for not inviting him up, but wary about what it might look like if I did invite him up. However, even though it prevented that awkward moment, it didn’t make the one that came when he walked me to my car any easier.

Davis took both my hands. “Can I give you a call in a few days? Maybe we can make a plan to meet up for coffee or something?”

I smiled. “Sure. I’d like that.”

He leaned in slowly, almost as if he wanted to give me a chance to move before he entered my space, and brushed his lips softly across mine. “’Night, Rach.”

In a fog from the last two hours, I got into my car, and Davis closed the door. He waited for me to start it before walking to his. I needed a few minutes before I drove, so I fished my phone from my purse and checked for missed calls and text messages as my engine idled. The first thing that popped up was a text from Caine. It must’ve come in during dinner.

Caine: Don’t do something stupid to get even with me.

What nerve! The man seriously thought the world revolved around him. The fog I’d been in suddenly lifted, and my anger from earlier was back, clear as day. I typed in a frenzy.

Rachel: Screw you. Not everything is about you.

The dots immediately started jumping around.

Caine: This is.

A hundred scathing responses ran through my head. But then I noticed Davis waiting for me to go before leaving the restaurant parking lot himself. God, I’m such an ass. Tossing my phone into my purse, I forced a smile and gave Davis another wave before putting my car in drive.

The restaurant was about twenty minutes from my apartment. I was on schedule to make it in about five when I had to jam on my brakes and narrowly averted smashing into the back of a Honda stopped at a stop sign. I was so angry, so unfocused, I hadn’t seen the big, red reflective sign or the two tons of steel yielding to the law.

Between my emotions getting the best of me and the adrenaline that kicked in after a near-accident, my heart was palpitating like mad in my chest. I had to pull over for fear my next close call wouldn’t just be close.

Of course, since I was stopped on the side of the road, I pulled my phone out of my purse.

Dumb move.

I should have just caught my breath, calmed down, and driven myself home at a normal speed. Instead, when I swiped, I found both a missed call and a text from Caine. There was no voicemail, but the text read ‘We need to talk’.

I was furious. Not only did he think everything was about him, he thought he could issue commands. We need to talk.

You know what? He was right. We did need to talk. But I was going to be the one doing all the talking, and it was going to happen on my terms.

My tires screeched as I pulled away from the curb and hung a U-turn to head toward Manhattan. That talk he wanted was going to happen now.

Rachel

If you looked up unstable in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure my picture would be there.

In the span of five or six hours, I’d been aroused during a heated argument where I goaded Caine into touching me, angry and deflated when he dismissed me as if he hadn’t been right there with me, and then confused yet flattered when Davis told me he wanted to get back together. Then, the minute dinner was over and Caine started barking at me over texts again, I rounded the circle back to angry.

Now it was almost eleven o’clock at night, and I was parked two buildings away from Caine’s apartment. Suddenly all the angry nerve I’d harnessed on the drive over had disappeared, and I debated why I’d even come. Talk about emotionally unstable.

Why was I here? To tell off Caine, give him a piece of my mind for his hot-and-cold dismissive behavior. Sure, I wanted to tell him off. But I knew that’s not what I really wanted. Sitting in the still-warm car, I took out my phone and swiped to re-read Caine’s texts.

Don’t do something stupid to get even with me.

He wasn’t off base. My choices today—getting dressed up hours before dinner to go to class, showing up in something sexy, even deciding to go to dinner with Davis alone in the first place—they all had to do with Caine…and most of them were stupid.

I let out an exaggerated, heavy sigh. This visit was a bad idea. I tapped my forehead against the steering wheel a few times, mock knocking some sense into my brain. All of this emotional instability had taken its toll at once, and I was tired. Really tired. Taking one final look up at Caine’s building, I started my car and headed back home to Brooklyn.

Finding a parking spot in my neighborhood after eight o’clock was next to impossible. I was too tired to search and decided to head directly over to the overpriced parking garage five blocks away rather than get aggravated circling for an hour. I’d had my fill of aggravation for today.

By the time I reached my block, I was cursing my high heels, along with the city’s maintenance department for the crappy, broken sidewalks I had to walk on. I almost tripped three times. Finally arriving at my building, I winced up every step of the tall stairs. I grumbled to myself as I opened the outer door to the vestibule, finding it unlocked once again. Anyone could wander inside.

I jumped when I stepped in and found a man standing there. Instinctively, I started to scream.

Caine looked just as freaked out as I was. He held up his hands. “Rachel, it’s just me.”

I clutched at my chest. “What the hell are you doing? Trying to scare the living shit out of me?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But the door was open, so I let myself in. I was just about to leave since you didn’t answer the buzzer.”

My heart hammered in my chest. This was the absolute day from hell. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to speak to you.”

My fright easily transformed into anger. “That’s right. We need to talk. You barked that to me in a text earlier.” I stretched the truth. “While I was saying goodnight to my date.”