And yet the night before, she’d insisted on staying at his apartment, bringing a garment bag along with her.
“No arguing with me,” she said.“Not at all.I’m your emotional support girlfriend.”
He liked hearing her call herself his girlfriend so much, that the rest didn’t matter, not really.
And the morning of, when the sun rose, he went to shower, leaving her behind as he made coffee.He tried to go through his presentation, but the words weren’t sticking.
“Make it you.”
He turned around, only to see a vision.
Naomi had emerged from the bedroom like Venus from the water.The suit she wore accentuated her curves and made her look like the goddess you’d want organizing your life.She carried a briefcase…
“You,” he said, “are gorgeous.”
“And so is this business plan,” she said.“We…you have enough information to convince anybody of your perfect, businesslike intentions.”
“Heck,” he said with a laugh.“I’m sold.But how do you suggest I get myself through this presentation to begin with?”
“If you can’t remember the speech word for word,” she said as she walked into the room and poured herself a cup of coffee, “think about what you want to do with this business of yours.Charity work.Entertainment on-set private catering.Consultation.Public events and mentorships that drive them all.”
He nodded.The branches of his business.“And how I’m pairing myself with a brilliant events coordinator, giving them first right of refusal on my catering services.”
“I say you have a winner.”
“From your mouth,” he managed.He paused and pulled her close.“I love you.”
*
As she’d gottencloser to him over the years, even as their relationship morphed into something beyond friendship and settled into love, there were things about Jason that Naomi had noticed.Like how sometimes his ‘I love you’s,’ though no less a gesture of love, were also ways of changing the subject.
She could tell them from the tone of his voice, and how focused he was on her shoulder.Not on her face.
“So,” she said, answering this one with the question he was actually asking.“Where is this meeting?”
“Listen,” he said.“You don’t have to come.Really.You don’t.It’s fine.”
And like clockwork, the conversation started once more, the nerves she could see radiating from him suddenly ruled the center of the conversation.They set boundaries he didn’t actually believe he needed.
He was too transparent for her to think otherwise.
And that meant she had to be clearer about her options, ideas and motives.“I said I’d support you.”
He sighed.“Support and guide are two different things, and I think you can’t support me without guiding, especially if I start to fumble.I might fumble and I need…in front of them, I need to be able to fumble and to be able to pick myself up off the floor.”He shook his head.“Wouldn’t look good for the family if I needed you to pick me up.”
A slightly more dramatic scenario than she’d expected, but she’d take it.“So, I’ll sit demurely in the back of the room, take notes and say not a word.And if they ask me, I’m your secretary or something.I don’t know.”
He laughed, not exactly the jovial, excited laugh she was used to from him, but she would take that one too.“You’re a kick-ass event planner, and the woman I love,” he replied.“You never need to introduce yourself as my secretary.”
“Your relatives are old-school,” she reminded him, showing him the notes she’d taken in preparation for the meeting, not telling or reminding him where or how she’d found the time to do said research or why she found it important.“If anything, the men at the center of the New York family will see me as your secretary and not much else.”
“Not much else, huh,” he said with another laugh.
“Well,” she said, going along with whatever joke he thought he was telling, creating the scenario she expected to confront in order to get him out of the nervous funk he was in.“I suspect that at most, they’ll think you believe I’m flexible enough to do fun things under your work station during a work day.”
When he got the message or reality in his head chopped through the scenario she was creating, his expression changed from amusement to disbelief.“I don’t think they’re as bad as that.”
“Oh, they are,” she replied, standing firm despite her lack of desire to argue with him.“Bank on it.”
