They started walking again. Okay, so maybe they didn’t totally cease to exist. Depending on the approach, Stacy handled the attention in different ways. She hated the showy bravado, the wolf whistlers—the rude ones. The shy guys, the ones who simply admired what they were seeing and enjoyed it, well, Stacy enjoyed them back. Sometimes she would smile or even wave, almost like a celebrity who gave a bit of herself because it was a little thing and made others happy.
“I went on that website last night,” Kat said.
That made Stacy smile. “Already?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. That didn’t take long. Did you hook up with someone?”
“Not exactly.”
“So what happened?”
“I saw my old fiancé.”
Stacy pulled up, her eyes wide. “Come again?”
“His name is Jeff Raynes.”
“Wait, you were engaged?”
“A long time ago.”
“But engaged? You? Like a ring and everything?”
“Why does this surprise you so much?”
“I don’t know. I mean, how long have we been friends?”
“Ten years.”
“Right, and in all that time, you’ve never been within sniffing distance of love.”
Kat gave a half shrug. “I was twenty-two.”
“I’m at a loss for words,” Stacy said. “You. Engaged.”
“Could we move past that part?”
“Right, okay, sorry. And last night you saw his profile on that website?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“Say to who?”
“Whom,” Stacy said.
“What?”
“Say to whom. Not to who. Prepositional phrase.”
“I wish I was carrying my gun,” Kat said.
“What did you write to, uh, Jeff?”
“I didn’t.”
“Pardon?”
“I didn’t write him.”
“Why not?”
“He dumped me.”
“A fiancé.” Stacy shook her head again. “And you never told me about him before? I feel like I’ve been had.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know. I mean, when it came to love, I always thought you were a cynic, like me.”
Kat kept walking. “How do you think I became a cynic?”
“Touché.”
They found a table at Le Pain Quotidien inside Central Park near West 69th Street and ordered coffee.
“I’m really sorry,” Stacy said.
Kat waved her off.
“I signed you up for that site so you could get laid. Lord knows you need to get laid. I mean, you need to get laid as badly as anyone I know.”
“This is some apology,” Kat said.
“I didn’t mean to conjure up bad memories.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Stacy looked skeptical. “Do you want to talk about it? Of course you do. And I’m curious as all get-out. Tell me everything.”
So Kat told her the whole story about Jeff. She told her about how they’d met at Columbia, how they’d fallen in love, how it felt like forever, how it all felt easy and right, how he proposed, how everything changed when her father was murdered, how she became more withdrawn, how Jeff finally walked out, how she’d been too weak or maybe too proud to go after him.
When she finished, Stacy said, “Wow.”
Kat sipped her coffee.
“And now, almost twenty years later, you see your old fiancé on a dating website?”
“Yes.”
“Single?”
Kat frowned. “There are very few married people on it.”
“Right, of course. So what’s his deal? Is he divorced? Has he been sitting at home, still pining like you?”
“I’m not still pining,” Kat said. Then: “He’s a widower.”
“Wow.”
“Stop saying that. ‘Wow.’ What are you, seven years old?”
Stacy ignored the mini outburst. “His name is Jeff, right?
“Right.”
“So when Jeff broke it off, did you love him?”
Kat swallowed. “Yes, of course.”
“Do you think he still loved you?”
“Apparently not.”
“Stop that. Think about the question. Forget for a second that he dumped you.”
“Yeah, that’s kinda hard to do. I’m more of an ‘actions speak louder than words’ girl.”
Stacy leaned closer. “There are few people who’ve seen the flip side of love and marriage more clearly than yours truly. We both know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“You learn a lot about relationships when your job, in some ways, is to break them up. But the truth is, almost every relationship has breaking points. Every relationship has fissures and cracks. That doesn’t mean it’s meaningless or bad or even wrong. We know that everything in our lives is complex and gray. Yet we somehow expect our relationships to never be anything but simple and pure.”
“All true,” Kat said, “but I don’t see what you’re driving at.”
Stacy leaned closer. “When you and Jeff broke up, did he still love you? Don’t give me the ‘actions speak louder than words’ stuff. Did he still love you?”
And then, without really thinking about it, Kat said, “Yes.”
Stacy just sat there, staring at her friend. “Kat?”
“What?”
“You know a hundred ways over I’m not religious,” Stacy said, “but this feels a little like, I don’t know, fate or kismet or something.”
Kat took another sip of her coffee.
“You and Jeff are both single. You’re both free. You’ve both been through the ringer.”
“Damaged,” Kat said.
Stacy considered that. “No, that’s not what I . . . Well, yes, that’s part of it, sure. But not so much damaged as . . . realistic.” Stacy smiled and looked away. “Oh man.”
“What?”
Stacy met her gaze, the smile still there. “This could be the fairy tale. You know?”
Kat said nothing.
“But even better. You and Jeff were good before, right?”
Kat still said nothing.
“Don’t you see? This time, you can both go into it with eyes open. It can be the fairy tale—but real. You see the fissures and cracks. You go into it with baggage and experience and honest expectations. An appreciation for what you both messed up a long time ago. Kat, listen to me.” Stacy reached her hand across the table and grasped Kat’s. There were tears in her eyes. “This could be really, really good.”
Kat still didn’t reply. She didn’t trust her voice. She wouldn’t even let herself think about it. But she knew. She knew exactly what Stacy meant.
“Kat?”
“When I get back to my apartment, I’ll send him a message.”
Chapter 4
As Kat showered, she thought about what exactly to put in her message to Jeff. She ran through a dozen possibilities, each lamer than the one before. She hated this feeling. She hated worrying about what to write to a guy, as if she were in high school and leaving a note in his locker. Ugh. Didn’t we ever outgrow that?
The fairy tale, Stacy had said. But real.
She threw on her plainclothes cop uniform—a pair of jeans and a blazer—and slipped on a pair of TOMS. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail. Kat had never had the courage to cut her hair short, but she’d always liked it pulled back, off her face. Jeff had liked it that way too. Most men liked her hair cascading down. Jeff didn’t. “I love your face. I love those cheekbones and those eyes. . . .”
She made herself stop.
Time to get to work. She’d worry about what to write later.
The computer monitor seemed to be mocking her as she walked past, daring her to leave. She paused. The screen saver did its little line dance. She checked the time.
Get it over with now, she told herself.
Kat sat down and once again brought up YouAreJustMyType .com. When she signed in, she saw that she had “exciting new matches.” She didn’t bother. She found Jeff’s profile, clicked the picture, read his personal statement yet again:
Let’s see what happens.
How long, she wondered, had it taken Jeff to come up with something so simple, so enticing, so relaxed, so noncommittal, so engaging? It was no pressure. An invitation, nothing more. Kat clicked the icon to write him a direct message. The box came up. The cursor blinked impatiently.