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In less than half an hour, I’d gotten everything I needed without leaving a one-block radius of my hotel. Lindsay was right. She’d once told me you could stroll out your door and get anything you wanted in NYC. And most of the time it didn’t even take going that far since every place delivered.
I went to my room and didn’t even bother to put down my canvas shopping bag before grabbing the bucket and liner from the counter and heading for the ice machine.
Forty seconds later, I was holding the bucket under the dispenser spout of the ice machine in the alcove down the hall. The machine made loud thunking noises and stuttered on a cube until it dumped an overabundant payload. I bent to recover a few escapees and put them in the drain tray below the chute.
A shadow fell over me from the hallway, and I looked up and saw…him.
Joshua Whittaker.
Josh. The man I hadn’t seen or spoken to in five years. The man who’d been one of my best friends until we’d gone to different colleges. The man who had broken my heart.
Of course I was going to pretend like I didn’t know him.
“Ice machine’s all yours.” I pivoted to angle past him through the alcove’s doorway.
He didn’t turn from the threshold, didn’t produce a smile or a falsely bright greeting, didn’t put a hand out to stop me. He just breathed one word. “Margot.”
The sound of it curled into my ears and wobbled my knees. It settled at the base of my spine, which I straightened. I needed to be strong for this.
Or pretend I didn’t hear anything.
I stepped around him and made it out into the hall.
“Margot.” This time my name was wrenched out of him from somewhere deep inside, the sound of it low and solid. Did he feel the pain then too? Not like I did. He couldn’t. It had been too long.
I stopped and, blinking at him like he was a stranger, pushed the strap of my shopping bag higher on my shoulder. I hugged my ice bucket to my chest. “Yes?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, discomfort pinching his lips. “Hi.”
A tiny, minuscule, almost nonexistent current of happiness coursed through me at his awkwardness. I nearly smiled. “Hello.” I made to walk on.
He turned toward me like he was a plant seeking light and I was the sun. “Wait.”
I waited and raised my eyebrows.
“How are you?” His warm brown eyes searched my face, but I kept it blank. He’d get nothing from me. He was just an unknown guy in a hallway.
“Fantastic.” I looked away and took two more steps.
“That’s great.”
“It is.” I threw the words over my shoulder and made it another two steps up the hall. The door to my room was in sight. I was almost free. “Goodbye.”
“Wait!”
Something in the timbre of his voice stopped me. A note of loss, of regret, of desperation. Once again, I waited.
“Have dinner with me.” His words floated over my head to hit me in the heart.
“No.” I wouldn’t turn around.
“Talk to me.”
“Also no.”
“Make a bet with me!”
My head snapped up. I swiveled in his direction. He may have spoken the only words that were capable of getting my attention. I narrowed my eyes at him. He knew it too. I could see the shadow of a sly smile behind his otherwise outwardly respectful face.
