Off-Limits

Chapter Two: The One Who Didn't Play

The party was a favor, technically — a birthday thing for Priya's roommate, someone Jake had met maybe twice, in a fifth-floor walk-up in a part of the city he didn't usually bother with. He'd come because Priya had asked and because Mason had bailed at the last minute for a family dinner, which meant Jake was on his own for the night, nursing a beer in a kitchen too small for the number of people crammed into it, half-listening to a conversation about someone's improv class.

He noticed her the way you notice a wrong note in a familiar song — not loud, but impossible to ignore once you'd caught it.

She was leaning against the counter on the far side of the kitchen, a glass of red wine in one hand, laughing at something with her head tilted just slightly, dark hair falling over one shoulder. She wasn't dressed like she was trying — jeans, a simple black top that clung just enough to suggest a figure without shouting about it, no heels — and that alone made her stand out in a room full of people performing for each other. She had a face built for close attention: sharp cheekbones, a mouth that looked like it didn't smile for just anyone, and eyes that, when they briefly swept the room and landed on him, held for half a second too long before moving on, unimpressed.

Jake felt that half-second land somewhere just under his ribs.

He crossed the kitchen with his beer in hand, the same easy stride that had worked on a hundred rooftops and never once failed him, and leaned against the counter beside her with the kind of casual confidence that usually did most of the work before he'd said a single word.

"You look like you're the only person here who isn't trying to be somewhere else," he said.

She glanced at him, unhurried, taking her time before answering — the same slow, assessing look Sasha had given him two weeks ago, except this one didn't feel like an invitation. It felt like a test.

"I am somewhere else," she said. "I'm just polite about it."

"Ouch."

"You'll survive." She took a sip of wine, gaze flicking over him once — the jacket, the easy posture, the practiced smile — and something like amusement flickered at the corner of her mouth, though it didn't reach the rest of her face. "Let me guess. You're going to tell me something charming, I'm going to laugh because it's socially required, and then you're going to ask for my number before the ice in your drink melts."

Jake laughed — a real laugh, startled out of him, not the one he used to smooth over a room. "That obvious?"

"You have a type of energy," she said. "I've met it before. It usually peaks around age twenty-five and never quite recovers."

"Brutal."

"Accurate." But she was still looking at him, and the corner of her mouth had crept up another fraction of an inch, and Jake — who had never in his life felt the need to work for a woman's attention at a party — found himself, for the first time in longer than he could remember, actually wanting to.

"I'm Jake," he said.

"I know. You introduced yourself to Sam by the door about forty minutes ago. Whole kitchen heard it."

"You've been keeping tabs."

"I've been standing in a kitchen for forty minutes," she said. "It's a small kitchen."

He grinned, and this time she didn't quite manage to hide her own smile, brief as it was, before schooling her face back into polite disinterest. It was, Jake thought, the single most interesting thing that had happened to him at a party in years — a woman actively resisting him, and doing it well.

"You didn't tell me your name," he said.

She considered him for a moment, like she was deciding whether he'd earned it. "Veronica."

"Veronica," he repeated, testing the shape of it. "You're not going to tell me your number, are you."

"Not a chance."

"Your building, then. In case I want to send flowers."

"You're persistent."

"I'm thorough."

That got an actual laugh out of her — short, surprised, quickly reined in, but real — and something in Jake's chest did something unfamiliar and slightly alarming, a kind of warmth that had nothing to do with the beer in his hand.

• • •

They talked for the better part of an hour, migrating from the kitchen to the narrow balcony when the apartment got too loud, the city stretched out below them in scattered light. She was sharp — quicker than him in places, which he found he didn't mind nearly as much as he expected to — and she asked questions like she actually wanted the answers, not like she was waiting for her turn to talk. She worked in something creative, she said, though she was cagey about specifics in a way that made him more curious rather than less. She'd lived in the city her whole life. She had a brother she clearly adored, based on the way her whole face changed when she mentioned him, though she didn't offer a name and Jake didn't think to ask.

At some point their shoulders ended up nearly touching on the narrow balcony rail, and Jake was aware of it the way he was aware of very little else that night — the six inches of space between her hand and his, the smell of her perfume, something warm and a little spiced, the way she bit the inside of her cheek when she was thinking of a comeback and hadn't quite landed on it yet.

He didn't try to kiss her. That, more than anything, surprised him about himself — there'd been an opening, more than one, and every instinct he'd built over years of nights exactly like this one told him to take it. He didn't. He wanted, badly, to see what happened if he didn't rush it, which was a want he didn't have a name for yet and didn't examine too closely.

"I should go," she said finally, glancing at her phone. "Early morning."

"Can I at least walk you to a cab?"

She studied him for a long moment — that same assessing look from the kitchen, except warmer now, less like a test and more like she was genuinely reconsidering her first impression of him. "Sure," she said. "You can walk me to a cab."

He did. He didn't try anything at the curb either, just held the door for her, and when she looked back at him through the open window as the cab pulled away, there was something in her expression he didn't have a category for — not quite interest, not quite dismissal, something unresolved that he found himself thinking about the entire walk home.

• • •

He told Mason about her two days later, over lunch, in more detail than he meant to.

"There was this girl," he said, around a mouthful of sandwich, trying and failing to sound casual about it. "At Priya's roommate's thing. Didn't get her number. Didn't even try, actually, which — I don't know. Weird."

Mason raised an eyebrow, delighted. "Jake Reyes didn't make a move? Somebody call a doctor."

"She wasn't — she's not like that. She actually called me out for my whole thing within the first thirty seconds. Didn't fall for a single line."

"What'd she look like?"

Jake thought about it — really thought, which was its own small surprise. "Dark hair. Really sharp — like, actually funny, not performing-funny. Didn't dress like she was trying, which somehow made her the best-looking person in the room. She had this laugh she kept trying not to do."

Mason was grinning now, stirring his coffee slower than necessary, clearly enjoying himself. "Man, you sound like you got hit by a truck. What's her name?"

"Veronica."

Something flickered across Mason's face — there and gone so fast Jake nearly missed it, half a beat of stillness before Mason's grin came roaring back, wider now, like he'd just been handed the best material of his life.

"Veronica," Mason repeated, and there was something in the way he said it, some private amusement Jake couldn't place. "No last name?"

"Didn't get one. Why, you know her?"

"Nah," Mason said, too quickly, biting down on a laugh Jake didn't understand. "Doesn't ring a bell. Common name." He waved a hand, changing the subject with the practiced ease of a man who'd decided something was funnier left unsaid. "Go get her number, man. Seriously. I've never seen you like this over someone you met for one night."

Jake didn't know it yet — wouldn't know it for another two and a half weeks, until a Sunday dinner at the Cole family house he'd been invited to a dozen times and always found an excuse to skip — but Mason knew exactly who Veronica was. He just wasn't about to be the one to ruin it.

Some things, Mason had decided on the spot, were funnier when they got to happen on their own.

• • •

Chapter Three: Jake finally accepts one of Mason's family dinner invitations — and the girl from the party opens the front door.