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CASSIE
MARK DRURY LOOKED like I’d just rolled up a newspaper and hit him on the nose.
“You don’t want to see me anymore?”
After he called twice in three days, I agreed to meet up with him at Washington Square Park after
my shift. Despite a sign banning dogs and bikes, the park was a perfect place to bring both on a hot
summer’s day.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see you …” I said.
“I thought we had a good time.”
“We did.”
“Then what’s up with you?”
I squinted into the middle distance, keeping my eye on a cocker spaniel puppy nipping at the leg of
its owner, thinking that if Mark were a dog, that’s the breed he’d be. Will would be the stalwart
chocolate lab over by the sandbox, Tracina the yappy alpha beagle holding court nearby. I’d be the
flat-coated retriever under the stand of palms, the one chasing its own tail.
“Mark,” I said. “I think … you’re great.”
“Is it this Will guy?”
My shoulders sank. It was Will. Every time I made strides away from him, one look, one touch, one
kiss and I was infected again.
“That’s part of it.” But the other, the part I didn’t want to tell him, was that outside of bed I thought
of him as my bratty brother.
Mark placed a tender arm around me.
“Love is hard, Cassie. I know. I’m a musician.”
I almost snorted, but he was so damn endearing. I just accepted the gesture and leaned into him a
little.
It had been three days since my interlude with Will in the new restaurant, since he’d pulled me into
that kiss. In those three days we had sheepishly avoided each other at work, both of us overapologizing
for every awkward hallway passing, over-thanking each other for every favor of a poured
coffee or a hammer handed over. Alone with me briefly in his office during a shift change, Will
whispered that he wanted to get two things straight—and that it would be the last time he’d bring up
what happened.
“One: I have no regrets for anything I did or said. And two: I still want you to take the job
upstairs.”
“Fine,” I said, “I will. I’ll take the job, but the other? That can’t happen again. It’s not fair to me,
it’s not fair to Tracina, or the baby.”
In hushed tones, both of us listening for sounds of footsteps coming down the hall, he promised no
more drama, no more stolen kisses, no more sneaking around. We even shook on it, the shock of his
skin electric as always. And today, looking at Mark’s attractive profile as he sat on the park bench
next to me, I realized that since I didn’t have the ability to keep away from someone I really wanted
or to be compelled by someone I didn’t want, I needed a man in the middle. I needed a wedge
between me and Will, and me and Mark.