So, I kept it to myself when she shared with me. I keep it under wraps like I’ve always done. The only people who know the details are my two best buds.
I’m out for a run with them a few days after the Long Food shoot, TJ and Easton pounding the pavement alongside me in Central Park.
“You almost done paying off the loan?” TJ asks.
“Close like a horseshoe,” I say.
“Good. I still can’t believe you got stuck with that,” he adds.
“Well, I haven’t always made the best decisions.”
“Who has?” Easton shrugs like it’s no big deal. “But you’re almost there, so that’s good.”
“Yeah. I just want to make the final payment and put it behind me.”
“And never have to tell Emerson about it?” TJ asks pointedly.
Never tell anyone but these two guys. These dudes are vaults, and they are also far, far away from my family and my life in San Francisco. “It doesn’t exactly scream this guy has his shit together,” I say.
Easton shakes his head. “It says nothing about you.”
“Exactly,” TJ agrees. “But it bugs you that you never told her. That does say something about you.”
I’ll bite. “What does it say?”
“That you want her to know the real Nolan,” he tells me plainly.
Do I, though? Probably. But do I want that as a friend? Or as something more?
I shouldn’t want more with her. There’s no room for it in our plans. “What I want is to move back to New York,” I say as the sun climbs higher. “So, the sooner I pay it off, the sooner I can do that.”
TJ goes with the subject change as we near the reservoir. “Look, I’m not saying I want to see your ugly face around here more often, but I heard from some friends about a sublease in Queens,” he offers.
“Awww. I love it when you sweet talk me,” I deadpan.
“And Bellamy mentioned a friend in Brooklyn who is moving out of her studio soon,” Easton says, just as chill. “Not that I give a fuck if you’re here either.”
I plaster on a smile as we run, pretending I’m inhaling the scent of their . . . adoration. “The love, gentlemen. The love. It wafts off you two like cologne.”
“And I bet it smells fantastic,” TJ says.
“Seriously, though,” I add. “Appreciate the hookups. I truly do.”
That’s the simple part. But what about Emerson? Would she stay on the East Coast if the show worked out, or bounce back and forth? Would she stay if it didn’t? And what happens next?
That’s the trouble.
Our fate is in the hands of a network that has its own agenda, as TJ pointed out the first night we arrived.
As my buddies chat about New York rent and other quirks of the city—last week TJ saw a dude walking a tiger on a leash in Soho—my gaze falls on a food truck setting up for the day.
Kale-ing It is the sign on the truck, and it peddles all things, well, kale. It’s perfect for How to Eat a Banana, and I need to talk to Emerson right the fuck now.
“I gotta go.” That’s all I say before I pick up the pace and dash back to the hotel, breathing hard and sweating as I knock on room 1208.
Ten seconds later, Emerson answers, and my heart jackhammers. Damn, she looks pretty in the morning when she’s doing her makeup and her hair is all slicked back and wet. She’s wearing a T-shirt and skinny jeans, and I want to undress her and kiss her all over. And make her feel spectacular with my tongue between her legs. I bet she tastes like a dream.
And fuck me. Here I go again, thinking with my little head.
I slam the door on the dirty thoughts. Now is not the time. She has her loan. So do I.
Business. Just business.
“What if they don’t pick us up at the end of this trial?” I blurt. “What if Dot and Bette win the slot? What if we’re relegated to the bottom of the streaming menu? If the service doesn’t promote you, you don’t become the next Stanley Tucci touring Italy. You become a blip.” My worry spills out in a verbal ten-car pile-up. “I can’t be a blip, Emerson.”
With a makeup brush in one hand, she grabs me with the other and drags me inside. “That’s all true. What do you want to do?”
What I don’t want is to be back on the cusp, scraping by, bouncing from couch to couch, crushed under debt.
I take off my glasses, pinch the bridge of my nose, and pace up and down in her room. “There are no restrictions in our contract against us doing the YouTube show, so long as we don’t do the chef interviews or cover the same places.” I looked over the contract with Hayes, though I’m only working this idea out now. “We’ve only done one or two shows for our own channel since we’ve been here. That’s not like us, Em.”