Playing It Safe (7 page)

“As in ‘Undesirable Number One, Harry Potter’?” I ask teasingly.

She giggles and nods yes. “Can you do that?”

“
Pffft
, I can have this whole house looking like Hogwarts in a few hours, no problem.”

“Are you a Harry Potter fan?” she asks.

“Girlie, I’m totally Team Slytherin.”

“Slytherin? Oh my gosh, are you serious?” she asks.

“Totally,” I say with a smile. “I do love me some Professor Snape. How about you? And don’t you dare say Hufflepuff. I can deal with Ravenclaw, but I draw the line at Hufflepuff.”

“Gryffindor, of course,” she says while laughing.

A quick glance over her shoulder and I find Alex shaking his head with a grin. “If you need me, I’ll be in my office,” he says.

He disappears down the hallway into one of the rooms I was curious about earlier, leaving me and Josie on our own to go over the details with a fine-toothed comb.

“Okay, so theme, check. Venue, check. Date?”

“Um, I don’t know. Should I ask Uncle Alex?” she asks.

“Well before we do that, how about you tell me when your actual birthday is. That way, I’ll look at my planner and see if there is a weekend it’s close to that we can use.”

“Oh, I already know my birthday actually falls on a weekend this year,” she says. “November ninth.”

My finger scrolls the calendar on my iPad forward to November. “It’s a Friday, so how about the next day, Saturday the tenth?”

“Uncle Alex! Is Saturday the tenth okay with you to have my party here?” she yells out to him.

“Yes,” he yells back.

We look at each other and smile. Mine probably looks more devious than hers as the wheels in my head are spinning with all sorts of ideas for this party. Josie starts rattling off a guest list while I furiously take notes, trying to keep up with her. On top of that, I’m mentally chastising myself for worrying about coming over here today when this is what Alex had in mind all along.

How clueless can I be?

And to think I wore the granny panties, which, by the way, are chafing my undercarriage like nobody’s business.

A
couple of hours and many discussions later about whether or not Harry should have ended up with Ginny or Hermione, Josie and I have pretty much ironed out most of the details of what she wants for her birthday party. I’ve also been able to obtain valuable intel on Alex, specifically his relationship with Marisa.

Turns out she’s not his girlfriend, though she wishes she was—Josie’s words, not mine—and it took all of me not to laugh at the dramatic eye roll she threw in for effect as she said it. Marisa’s all of twenty-four years old and has a degree in being an idiot—again Josie’s words. Her parents and Alex’s parents have known each other for many years, which would explain the whole “old friend of the family” bit he gave me the other day. The one piece of information Josie revealed that I found to be really intriguing is that if her mom, Alex’s sister, doesn’t like one of his girlfriends, the chick is usually doomed. She wouldn’t elaborate much more on that other than to say how Alex and her mom are super close.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and I hear you loud and clear:
Julia, why do you care so much about Alex’s love life when you’re still grossed out about his thing with Sabrina?

I wouldn’t say I care so much as wanting to be fully informed, because you never know when having the right intel could come in handy in the future.

All in all, I’d say my little powwow with Josie was all kinds of fun. I would have never guessed spending my afternoon with an almost-ten-year-old would be so enlightening. Her honesty and innocence is like a breath of fresh air from my daily dose of sarcasm. I almost wish that I could hang out with her more often, which is funny given my penchant for not being too kid-friendly. But this kid is pretty effing cool.

See, I’m already censoring my foul language!

“Girlie, if you weren’t nine years old—”

“Ten,” she cuts in.

“Okay, okay, if you weren’t
almost
ten years old, I’d say let’s go grab a drink and hang out this weekend.”

Josie’s eyes go wide in awe. “Really?”

“Totally. I’ve had more fun with you than I’ve had in a
looong
time. Maybe you can be my new best friend. What do you say?”

Her brow furrows in confusion when she asks, “Don’t you have a best friend?”

“I do, but she moved away and left me all alone and bored.”

Josie starts to laugh as she puts out her hand for me to shake on it. “Deal.”

“Deal,” I say immediately after her with a matching grin.

“This can’t be good,” Alex groans, making his way back into the kitchen where we’re still sitting. “What are you two shaking on?”

“Julia just asked me to be her new best friend,” she explains excitedly.

He stops on the opposite side of the kitchen island and plants both his hands on it before giving me a funny look. “Don’t you have a best friend?”

I open my mouth, but Josie’s voice fills the room first. “She said she moved and left her all alone and bored. And I’m going to be her new best friend that she’s going to take out this weekend for a drink and to hang out.”

“Did she? I wonder what your mom is going to say about that when she gets here in five minutes to pick you up,” he says with an amused chuckle.

Josie turns in her seat to face me. “Oh my gosh, you’re going to love my mom! She’s super cool like you.”

See what I mean? This kid is all kinds of awesome.

“So long as we don’t tell her about the going out for a drink part, I’m sure we’ll get along fine. That reminds me, Alex, did you tell her all about this? The party, I mean.”

He smirks. “You let me worry about my sister.”

I start to power down my iPad and put away my notepad, feeling uncomfortable from the curious look on Alex’s face while he watched my exchange with Josie about being best friends. Plus, his sister is on her way here to pick up Josie, and that’s definitely my cue to start getting out of here myself. The last thing I want is to be sized up by the big sister who, given all the information I’ve come to know about her, has a pretty big say in Alex’s personal life. What I wouldn’t give to know what she has to say about Marisa. Dammit, I should have asked Josie about it when I had the chance. I’m sure she would have been more than happy to give up that intel if I had asked her in a roundabout way.

As if on cue, I hear the front door slam shut, and I look over in that direction to see what could only be Alex’s sister walking toward us. She’s tall, curvy, and has long, naturally wavy dark blond hair that I would kill for. She’s dressed in a pair of fitted dark-wash jeans, a vintage Rolling Stones concert T-shirt, and a pair of black Havaianas—I like this chick already.

Josie goes flying off of her stool and wraps her arms around her mother’s waist before she’s able to reach the kitchen. It’s so fast that she nearly knocks the wind right out of her.

“Mom, I want you to meet someone,” she demands.

She walks her mother over to me and says, “Mom, this is Julia, Uncle Alex’s friend, and she’s going to throw me the best birthday party ever!”

“Hi, I’m Vanessa, it’s nice to finally meet you. What’s this about a party?”

My face must look as confused as I feel by her saying the word “finally,” but I extend my hand anyway because I wasn’t raised in a barn.

Her blue eyes roam over me quickly but not in an “I’m better than you” way. More like a “so this is Julia” kind of way. Which actually isn’t much better either, just less invasive, and it only serves to make me think she knows more about me than the other way around. Which, in turn, leads me to believe Alex has told her about me. What the hell would he tell her about me?

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I say, “and you’ll have to ask Alex since he’s the responsible party.”

Vanessa smiles and sneaks a peek at her brother, who is standing on the other side of the kitchen island with an impish grin still on his face.

“Alex,” she warns, “what did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Um, maybe I should leave you two to discuss this party thing.” I start to stand up and make a dash for it.

“Julia, stay put,” Alex commands while keeping his eyes on his sister. “I’m having a party for Josie here at my house for her birthday.”

“You’re what?”

“Seriously, guys,” I try to say as unobtrusively as possible. “I’ll just be going now.”

Alex points to the stool I was just sitting on and directs me to sit down again. What’s scary is that I don’t even hesitate; I sit my ass back down. Vanessa and Alex are now going back and forth about how he spoils Josie something stupid while Josie is watching them closely.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about how he grinned at me when I followed his command to sit back down. My heart skipped a beat or two, and my pulse started to race just from pleasing him. Does that make me a sub? You know, like those women who get off on men telling them what to do inside and outside the bedroom? I may be jumping the gun, but the thought of pleasing Alex—in any way, shape, or form, inside, outside, on the couch, against the wall, on this countertop—gets me really hot.

“Right, Julia?” Josie asks. What is she asking me? I have no clue as I was in the middle of having a very vivid fantasy.

I fall back on my skill of being able to say something that will hopefully work within the conversation the three of them were having while I was starring in a Skinemax movie in my head. “Absolutely.”

That was just pitiful, even for me.

Vanessa gives Alex a worried look. What was that for? Oh jeez, did I just put my foot in my mouth with my piss-poor, one-word response to Josie’s question?

“If you’re sure you’re okay with doing all of this,” she says before glancing down at her daughter, who looks ready to burst at any moment, “I guess I have no choice but to go along with it.”

Phew! Josie is jumping up and down, Alex and Vanessa are smiling, and I feel like my answer was close to handing them the entire Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes grand prize.

“Mom, can I go out drinking with Julia?”

Did you hear that? That was the sound of a needle on an old-school vinyl record being scratched right off the turntable. Where there was sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows a moment ago, there’s now a shocked expression on Vanessa’s face and Alex almost choking from laughing so hard.

“Um, it’s not what you think,” I sputter. “I swear, I would never give her any alcohol.”

“She didn’t mean it like that, Vanessa,” Alex says after clearing his throat.

“I swear I didn’t. It’s just that Josie is pretty damn … ugh, sorry, I mean, darn … anyway, she’s pretty darn cool, and I had a lot of fun just hanging out with her.”

The corners of Vanessa’s lips are trying to contain a smile, but she bites her lip to keep it in as she watches me squirm a little.

“It’s okay,” she confesses. “I know what you mean, and I think she’s pretty darn cool too, if I do say so myself.”

I dodged a bullet on that one, so I decide it’s best that I start to get going for real this time. Vanessa sees me getting ready to stand up with my belongings in hand and gives a funny look to Alex. “Don’t get up. Josie and I are heading out. It’s a school night, so I have to get her fed and to bed on time. If not, this ‘cool’ little girl will be like the walking dead tomorrow.”

“How about you bring Josie to my office one day this week to go over more party details?” I offer while pulling out one of my business cards.

I hand it over to Vanessa. She eyes it and smiles. “Sounds good.”

It’s then that I notice she doesn’t have a wedding ring on. Nowadays that usually doesn’t mean much either way. But something tells me that Josie’s dad isn’t in the picture. We spent the afternoon together chatting up a storm, but she never alluded to her father, not once. So it would make sense to assume that Vanessa is divorced.

“Julia,” Josie chimes in as Vanessa is saying good-bye to her brother, “so I’ll see you again soon to go over more party stuff?”

“Don’t you worry, girlie, we’ll definitely be getting together soon.”

“Awesome!”

Josie scurries over to where I’m still hovering between sitting and standing with my purse in my hands, and she gives me a big hug. Her tiny arms release me, and she motions for me to bend down so she can tell me something in private.

“My mom likes you, I can tell,” she whispers in a rush. “You’re totally in now with my uncle.”

The little sneak bounces away to kiss Alex good-bye, leaving me speechless. When Vanessa says good-bye to me, I barely manage to say anything back to her, still in shock over what Josie just said. Although a part of me wants to laugh, because I have to hand it to the kid, she played it beautifully. As she’s walking to the front door with her mom, she throws me a smile over her shoulder with a thumbs-up. I shake my head, chuckle, and start to follow them so I can finally head home myself.

“Where are you going?” Alex asks, stopping me from walking any farther toward his front door.

“Home.”

“No you’re not. You’re staying for dinner,” he says loud enough for everyone to hear him.

“I think Uncle Alex is going to enlighten Julia now, Mom,” Josie says out of nowhere.

I want to die of embarrassment. I think Alex is even blushing now. We turn our heads to find Vanessa covering her mouth to keep herself from laughing out loud and Josie with a huge, satisfied smile on her face.

“Isn’t that what you said you would do, Uncle Alex?” she asks.

“Um,” Alex says.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him at a loss for words. It’s pretty damn funny. So I start to laugh a little until he gives me a look that screams,
Help me out here
, and I shut up.

I clear my throat and say, “Um.”

“Good one,” Alex whispers by my ear.

“Come on, sweetie, we should be going,” Vanessa says, ushering Josie out the door. “Julia, I’ll give you a call tomorrow to set something up. Alex, I’ll talk to you during the week.”

She’s still chuckling when she closes the door behind her, leaving Alex and me alone. He runs his hand through his hair and then rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry about that,” he says. “Josie is a little …”

“Perceptive? Precocious? Sneaky? Funny?”

“Yes,” he says with a smile.

“Yeah, I kind of noticed.”

“So,” he says and puts his hands in his pockets. “About dinner.”

“What about it?” I ask.

“You’re staying.”

“Why should I?”

“Because it’s a good idea,” he says.

“Is that right?” I ask, trying my hardest not to grin.

“Yes, it is,” he says confidently. “I know you want to stay, Julia, so just say yes and get it over with.”

A slew of thoughts hits me, none of which are all too unpleasant either. But the one that rises above all others is that there is no way I can do this. I know myself, and granny panties be damned, this could spell trouble. And do I really want to ruin whatever this friendship is between us? Granted, I tend to believe in the whole
When Harry Met Sally
theory that men and women can never truly be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. Still, whatever it is we have that is a semblance of friendship, I don’t want to lose that either. Damn Nora Ephron and her stupid wise words that I’ve memorized for totally being a buzzkill right about now.

“Alex …”

“Julia …” he mimics, amused at my discomfort.

He steps into my personal space, and not for nothing, but if there is one thing I’ve noticed about Alex recently it’s that the guy likes to get all up in my grill. Worse is that I never back away, so this technique of his is obviously paying off in the long run.

“Before you say anything about what a bad idea it is, because I know that’s what you’re thinking,” he continues, “stop thinking so much and tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when I ask you again if you’ll stay for dinner with me.”

“You didn’t ask me the first time.”

He smiles, and dammit if those dimples aren’t the key to breaking through my last bit of resolve. “Fair enough. Would you please stay and have dinner with me?”

“Um …” I know, that’s top quality answering right there, but that’s how tongue-tied he makes me sometimes.