So where did that leave them? The sand was running out of the hourglass. She rolled onto her side and draped her arm around him, determined to hold on to this for as long as it lasted.
Chapter 17
The Whitman Street Spring Festival was an annual harbinger of the impending spring, falling in early April when winter’s clutches finally loosened. Ten blocks of Whitman Street shut down to give the space to food trucks, tables for local businesses and independent vendors, and carnival rides.
Paige manned the Cat Café’s table. She’d found a bedsheet covered in cats at a discount store and used it as a tablecloth. Then she set up plastic display containers and filled them with flyers and brochures advertising the café’s regular events—Paige had just started after-hours movie nights once a month with cat-themed films—and cat adoption opportunities. She’d also let Mitch come by with flyers for his own organization, and he hung out around the table to answer questions about how people could volunteer to catch and tag feral cats in Brooklyn.
Sunday had been chosen as the feline ambassador—Sadie couldn’t handle outside noise and would have panicked the whole time—and she was in a huge kennel set up on the table so that people walking by could be lured in by the very cute cat. Sunday seemed very mellow now, lying on her little cat bed and occasionally yawning and stretching like this was no big deal.
Lauren walked back and forth between the table and the café. Monique was in charge inside, with Victor slinging lattes at the counter, and they were getting a fair number of customers who had indeed been lured in by the table and wanted to check out the space. Lauren struggled a little to figure out where she’d be the most useful.
When Lauren went back outside, Caleb walked out of the vet clinic with a Tupperware bin the size of a shoebox that appeared to be full of paper. He looked infuriatingly handsome today, his skin a bit flushed, his hair neat aside from one thin tuft that had escaped and draped over his forehead. He had on his white doctor’s coat over his standard uniform of a button-down shirt and khakis. That Lauren knew what he looked like under all that clothing made her flush a bit.
If Caleb felt any of that, he didn’t show it. “Olivia said you said we could put some pamphlets for the clinic on your table.”
“You could get your own table, you know,” Paige said. “All businesses on Whitman Street are allowed to put one table out on the street here. The fee is waived just for the street fair.”
Caleb said, “There’s no one to man it. We all have patients today. It’s Saturday.”
Lauren supposed the “Saturday is our busiest day” was implied. Caleb’s haughty tone irritated her like a bugbite, though, so she said, “Oh, well, I didn’t realize you all were so important.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Oh, you know. No big deal. Just the lives of living creatures hanging in the balance. Where should I put these?”
Paige reached over and took the box. She took some pamphlets out of it and slid them into an empty slot in her plastic display, then put the box with the remaining pamphlets under the table.
Lauren looked Caleb over. It would have been nice if they could walk around the fair together like a couple instead of playing at being adversaries. Neither seemed that offended by the mocking. It would have been nice if they didn’t feel the need to be so performative in their dislike of each other, though. Or else Caleb had reverted to his bratty self, back to the man Lauren hadn’t seen in a week or two as they’d had good sex and pleasant conversation a few times. Maybe he was…overcompensating now. Or Lauren was wrong in thinking he’d turned some new leaf and this was just who he always was.
Lauren saw in her peripheral vision a blond standard poodle and a harried-looking woman going into the vet clinic. Caleb must have seen it, too, because he said, “That’s my next appointment.” He looked around. “This is quite an operation.”
“It is,” said Lauren. “If you have a spare few minutes and can bear spending time among the hoi polloi later, I’ll give you a tour.”
“All right. Well. Uh. Break a leg?”
“Later, Caleb,” said Paige, waving in a way that looked a little patronizing. He mirrored her movement and went inside. “So he’s still a dick.”
“Yep,” said Lauren. But he was hers, wasn’t he? At least for now. Something had definitely changed between them recently, at least in private.
Evan came by the table then, a plastic bag from the bookstore hooked around his wrist. “Don’t look,” he said, “but Pablo has a table with a mix of weird used books and new releases, and there is absolutely no more shelf space anywhere in my apartment, but he had, like, eight things I want to read.”
Lauren turned to look despite Evan’s warnings. Pablo was indeed a few tables down, chatting with a woman who was pointing at books in the new release display.
“These excuses for talking to Pablo are costing you quite a bit of money. You pay full cover price for those books in your bag?”
“There’s a ten percent off street fair special.”
“Right.”
Evan frowned and looked at his bag. “He must think I’m way smarter than I am. I’ve only read a tiny fraction of the books I’ve bought from him since he started working at Stories.”
“Or you could ask him out.”
Evan shook his head. “When I was a teenager, I worked at a clothes store in the mall. There was this girl I worked with sometimes who thought my name was Jason. I corrected her a few times, but it never sank in, and she kept calling me Jason. Eventually, it had gone on too long, and I didn’t want to embarrass her by telling her she’d been getting my name wrong for months, so I just…responded when she called me Jason. I feel like this thing with Pablo is like that. I missed the window. I should have asked him out when he left Star Café, but now so much time has gone by that it’s embarrassing if I ask him outnow.”
“That’s insane,” said Lauren. “Why not just walk up to him and say, ‘Hey, I really like you, let’s get a drink sometime. There’s a great bar just up the block that has amazing martinis.’ Done and done.”
Evan guffawed. “As if.” He looked around. “Hey, can I stash this bag with you. It’s heavy. That truck with the guy who makes the arepa sandwiches is just on the other side of Henry Street, and I’ve had dreams about his steak sandwich since the last one of these street fairs.”
“I’ll put your books under the table if you get me that chicken and avocado thing he sells.”
