On Second Thought(70)

“Hi,” I said, and to my irritation, my voice was husky.

“Ainsley.” He got up and kissed me on both cheeks. He smelled different, but the same. A new cologne, but still my Eric.

I had to press my lips together to avoid crying.

“You look beautiful,” he said, smiling. I didn’t answer. Round one went to Eric—I was more shaken by seeing him than he was at seeing me. “Jonathan. Good to see you. How are subscriptions?”

“Very healthy, thank you. We’ve seen a bump since your column.”

Eric smirked. How gratifying for him that Jonathan, who’d clearly thought his blog was idiotic, was now wining and dining him.

“Shall we get a table?” Jonathan suggested, and we did, the blue light making us all look like aliens. The waiter came right over.

“What would you like to drink, Ains?” Eric asked. “I’m having The Hemingway, and it’s delicious.”

I glanced at the menu. Name aside, it was a girlie drink with fruit juice and a sugar rim. To be true to Hemingway, it should’ve been a shot of whiskey mixed with bull semen. “I’ll have a Ketel One martini, extremely dry, two olives, please,” I said. I could drink a real martini, thank you very much.

“Bowmore single malt,” Jonathan said.

“On the rocks?”

“Good God, no.” So round two went to Jonathan.

“I’ll have another Hemingway, Jake,” Eric said. Ah. He was friends with the server. How cute.

My chest hurt.

Eric wore a dress shirt unbuttoned a few, a gray suit jacket and jeans. His hair had grown in the weeks since I’d seen him, and he’d gelled it to stick up in front.

He looked hot, in other words.

“Ollie says hello,” I said.

His eyes flickered. “How’s he doing?”

“Great. Sweet as ever. Perhaps a little confused.”

Eric looked down for a second. “Maybe I’ll come see him before I leave.”

“Still planning to go to Alaska, then?” Jonathan asked.

“Of course.” He looked meaningfully across the table. “I made a commitment to Nathan’s memory. I’m doing this for him, on some level.”

“What about your commitment to me?” I couldn’t help saying.

“We didn’t have one.” He gave me a sad smile. A sad, fake smile. My fists clenched in my lap.

“A trip that big must take a lot of preparation,” Jonathan said, and Eric lit up and started talking about walking sticks and ice picks and the best kind of tent.

Our drinks came. Mine went down fast.

“I don’t know if I told you, Ainsley,” Eric said, “but I may have a book deal in the works! Isn’t that great?”

“So great.”

“It’s about my cancer journey and, of course, the trip to Denali. My agent is fielding offers.”

He had an agent now?

“Congratulations,” Jonathan said. “And it brings up the reason we’d like you to stay with Hudson Lifestyle. Obviously, your column struck a nerve.”

A nerve right in my heart, you *. I narrowed my eyes at Eric, who just smiled back.

Jonathan looked at me. “Ainsley? Why don’t you tell Eric what we have in mind?”

“Before you start, Ains,” Eric said, “I just want you to know that my agent is in talks with Outdoor Magazine, GQ and Maxim.” He smiled. “So Hudson is feeling a little...provincial.”

“That’s incredible,” I said. “I mean, they were never interested when the blog was just about you and your testicle. It was only when you crapped all over our relationship that things heated up. How will you sustain interest? Just keep dumping women after they’ve given you everything?”

“I understand your anger,” he said. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“And thank you, Eric, for so generously understanding.”

Jonathan took a sip of his scotch and said nothing.

It didn’t take a shrink to figure out why I was really here. I wanted to see him, to see if he was really sticking to his corpse guns.

God. What if he did come back to Hudson Lifestyle?

On one hand, it would be nice to be able to edit Eric’s column each month, which would consist of me putting a big red X through it and saying you can’t write for shit in a helpful, constructive way.

“A very big raise.” Jonathan’s voice was extremely quiet.

Eric frowned. “Excuse me?” he said.

“Nothing,” Jonathan answered.

My ex-boyfriend looked pissy at that. “Tell me why I should stay with your magazine,” he said, sitting back with his girlie grapefruit drink. He smiled, fully prepared to enjoy our sucking up.

I fake-smiled right back. “Well, Eric, as you no doubt recall, Hudson Lifestyle gave you a column when no one else would. You might remember that you did indeed pitch many magazines and blog sites to carry The Cancer Chronicles, and no one so much as returned an email.”

His smile slipped for a second, then returned. “Times have changed. Fox News said I was the voice of the modern male.”

“Actually, it was a reader comment on the Fox News website—in Sioux City, Iowa, that is—who said you were the voice of the modern male,” I corrected. “Other commenters had more colorful names for you, which I’d be happy to list. Or maybe I’ll start my own blog about men who exaggerate when they’re sick.”