CHAPTER TWO

Bryn scooped her arm around Keira’s shoulder as the younger of the two sisters wept bitterly.

“You’ve done the right thing,” Bryn soothed. “I know it won’t seem that way right now, but trust me. You were getting in way too deep. You’re twenty-eight, Keira, it’s not time to settle down.”

Her words did little to comfort Keira. Who exactly was Bryn to talk? Her life had been a series of disastrous relationships. She had no idea what kind of love Keira and Shane had found, and now lost. Sobs made her whole body shake.

“Come on,” Bryn added, “Let’s go get a coffee. I’ll call Mom. You know how great she is with all this stuff.”

Keira couldn’t disagree more. Her mom, unlike Bryn, seemed to be in a rush to get her to settle down and have babies. She’d gone so far as to say that there was little point in Keira putting so much energy into her career when she’d be giving it all up in a couple of years anyway to have kids.

She shook her head. “I can’t, I have to get to work.”

Bryn pulled a face. “Babe, you are a wreck. They won’t want you there in this state. You’re no good to anyone.”

“Thanks,” Keira muttered. “But I can’t not go in. First day back after a break. New senior position. Elliot’s going to be in the office. He’ll be expecting me to step up my game.”

While she was speaking, Bryn reached over and plucked Keira’s phone from her hands.

“Hey!” Keira protested.

Bryn tapped some buttons and then triumphantly placed the cell on the coffee table. “Done.”

“What?” Keira cried, horrified, snatching it up. “Did you just request a sick day for me? I’ve never taken a sick day! You’re so unprofessional. I can’t believe you’d do that.”

But when she scrolled through the most recent actions on her phone, she saw that it wasn’t work whom Bryn had contacted, but instead Nina, Keira’s friend and editor at the magazine. She read through the message that Bryn had sent her.

Shane dumped me. My life is over. Help.

Keira rolled her eyes, unimpressed, and fixed a death-glare at her sister. Bryn just shrugged cheekily. A second later, Keira’s phone buzzed with an incoming message from Nina.

It’s going to be okay. I’ll tell Elliot we’re having a meeting outside the office. Coffee in ten?

Keira’s expression softened. Maybe Bryn had some uses after all.

“Nina’s going to come and meet me,” she said, stowing the phone away. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” Bryn replied. “Now I just have to quickly tell my boss I’m not coming in today.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Oh please, any excuse,” Bryn said.

Keira gave in. There was no arguing with Bryn sometimes. Even though her sister wasn’t always the most comforting shoulder to cry on, she was good at putting herself first and that practice occasionally worked in Keira’s favor.

Several minutes later, the sisters left the apartment together, wrapped in their warmer fall clothes, and headed down the street to the coffee shop they’d agreed to meet Nina in. It was still very early. When they arrived, the coffee shop had only just opened up for the day. They were the first inside.

Bryn ordered flat whites and skinny muffins for them both and led Keira to the squishy leather couch. A moment later, Nina walked in.

“Keira,” she said, her expression pained.

She sat down and hugged Keira tightly, which made her feel instantly comforted. Maybe skipping work had been a good idea after all, though she reminded herself not to make a habit of it. It was beyond unprofessional, even if Bryn and Nina didn’t seem to think so. Keira probably didn’t have too much to worry about; she was on the verge of committing herself to a life of celibacy anyway so there was very little chance of her taking a heartbreak day ever again…

“God, I can’t believe Shane has been such a jerk,” Nina began.

Keira shook her head. “It’s not like that.”

Nina shot her a deadpan expression. “How is it not like that? He manipulated you into thinking you’d fallen in love with him and then a week before you’re supposed to reunite he dumps you?”

“Well, if you put it like that,” Keira said. “But trust me, that’s not what happened. His dad got sick. It made him, I don’t know, reevaluate things.” She felt tears threatening to choke her again. “But can we please not do this? I don’t want to be put in a position where I have to defend the guy who’s just broken my heart.”

Nina paused, seemingly deliberating over her request. “Maybe this is all for the best,” she said. “Elliot will probably be sending you abroad for a new assignment soon anyway. Maybe you’ll meet a new guy. An ever better guy.”

“That’s the last thing I want right now,” Keira replied glumly, sinking her chin onto her fist. “I don’t know how much more my heart can handle. Straight from Zach to Shane to someone else who’ll just treat me like crap? I don’t think so. I was right before to put all my focus on my career. It’s not like my job will tell me that if things were different it might have married me.”

Nina winced. “Shane said that?”

Keira nodded, feeling sadder and more dejected than ever.

Nina gave her another squeeze around the shoulders. “You’re young. Too young to settle. There’s a big world out there and you’ve only seen a fraction of it.”

“Thank you,” Bryn agreed. “That’s what I’ve been telling her. She’s still in her twenties, for God’s sake. Wait until you hit three-oh at least.”

Nina raised an eyebrow. “Make that four-oh,” she said, witheringly. “Plus a few more for luck. I’m in no hurry to settle down. Despite what the media might be telling me about my biological clock.”

“The media?” Keira quipped. “You mean like us? We are journalists after all. It’s our job to make people think they want things. Like love,” she added bitterly.

Nina laughed and Keira felt a little better. She glanced out the window at the busy New York City streets, filled with people on their way to work, people on their way home from all-night raves, people dressed in expensive suits, others in witty slogan T-shirts. She could see so many races and nationalities, and every conceivable hairstyle. They hurried along, battling against the cold winds that fall had brought in.

As she studied them, Keira realized just how much she loved her city. She’d never have been happy living in Ireland. Shane had been right about that. Moving away just wasn’t an option for her. She was New York through and through. The city practically ran through her blood.

She turned her attention back to Nina and Bryn.

“So, how did Elliot take my absence from the office today?” she asked Nina, more than ready to change the topic of conversation.

Nina stirred her coffee. “Honestly, he seems a little distracted today. I overheard him having a heated conversation on the phone the other night when I was working late. I think there might be someone trying to buy out the magazine.”

Keira raised her eyebrows in surprise. “That wouldn’t happen, though. Elliot wouldn’t sell. He loves Viatorum. Too much sometimes.”

Nina just shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “Sometimes it’s not about how much you love something. If one of the big companies is going to start up a rival magazine, copy our model but use all their financial assets and connections to push themselves and bury us, he won’t have any other option but to sell. Sometimes the only way an independent like Viatorum can stay viable is for the boss like Elliot to make compromises over ownership.”

“But it would be like taking a demotion for him, wouldn’t it?” Keira asked. “He’d go from owning it outright to just, what, managing it?”

Nina tilted her head to the side. “It’s not all bad. He could make more money this way. He’d just have higher-ups to answer to. He’d probably lose some creative freedom.” She shrugged again. “Actually, he’d definitely lose some creative freedom.”

Keira chewed her lip, considering Nina’s premonition. Why did things always have to change so quickly? This morning she’d woken up with a loving partner and an awesome job. Now she was sitting tear-stained and depressed in a coffee shop, back on the market and worrying about her employment situation.

“Well, that’s one way to take my mind off Shane,” Keira said wryly to Nina.

“Oh God, sorry,” Nina said. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m sure nothing will change for you, or me, or anyone else for that matter. Just Elliot really. I’ve been through buy-outs before, countless times, in fact. It’s usually pretty unnoticeable for most of the staff.”

Keira pursed her lips. “We’ll see,” she replied.

Nina looked a little panicked, Keira thought, and she watched as her friend made eye contact with Bryn as if trying to prompt her to take over. Bryn suddenly lit up as though she’d been struck with a thought.

“I have an amazing idea,” she said, her eyes widening.

“Why do I get the feeling I am not going to like this one bit?” Keira replied, narrowing her own.

“There’s this awesome party thing at Gino’s tonight, you know, that authentic Italian restaurant in the city,” Bryn said. “It’s Halloween themed. Actually, it’s All Souls’ Day themed, which is an Italian holiday I’ve never heard of but it sounds super creepy and they’re taking it really seriously at Gino’s. It’s going to be half masquerade ball, half gothic meal. It sounds crazy but in a super cool way.”

Keira squinted her eyes further. Bryn was blabbering. “Go on…” she urged her sister.

“Here’s the thing,” Bryn said. “I was invited there for a date by this guy I met the other night, Malcolm. He wanted to see what it was all about, you know, something different to try. I obviously said sure, you know me, I’ll try anything once. Anyway, so he mentioned today that he has a friend who’s single and wondered if I knew anyone to double date with. I was going to invite Tasha, but why don’t you and I go instead? Now you’re back on the market.”

Keira didn’t even need a second to consider Bryn’s proposition. She shook her head with an emphatic no. “Absolutely not,” she said.

Nina leaned forward, seemingly on board. “I know this amazing costume store,” she said. “You could get a full-on ball gown, gloves, mask, the lot.”

Keira shot her a withering glance. “Why don’t you go on the double date if you’re so into the idea?”

Nina closed her mouth. Bryn took over as lead cajoler again.

“Just come for the food at least,” Bryn said. “Free meal. Fancy food. Dancing. Just think of it as a night out for the two of us, with just a couple of guys tagging along footing the bill. You don’t even have to tell them your real name if you don’t want to, or even take off your mask. It could be a night of anonymity. You could invent a whole new persona.”

Keira laughed. “Let me guess, you’ve done that before?”

Nina jumped in then. “Please, darling, everyone’s done that before. If you haven’t been on a date and pretended you work for the FBI or that you’re an heir to a billion-dollar inheritance then you haven’t really lived.”

Shaking her head, Keira glanced out the window again. She looked at the people milling through the streets. Some of the stores already had Halloween decorations in their windows. She spotted a goth couple walking down the street – the woman in a black lace dress carrying a parasol, the man on a leather lead. Only in New York City, she thought to herself, amused.

Life was supposed to be about embracing the crazy, she reminded herself. Hadn’t she told herself that exact thing just this morning?

“Fine,” she said, turning back to Bryn with a sigh of resignation. “I’ll come to your ball.”

*

Bryn was right about one thing, Keira discovered later that evening; Gino’s looked amazing. The whole restaurant had been decorated to look like a gothic castle, the tables pushed to the perimeter so that the middle part was a dance floor. There was an incredibly creepy vibe, with old Italian folk music, waiters in velvet suits, and of course, everyone in masquerade masks.

If it had just been the two of them, Keira would have had a great night. But unfortunately, they were sharing their evening with Malcolm, Bryn’s date, and Glen, Keira’s date. They must have been two of the most boring men in the world.

Keira forked her pasta, barely able to keep herself awake, as Glen explained more details about his career in accounting. Work chat annoyed Keira at the best of times, but when it involved math the boringness was stepped up another notch. Not to mention he hadn’t actually asked her a single question about her job.

There was a sudden lull in the conversation and Keira sat up as though startled awake.

“So, what do you do in your spare time?” she asked Glen, desperate to steer the conversation elsewhere.

Glen took a long time to answer, another thing Keira took as a bad sign. Who didn’t know what hobbies they had? Or what they enjoyed doing other than their jobs?

“I watch sports,” he said, finally.

“Watch,” Keira repeated. “Not play?”

Glen laughed. “Hell no. I don’t want an injury. I prefer to be a spectator.”

“That’s…” Keira struggled for a word. The one she landed on was probably the opposite of what she meant. “…interesting.”

“What about you?” Glen asked.

It was the first time he’d asked her about herself, and Keira was almost surprised. “Oh, well, I’m in journalism so I spend a lot of my spare time reading,” she began.

Glen cut her off immediately. “I read, too. The Wall Street Journal mainly.”

Realizing her time to speak had been snatched from her, Keira felt her chest sink. She prodded her pasta again. “Cool.”

Bryn leaned across the table then. “We were just talking about plans,” she said. “What we want to achieve in five years. Keira, what about you?”

If Bryn had asked her yesterday Keira would have been certain that what she wanted in the next five years was to spend as much time as possible with Shane. Buy their dream house together. Maybe even marry and have some kids. But that dream was dashed now.

Keira just shrugged. “I’d like to travel. See the world. In five years’ time I want to have set foot on every continent at least once.”

Bryn clapped. “That’s a great one, sis.”

Glen scoffed. “Traveling is so overrated these days, now that we have the technology to map everything. I mean why spend hours in an aluminum tube flying through the sky, polluting the atmosphere, when you can see the world from the comfort of your own home? Virtual reality is in its infancy at the moment, but within five years it’s going to take off. A fifty-dollar headset will take the place of hundreds of dollars wasted on flights.”

Only Malcolm nodded in agreement, his expression revealing that he found Glen’s point to be thought provoking. Bryn, on the other hand, looked horrified by his statement and she flashed Keira a look of apology. Keira just gave her sister a deadpan look, as if to say I said this would be terrible.

“What about you then, Glen?” Bryn asked, floundering to save the conversation. “If you’re not a fan of traveling, what do you think your next five years will look like?”

Everyone turned their attention to the accountant. He cracked his knuckles.

“I’ve got it all planned out,” he said confidently. He pointed at his index finger. “A wife in a year.” Then he moved onto his next finger. “Our dream family home in the suburbs the year after that.” He pointed at the next two fingers. “Two kids, eighteen months apart. One boy, one girl.” Then finally he wiggled his thumb. “And a dog.”

Keira sighed deeply. She’d known before she’d even left Bryn’s apartment that she wasn’t going to find anything resembling romance on this date. But there’d still been a flicker of hope. Just a little spark that someone who burned as brightly as Shane might appear in her life out of the blue, turning her world upside down just as quickly as Shane himself had done.

But she realized now, with bitter disappointment, that she’d been a fool to even entertain that idea. Shane was a one in a million experience. No, one in a billion. Her date with Glen had just confirmed her worst fears.

She’d never find a love like that again.