Chapter 8

When Kate left Rick at the coffee shop she intended to go straight home, but that wasn't where she ended up. Instead, she made a detour to Lanie's place, because what one needed when one made a perfect fool of oneself was the shoulder of one's best friend to cry on. Too bad for Kate her crying was being drowned out by all the laughing her best friend and her shoulder were doing.

"Hell, if I'd know it was that easy to get some sugar out of you, I'd have kept my cabinets stocked top to bottom with Toll House. Imagine all the making out I could've been doing during this man drought of mine."

Kate pressed a fist to her hip and shot a glare. "Could you be less helpful, Lanie? Is that possible? I didn't say I made out with him. There was no making out." Again, she began to pace restlessly back and forth, the fingernail of her thumb clamped between her teeth. "Why the hell did I do that? I wasn't even thinking about kissing him, Lanie. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind, and then suddenly there I was."

That wasn't entirely true.

"I know it wasn't your beat, but you would've made a great court lawyer. I'm telling you if I didn't know you like I do, I'd probably believe what you just said. Come on now, who do you think you're fooling? And stand still, for the love of Pete."

Kate stopped moving, shoved her hands into her pants pockets.

"Kate, you don't do anything without thinking. Zero things. None. If you kissed the man, it was because you wanted to kiss the man. You should be asking yourself why that bothers you so much. That's the real question here."

"I barely know who he is, Lanie. I've spent, what, a few hours with him, that's it, and he's so…"

"He's so what?" she picked up when Kate trailed off. "You and I both know that you can be in a relationship with someone for years and still barely know them. Time is something, not everything, and if you, of all people, are at the point where you're up and planting one on him, he must be pretty great.

"Kate, you haven't had a reaction like this to someone in a long time, and I mean a long time. Maybe not ever. It seems to me there must be something different going on with this one, something special."

Kate dropped her chin. "He said my mom would be proud of me. God, I told him about my mom," she shared in a tone of disbelief.

"He was right about that. She would be. She'd be proud of whatever you decided to do with your life, and I'm proud of you for talking about her. I know how difficult that is for you, even now. Telling him was a big deal. This is what I'm saying." She crossed her legs up on the couch, dropped a pillow into her lap. "So how did you leave things?"

"Before I…did what I did, I gave him Maddie's number." Kate lifted her head slowly. "He's going to take her to see Springsteen this weekend."

Lanie shut her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I'm sorry, you did what? What in the hell kind of a plot twist is that to hit a girl with?" She drank down a gulp of wine. "Your cookie man is going out with Maddie, as in our hot, successful, scatterbrain of a friend, because you gave him her number? What happened to the thing about not setting up your friends, and that's just first of all?"

"He isn't my man, Lanie, and there wasn't anyone else. I tried. I couldn't go back to him with nothing. I just couldn't."

"Wait a second, hang on. I did my thing and checked him out after you told me he was some famous author. Maddie goes for guys with slick dark hair and dark eyes, the leather jackets, and muscles like Popeye. The Richard Castle I saw definitely looked like none of that."

"I know that, but I figured they both own restaurants and that might at least be a good potential start." A snicker came flying her way, as did the pillow, which struck her right in the chest. "What was that for?"

"Girl, you have got it so bad for this guy, and you are way too smart and way too talented at what you do to try and pass off a flimsy sell like that one. What you figured was that those two would crash and burn on takeoff, and that he couldn't then come back at you after and accuse you of not trying. He got a date, the service he's paying you for, so you're covered, and he's still a single man at the end of the night."

Kate bent and picked up the pillow, walked over to the couch, and plopped down next to Lanie.

"I'm a terrible person. I'm a terrible friend. Maddie was so excited when I told her."

"You're not. You're feeling something you didn't expect and that wasn't part of your plan and that scares you." She rested her hand on the cushion between them and Kate curled hers around it. "Maddie will be just fine. She'll go, she'll have a fun night of it, and she'll move on. That's Maddie. Don't beat yourself up. Instead, think about what happens when Rick is sitting across from you in your office the next time."

There would be that.

xxxx

Rick had been set up on dates before. There wasn't anything new about that. What was new was the writing a check to someone for doing it, and the comedy, that the someone to whom he was writing the check was the only person he wanted to date, then or ever. Whoever "they" were, it was truer than ever to him what they said. Comedy wasn't always funny.

He was standing in his kitchen that Saturday evening with a drink in his hand and a distant look in his eye. He didn't know if Kate had made up the story days before about her having a date that night, too, but the mere possibility of it had him twisted. That she could be, at that very moment, sitting across a candlelit table from another man, or laughing with another man, or doing, quite frankly, anything else at all with any other man made him ache, and it was the sort of ache for which there existed only one cure.

No matter how great she might be, Madison would not be that cure. That, he knew for sure.

"Uh-oh." Martha, dressed to the nines in a medley of hot pink and leopard print, descended the loft's final two stairs and approached. "Booze before the night even starts, hmm? Well, that's not a good sign now is it."

The voice startled Rick from his reverie, for which he found himself grateful. There was less and less light where he was as the minutes ticked by.

"It's a few sips of scotch, Mother. I'm not guzzling the bottle."

She flopped her gold sequined clutch onto the bar, set to adjusting the collection of chains that hung at varying lengths around her neck.

"Richard, remind me why it is you're going out with this one when you want to be going out with that one. It seems like an awful waste of time if you ask me."

Rick cleared his glass and capped the bottle. "Thank you, Mother, but I didn't ask, and as the person who goes on more first dates than anyone I know, I'm not sure you're really in the best position to be offering advice on the subject."

He didn't mean it maliciously, of course. She understood that.

"Redheads are powerful creatures, kiddo." She gave her hair a playful fluff. "Few can resist, which you, unfortunately for all of us, know all too well." Martha wasn't, nor had she ever been, a fan of her son's first wife, and she'd never hesitated to tell him so. "I'm merely pointing out that you've never been one to simply roll over and accept defeat. If you know what it is you want-or in this case who you want-then you should get in there and fight for it, as I've always known you to do. The risk might just be worth the reward."

The woman was a nightmare in the kitchen, an inexplicable dresser, and frequently meddlesome beyond his threshold of patience, but Rick adored his mother and her heart, which only ever wanted the best for him.

"You look beautiful tonight, Mother," he told her as he slid a black blazer over his vintage Springsteen tee thin from too many washes and wears. Coming around the bar he landed a peck on her cheek, fixed into place one of the necklaces she'd missed. "I am fighting. I just can't bring a tank, not to this war."

She watched him head off on his way, humbled by his heart, as she ever was.

xxxx

Hours later, and Rick still hadn't shrugged off the disappointment of missing Springsteen's first four songs of the night; the insult to the injury that the reason why had been neither of his doing nor in his control.

He and Madison had agreed to meet at The Garden before the show. They'd had an arranged time, an arranged place-a plan. She'd told him the plan wouldn't be a problem. She could and would be there.

She hadn't been there, and Rick had waited. And waited some more.

Seated at their table at a bistro near the arena after the show, he waited again, and whereas earlier he'd been anxious for the evening to get started, he now was anxious for it to come to an end.

"Hi, sorry, I'm back." Madison took her place again following a lengthy enough trip to the restroom to strike him as borderline worrisome. "I thought I'd lost one of my earrings in there. It turned out it just got tangled in my hair."

"I hate it when that happens," Rick replied, employing a joke that required zero effort on his part, which was about all he could muster. "We hadn't talked about dessert or coffee, so I asked for a few minutes."

She picked up the menu and studied it, her face hidden from his view.

"They have cheesecake. I love cheesecake," he heard from behind the black fold, and his mind instantly took a walk down memory lane to that first night in the kitchen with Kate. Not that she wasn't already living in his mind full time. "Should we share a piece?"

"Why not," Rick answered, being a sport, and when their server came and went, it was Madison who put the uncomfortable silence that'd settled in-not the first-out of its misery.

"Rick, I just want to say again that I'm sorry for being late tonight. It's a thing of mine I'm trying to work on. I also feel like I should get something out of the way so there aren't any awkward moments later. You're a really nice guy, and tonight's been fun and everything, but you just aren't my type at all. I'm sorry."

A tidal wave of relief struck him square. He played otherwise, of course.

"Wow, okay, that's never a fun thing to hear. I suppose I have to appreciate the honesty, though. It's been fun for me, too, but I certainly don't want to waste your time." Coffee was dropped off at the table for both, and they each busied with fixing it to their liking. "For purely conversational reasons, now that the cat's out of the bag, what is your type?"

"Well, you are tall and that's definitely on my list." Madison looked at him, tilted her head a tick. "You're too pretty for me, Rick, too straight is what it is. I need someone darker, someone with more…edge. No offense," she explained, bringing her cup to her lips. "Becks knows that. It's weird she thought the two of us would be a good match."

"You mean Kate? Sorry. You call her 'Becks'?"

Swallowing, she confirmed. "Since high school, yeah."

It took a few seconds, but it came. She realized what she did: the one thing Kate asked her not to do.

"You've known Kate since high school?"

"Crap." Madison set her coffee back down, angled her eyes away. "She made me promise not to mention that. She's going to kill me."

Rick's mind started to race, his adrenaline to pump.

"No, no, it's fine." He mimed a key twisting his lips locked. "So, the two of you…then she would've known I wasn't your type all along. That is very interesting," he thought aloud before burying his burgeoning delight in confusion as cover. "I mean, it's weird that she would try to pair us up, yeah. Weird. You know what, why don't I break the news to her that things didn't work out as the three of us hoped. That way you don't have to. It might be less awkward for everyone."

"I appreciate it. I'm already going to be on her shit list for being late tonight. Thank you, Rick."

Oh, he deserved no appreciation or thanks. None at all.