Page 2 of One-Star Romance

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to wait to make it feel like a home.” Their eyes finally met. They grinned at each other. And there was no rational explanation, but still, Natalie knew in that moment: Gabriella Alvarez was going to be a love of her life.

Now, Gabby and Natalie had lived together long enough to be considered common-law married in the eyes of New York State, a milestone they celebrated by referring to each other as “my beauuuuutiful wife” in increasingly ridiculous voices while trying not to crack up. Gabby had made their New York apartment feel even homier than the dorm room, though it was practically the same size. She painted patterns of blooming hydrangeas and roses on the walls. (That pretty nature scene she’d hung up in their dorm room had been one of her own creations! Art was just a hobby, she claimed, though Nat cherished a hope that, someday, Gabby would chuck her advertising job and make a go of the artist’s path with her. Gabby sometimes approached life like it was one giant checklist, but she was never more relaxed, never looser, than when she was painting.) She pushed their couch into a nicely centered position and somehow knew the correct number of pillows to put on it so that you always had back support but weren’t overwhelmed, which Nat considered a real talent. She organized their spice rack, hung their pots and pans from the ceiling, and breathed life and air into the tight space. Natalie knew how to arrange words on the page, but Gabby knew how to arrange their life together.

Yet Angus had wormed his way in, lingering around their apartment at unexpected times so that Natalie actually had to close the door when she went to the bathroom (a thing she and Gabby never bothered to do when it was just them), which of course was silly and small and a sacrifice she’d be more than happy to make for Gabby to spend time with a man who was worthy of her. But instead, Angus was a guy who told unfunny jokes and had spent his life failing upward with the security of family money. He had swooped in to tell Nat that she should not plan anything for Gabby’s birthday because he was on top of it and then had planned a party at some bar in MIDTOWN, of all places, a stretch of New York City that she and Gabby did their best to avoid.

“You might want to fix your face before we go inside,” Gabby said.

“Huh?”

Gabby laughed, reaching out a finger to poke at the space between Natalie’s eyebrows. “You’ve got an angry crease right here. What’s wrong? Are you getting upset again about how Emily Dickinson was never fully appreciated in her lifetime?”

“Yes,” Nat said, “but I suppose I can let that go for one evening.”

She clasped Gabby’s hand in hers, and together, they walked into the night that would upend their lives.

2

As the party swelled around her, Natalie could admit that Angus had not done a terrible job. The inside of the bar felt less soulless than the other restaurants Nat had been to in this area. People milled around in party dresses and nice pants—some of Gabby’s coworkers, their friends from college, Angus’s business school classmates. No parents in sight, thank God, although there was Gabby’s sister, Melinda, who was always difficult to pin down, the flighty older daughter to Gabby’s steady younger. Kudos to Angus for getting her to show up. The lighting was dim but not dark, the soundtrack of Justin Timberlake and Miley Cyrus thumped pleasantly underneath everyone’s conversations, and, in a nice change from the establishments Natalie tended to frequent, the floor wasn’t sticky.

Natalie nudged Gabby and pointed to a low table over in the corner. “That little guy is calling your name.”

Angus came running over, skidding to a stop in front of them. “Milady,” he said to Gabby, doffing an imaginary hat for some reason, then throwing out his arm to indicate the rest of the room. “Your party awaits!”

“Baby, this is incredible,” she said, and he put his arms around her, her stiletto heels making the two of them the same height (five feet six inches).

“You look…wow, you’re stunning,” he said, going moony at the sight of her boobs but even moonier at the sight of her face. Then he blinked and registered Natalie’s presence. “Oh, hi!”

Already, people in the crowd were angling for Gabby’s attention. Angus gave her a little push forward. “Go and greet your adoring public!”

Angus and Natalie both looked after Gabby as she disappeared into the throng, then turned to each other. Angus had an uncharacteristically nervous strain to his smile as he cast about for a conversation topic, his hair a messy mass of dark blond curls. Ah, screw it. Natalie could make an effort.

“How’s life?” she asked.

“Busy. I’ve been advising my father on growth strategy, on top of all the responsibilities of business school.” Natalie had heard that the biggest responsibility of business school was getting drunk at networking events, but she gave Angus a serious nod anyway. Angus went on. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but my father owns a furniture empire.” (He’d mentioned it every time they’d hung out.)

“I’ve seen the billboards,” Natalie said. “ ‘The Futon King of New Jersey,’ right?”

“That’s him!”

When Natalie had first heard Angus’s name (Angus Stoat the Third!), she’d imagined that he was stuffy old money, the kind of guy who’d grown up in a country club, a golf ball in one hand. But when she met him, he felt more like someone who was trying to sneak into the club, pretending he belonged. Gabby had told her the story of his upbringing: his father’s family was old money, but Angus’s dad had fallen hard for a woman who could’ve been an extra on Jersey Shore. The senior Stoats disapproved and cut Angus II out of both the family banking business and the will, assuming that would send this gold-digging harlot away. But the marriage had gone on to be remarkably successful, and to spite his family, Angus’s father had founded a furniture chain that was now the place to go for all your futon needs.

“You angling to wear the futon crown yourself someday?” Natalie asked.

“Oh, no, no. The boardroom is more for me than the furniture floor. Not that I’m insulting the family business! There are no better futons around, anyone would be lucky to—”

Then Angus turned his head and caught sight of someone. His sentence cut off abruptly, turning into an actual squeal of glee. “You’re here!” he called as a tall man with a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead approached.

Most guys their age were firmly guys to Natalie. She and her friends were in a strange liminal moment: not boys and girls anymore, not yet men and women. But something about this person—the serious set of his thick eyebrows, maybe, or his clean-shaven face, or the black-frame glasses he wore along with a navy button-down and khakis—screamed “GROWN-UP!” A sort of old-fashioned grown-up too, from a time when men still combed their hair.

“I wasn’t sure, with your flight home,” Angus was saying, pounding the man on his chest, attempting to put him into a headlock, which the man accepted with patience and a hint of a smile even as Angus ruffled his neat hair into a mess. “I know how you love to get to the airport three hours early.”

“For this,” the man said, “I decided to risk cutting it a little closer.”

Angus let out a happy bellow, then squatted down, wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, and attempted to lift him up like a pro wrestler. “All right,” the man said, ducking his head so that Angus did not accidentally thrust him through the ceiling.

With a big huff of breath, Angus released the man, who stood back up to a bit of a slouch. “Natalie, meet Rob Kapinsky. Current linguistics PhD student, future professor, heartbreaker of the West Coast—”

“That part is not true,” Rob Kapinsky said.

---