Anne of Manhattan by Brina Starler

Gil paid the cabdriver, then joined Fred on the sidewalk in front of the narrow brownstone where they were renting the second floor. It wasn’t new and shiny, but it was home—at least for the next year. Fred’s tattoo shop was just starting to break even, and right now, Gil was living on what money he’d managed to squirrel away in California. The old apartment was the best they could do at the moment. It wasn’t what he was used to—which made him sound like the worst kind of snob, he knew. That sort of thinking was a by-product of growing up the way he did, going to an elite private school and living in a house with a pool and tennis courts.

He was working on it.

So, once he left high school, he started waiting tables and then bartending to support himself through college and into grad school. It was important for him to stand on his own two feet now, and not rely on his parents’ money. And he’d been doing okay before the move; once he found another job here, he’d be doing okay again. He already had an interview set up the next afternoon at a little family-owned bar called Kindred Spirits. But even if he did struggle a little, it didn’t matter. He belonged here now, not three thousand miles away. His dad had been diagnosed with cancer, Redmond had accepted his transfer application, and Fred had needed a new roommate. The decision to move back east was easy.

Well, maybe not easy. But it was the right thing to do, coming home.

Home . . . where Anne Shirley was.

He wasn’t going to lie; he’d known long before he’d made his decision that she’d moved to the city after high school. (And what she was majoring in, and how often she came back to Avonlea, and that she lived with Diana now, and a whole host of other things his mother felt were imperative he know over the last five or so years.)

Not that being near Anne again had been a deciding factor in Gil’s application. He’d also applied, and been accepted, to NYU and Queens College. But Redmond had the program that was closest to Berkeley’s, and their program had the least number of supplemental courses required to complete his degree in New York. The switch from one university to another was already pushing his graduation out another year. The possibility of seeing Anne again was just a bonus. Nothing more. Gil had gotten over her years ago. Dated plenty in California, some women more seriously than others. He’d been with Christine Stuart, a girl he’d met in economics class in sophomore year, for almost a full year before realizing their relationship was about as much fun as watching wallpaper paste dry. She’d been safe. Lovely and sweet and calm, and he knew she’d never hurt him. It took a while to figure out the reason she’d never hurt him was because she didn’t have the capability, since he’d never given her anything real to work with.

That epiphany made him extremely uncomfortable and the relationship had died a quiet, unremarkable death soon after.

From then on, Gil kept it casual, never going out with the same woman more than a handful of times. There would be plenty of time to find something more meaningful after he finished school and was firmly established in his career. His new direction had served him well so far—which is why it came as such a shock to spot Anne and have his heart immediately want to leap out of his chest and throw itself at her mercy.

Again.

He’d thought it had learned its lesson in seventh grade, and then again that summer after their senior year, when she crushed it underfoot without a thought. Apparently, his heart was a glutton for punishment.

She’d been nearly lost in the rowdy Friday-night crowd of bar hoppers, but the thick mass of copper waves tumbling over one shoulder caught his attention like a beacon. Still, he’d thought, there were probably hundreds of willowy redheads in Brooklyn. It was just reflex by now, that his gaze would snag on red hair, briefly assessing before moving on. But then their eyes met, and he was sure. After years of unconsciously searching for her in every crowd, it was almost a shock to finally land on the right redhead.

The way his heart slammed in his chest, as the undeniable compulsion to be closer to her had him hauling open the safety cage’s door, neatly answered the question of whether his feelings for her were truly gone again. It had registered in the back of his mind that Fred said his name, pitched to be heard above the noise, confusion in his voice. But Gil’s focus had been singular, the gleam of burnished copper curls in his sights as he wove through the crowd. Even halfway across the bar he could see the moment she became aware of him, eyes the color of rain over the ocean widening with shock. Amusement at the flash of something that looked almost like panic on her face, followed quickly by suspicion as he got closer, helped temper the urgency to reach her. It was so Anne to assume he was up to something. He’d spent years trying to coax that look out of her, because then he had her attention. It was embarrassing how many hours of his life had been dedicated to getting those big gray eyes to turn his way.

Gil thought he was prepared to see her again; he’d had the months spent arranging his transfer to New York after his father’s cancer diagnosis to get used to the idea. But he wasn’t, not by a long shot. It was laughable, how not prepared he’d been.

Unlocking the front door, he moved aside just in time to not get stepped on as Fred ambled past, kicking off his boots as he headed toward the kitchen at the back of the apartment. Neither of them was exactly known for their housekeeping, so Gil just knocked them up against one wall with his foot as he followed the sound of his drunk roommate’s off-key singing. Every time Fred drank more than three beers, he started in on Broadway’s greatest hits. It never got less funny.

Leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen, Gil raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you eat nearly an entire pizza and a full Caesar as a side earlier?”

“Dude.” Fred looked wounded as he balanced half a hard salami, a bag of shredded cheese, and a questionable box of mushrooms on top of a carton of eggs. “That was five hours ago. I work out, I gotta eat a lot of protein.”

Snorting, Gil moved into the kitchen, kicking a chair out from under the table and dropping into it, suddenly tired. Fred sniffed the mushrooms, then gagged and lobbed them into the trash by the back door. They were quiet for a couple minutes, Fred slowly slicing salami with the careful, precise movements of a man just a hair past buzzed, and Gil enjoying the silence after the noise of the bar. If he didn’t move, he could still feel his ears throbbing along with the music.

“So,” Fred said.

Fuck. Well, he’d known this was coming, he just figured he had until tomorrow, at least.

“Yeah?” Gil rose, grabbing a sports drink from the fridge and twisting off the cap. Better to have something to do with his hands. He took a small sip as Fred slid diced salami into the pan, the pieces making a sizzling noise and filling the room with the fragrant aroma of cooking meat.

“What’s up with you and the redhead?”

From the sideways grin his friend sent him, Gil knew he hadn’t forgotten Anne’s name, he just liked to mess with him. Gil capped the bottle again and hoisted himself up on the counter next to the sink, thinking of how to condense a decade of not-quite-friendship, not-quite-enmity into bite-sized chunks.

“We have history,” he said, finally. Rolling the bottle between his hands, he watched the bright blue liquid slosh back and forth, still a little dizzy from the last round of shots they all did before calling it a night. “You know we’re from the same town. Went to school together, with Diana.”

Fred just nodded, cracking a couple eggs on top of the salami and scrambling them around.

“Well, except Diana and me, we grew up together. It’s a small town, everyone knows everyone, right? Anne didn’t move there until we were in seventh grade, and . . .” He paused, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “We didn’t exactly get off on the right foot.”

“What did you do?” Fred dropped a handful of shredded cheese into the pan.

“Why do you assume I did something?”

“Because I know you.”

Gil laughed, caught out, and leaned back until his head rested on the door of the hanging cabinet behind him. “Yeah, okay. Fair. I, uh. ImighthavecalledherCarrotsandpulledherhair.”

“Dude, what?” Confusion wrinkled his friend’s brow as he flipped his witching-hour breakfast onto a plate.

“I might have called her Carrots and pulled her hair.” Gil hopped off the counter as Fred choked and sprayed bits of salami and eggs across the table and tossed the paper towel roll to the other man. “I know. It was immature and mean, which she absolutely let me know at the time.”

“I bet.” Fred made a face as he wiped the table surface down, then tucked back into his eggs. “You have some sort of death wish as a kid, to mess with a ginger? I know a ginger with a temper is a stereotype, but my cousin Macey is a redhead, and she will fuck you up.”

“No, just the usual middle school boy dumbassery. The kind I’m going to make sure if I ever have a son, he knows not to pull any shit like that. I regretted it almost immediately and apologized, but it didn’t do any good. Damage done. Believe me, she hasn’t forgotten it—and she’ll never let me forget it either, no matter what I do.”

“Wait. Hold up.” Putting his fork down, Fred gave him a hard stare. Gil took a long swallow from the bottle to avoid eye contact, knowing his friend had made the connection he’d hoped to avoid. “Is she the girl? The one who messed your head up so bad, you haven’t managed a real relationship since I met you four years ago?”

“To be fair,” Gil started, tossing the now empty bottle into the trash with regret. There went his tool of avoidance. “It was never her fault. That’s on me. I don’t think she really believed I liked her, even after we hooked up that one summer. Hooked up.” He snorted, the sting of missed opportunity still as sharp now as it was six years earlier. “We kissed. Once. Then it all went sideways, like it always did whenever we tried to call a truce.”

“So, is that it? You guys hated each other because you made a crack once about her hair?”

“Well, it sounds dumb when you put it like that.”

“Seriously?”

“No, not seriously. I never hated her. Sometimes I wished I could, just so I could stop caring so damn much, but I never quite managed it.” Gil stretched his legs out, feeling the last week catching up with him. A cross-country move, then meeting his mom and dad for his dad’s first chemo treatment, plus unpacking. It was a lot, and he could feel the weight of it trying to drag his eyelids down. Yawning, he slumped down in his chair. “And I mean, I don’t think she actually hated me either. She just thought I was obnoxious, which was accurate about fifty percent of the time. Maybe seventy percent.”

“Did you tell her you’re at Redmond now too?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Letting his head drop back, Gil stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I was going to, but . . . then I just didn’t. Maybe because I know her, and if I’d told her tonight, she’d probably spend the weekend mapping out routes around campus to avoid me.

“And I really don’t want her to avoid me,” he added with a resigned sigh.

Fred heaved himself out of his seat and brought his plate to the sink, giving Gil a couple moments of silence while he washed up the dishes. Wiping wet hands on a towel, his friend turned around and leaned back against the counter, eyeing him.

“Is this going to fuck you up again?”

“Maybe.”

Probably.

“Damn.” Fred threw the towel to the side, mouth twisting in a wry grin. “I really liked Diana. Cute girl. Funny. Great legs. Too bad, I’d have liked to get to know her a little better.”

Gil sat up, feeling guilty. “We can still hang out. Diana is cool, and Phil seemed cool. Anne and I can be . . .”

“Cool?”

“Shut up.” He aimed a kick at his friend’s shin, but Fred danced out of reach with a laugh. “Yeah, we can be cool.” He waved away a decade of animosity as he stood, cracking his back. “We’re twenty-four—high school was almost six years ago. It’ll be fine.”

“What could go wrong?” muttered Fred, sotto voce, as he disappeared down the hall toward his bedroom.

Well aware his friend was being sarcastic; Gil nonetheless couldn’t help but feel a sense of optimism. His rivalry with Anne was in the distant past and they were both adults now. It shouldn’t be that hard to put aside their differences and figure out how to be friends, especially since it looked like they’d be hanging out some time in the near future. So what if he was still wildly attracted to her and had never quite forgotten the feel of her soft, perfect mouth under his?

He knew how to compartmentalize. It would be fine.