Love and Miss Communication by Elyssa Friedland Read Free Book Online

Without—gasp—the help of a wireless connection, they found each other at Stanford Medical School (albeit over a cadaver dissection). After his training, Rick, an East-Coaster from birth, convinced Stasia to relocate with him. He became an ENT with a successful private practice on Park Avenue while she was slowly rising up the ranks in the research department of a top pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey.
    After her announcement at Paul’s wedding, Evie knew they were planning to start a family. It was natural to picture Rick as a father. He didn’t seem to mind when Evie crashed their date nights and was quick to offer up the guy’s perspective when she needed relationship advice. Plus Rick helped people for a living, even if it was only from the discomfort of deviated septums. That was more than she could say for Caroline’s husband, whose daily task at work appeared to be printing money. It wasn’t really her place to get high and mighty about professions, since working at Baker Smith hardly likened her to Mother Teresa. But still.
    Her office phone rang. Tracy.
    “Hey, I just saw a missed call from you. What’s up? I’m on lunch.”
    “Nothing. Just annoyed. Stupid Luke from Paul’s wedding. He hasn’t e-mailed me yet.”
    “Evie, you are killing me. I saw him. He’s cute, but you can do better. Didn’t you say he was kind of a jerky banker type?”
    “I don’t remember that.” (She did.) “And I hate to ask the obvious, but if I can do better, then shouldn’t he be banging downmy door? And by the way, when you did see him at the wedding, you said he was adorable.”
    “Uch, never mind what I said. Hormones talking. Stop checking your e-mail and think about where you want us to take you out to dinner for your long-overdue birthday dinner. We thought maybe the Beatrice Inn. Caroline can get us in.” Evie had canceled on two previously scheduled celebrations because of work obligations. Things had a shot of getting quieter over the summer, but Evie wasn’t much in the mood for merriment.
    She chose to completely ignore Tracy’s attempt to change the subject.
    “In my entire adult life, I’ve only met one person that I’ve truly loved and who loved me. You know I never should have given him that stupid ultimatum. I could be happily—”
    “Happily what?” Tracy cut her off. “Happily dating? You can’t happily date for the rest of your life. You said you wanted a real commitment. Marriage. A wedding. Kids. You deserve that, and breaking up with Jack was the right thing to do.”
    “I guess you’re right.” Evie decided it was easier to agree than to draw out this debate again, which she had had with each of her girlfriends at least a dozen times.
    “I am right. But I gotta go. The bell just rang.”
    Evie rested the phone in its cradle and opened up her lower file cabinet. She shifted a few heavy-duty hanging folders to the front, and pulled out the silver picture frame, now badly tarnished, that used to sit to the right of her computer. It housed a picture of her and Jack from a Halloween culinary event. Jack was one of the featured chefs. For a costume, the farthest he would venture was letting Evie attach feathers and silly pins to his toque. She, on the other hand, went all out and dressed as a sexy version of Remy, the chef from the Disney movie Ratatouille .
    She’d met Jack just a month before the Halloween party atthe Soho Grand bar while out with the girls celebrating Stasia’s move back from the West Coast. In the swanky lobby, she had flopped down happily in between Stasia and Caroline on a velour banquette and quickly downed a glass of Cabernet. She relaxed and imbibed, taken in by a sensual red diptych hanging next to the bar. That’s when she noticed Jack. He was getting up from a nearby table and shaking hands with a pretty young woman holding a tape recorder and a heavily inked cameraman. Evie was instantly curious.
    After about an hour of sneaking glances at each