“Isaac, I need your help,” Taylor said, sitting down across from him at the island in Isaac’s kitchen.
“Yeah, I gathered that from your incredibly demanding text message. What do you need help with?” his older brother asked, not bothering to look up from his newspaper.
“With Quin,” Taylor said exasperatedly, immediately annoyed with Isaac for not knowing that already. Taylor had done little in the past week other than complain about the fact that Quin hadn’t called him yet. He had found her store. Hell, he had remembered what her store was called, something she had only mentioned once during their first meeting. He had gone to her store, hadn’t tried to get her into bed. And yet, he still left with nothing more than her telling him that things were going to be on her terms from then on. As if that meant anything. Taylor wasn’t stupid and knew that was just her polite way of telling him to leave her the hell alone.
“You gave her your card. What else can you do?” Isaac shrugged.
“I have to get her to go to dinner with me. She has to see that I don’t just want sex,” Taylor told him.
“But… you do only want sex,” Isaac stated confusedly.
“Well yeah now! But only because I don’t know anything else about her. But, I think there’s potential for me to want more. A lot more. But I’m never going to know that for sure if she won’t agree to a date,” Taylor said, “And I told her that I would wait until she called me, but I can’t wait any more.”
“But you don’t want to look creepy and desperate.”
“Essentially,” Taylor started, “So will you help me or not?”
“I don’t know what you think I’m going to do that’s going to be so helpful. It’s been a few years since I was in the field,” Isaac admitted. Taylor rolled his eyes.
“I just need a sounding board. Do you think you can handle that?” he said, continuing before Isaac had the chance to respond, “So, I need to find a way to get her to come to dinner without knowing that she’s meeting me.”
“This is the beginning of an episode of CSI, I swear…” Isaac sighed, rubbing his eyes in frustration, “Taylor, you can’t trick her into meeting you. She’ll just leave when she realizes what you did. You’ll end up sitting there in the restaurant by yourself for hours when she came in, took one look at you and then left.”
“That’s why this has to be more creative,” Taylor said with a smile, “It can’t be at a restaurant. I have to get her to my apartment.”
“I’m assuming you already have a plan to get her there.”
“Of course I do!” Taylor boasted, looking incredibly happy with himself, “I’m thinking that I’ll send her an invitation to the opening of a new restaurant. She’ll show up, be impressed with my ingenuity, and stay for dinner.”
“You already had a plan! Why did you even need me? I have things to do!” Isaac exclaimed exasperatedly, getting up and dumping the rest of his cup of coffee into the sink as if to prove his point.
“What part of sounding board don’t you understand?” Taylor replied, “Do you think it’ll work?”
“I think she’s going to leave,” Isaac told him, “What is it with you and this girl? Just let it go.”
“I can’t, Ike. I just… I need to get to know her better. That’s all.”
“Yeah, in the Biblical sense,” Isaac snorted as he put the newspaper back in order, “Look, if you want to go to all the trouble to make a fake invitation and cook a big dinner, go ahead and give me and Becky a call when it fails. We’d love a free meal.”
“Fuck you,” Taylor spat, “Expect a victorious phone call in a few days.”
“Whatever,” Isaac sighed before going about his business, leaving Taylor to let himself out. On his way back to his place, he stopped by Office Max and picked up the entirely too expensive InDesign, justifying the purchase to himself because he knew they could use it to improve their website eventually. He got settled in on his couch with his laptop and loaded the software before spending the entire rest of the day playing with it and creating the invitation to the opening of Upstairs, his fantastic newly opening fake restaurant. Taylor became a man obsessed, working diligently on the design for hours, making sure that it looked professional and like something Quin would actually want to go to. By the time he’d finished, it was clean, sleek, and touted itself as the best new Italian bistro in TriBeCa. As he carefully wrote the invitation to Quin Harper and addressed it to her store, he knew that all he had left to do was cook one hell of a dinner on Saturday night and hope that she would show up.
The following Saturday, the rich aromas of the spaghetti carbonara he’d prepared were wafting from his open windows. Two glasses of the best Semillon he could find were poured and waiting on the table along with some homemade breadsticks and a damned fine Caesar salad, if he did say so himself. Taylor had always enjoyed cooking for himself, but had made sure to pull out all the stops to be sure that if Quin showed up, she’d have a truly wonderful meal to eat.
As the clock showed 8:30, a half hour past the time the invitation had said to arrive, he was about to lose all hope and eat dinner alone, when he heard someone shouting out on the street. A smile crossed over his features when he went to the window to see Quin standing down there, staring at the building and looking angry.
“Taylor Hanson, you are in so much trouble!” she shouted.
“I’ll buzz you up,” he grinned, leaving her standing there red faced and feeling more and more confident as each second passed. Not only was she there, but she was dressed to impress in a very expensive looking and low cut dress and some insanely high heels.
“She wants me,” he smiled to himself before pressing the button to let her in, “I knew it.”