The Man Plan by Tracy Anne Warren Page B

James. In all the years she’d known him, they’d never fought, not once. But she supposed there had to be a first time for everything.
    She sighed and began to clean up, screwing tops back onto paint tubes, washing her brushes, covering her mixing palette with a damp cloth to keep the unused blobs of paints from turning hard. A glance at her Kit-Cat wall clock, with his cute back-and-forth eyes and swinging tail, showed it was nearly five in theafternoon. Time to grab a quick shower and slip into her party clothes.
    Today was the Fourth of July, and no matter how low she felt, she wasn’t missing Neil and Josh’s party. Certainly not after making such a point of telling James that’s where she’d be.
    She had her doubts about the evening, but perhaps while she was there she’d manage to have a bit of fun—eating and drinking, chatting and watching the fireworks explode into colorful starbursts in the night sky. Perhaps she would also manage to forget James for a little while. Forget how horribly she’d botched their last outing and how desperately she’d missed him since.
    As the week had passed, she’d thought about calling him a dozen times a day, but something always held her back. At first she’d hoped he would change his mind about the concert and come knocking on her door. But as the hours went by and it became increasingly clear he wasn’t going to show up, she’d phoned Fred to ask if he’d like the tickets.
    Without James, she no longer wanted to go to the concert.
    But Fred wasn’t home, so Neil and Josh agreed to take the tickets off her hands, offering massive thanks and pledges of eternal gratitude for the unexpected bounty.
    After that, the days had slipped by with the speed of a sloth climbing a tree. One day became two. Two melted into three, and so forth until she realized the whole week was nearly over.
    This morning she’d decided she would wait until the weekend to contact James. If he didn’t drop over or call by Sunday, she’d pop up to his penthouse and put an end to their rift.
    She may have lost the battle, she reminded herself, but she was a long way from losing the war.
    Forty-five minutes later, attired in a powder blue sundress bedecked with cheery yellow daisies—a dress that made her look a lot perkier than she felt—Ivy set off for Bushwick.
    The party was in full swing by the time she arrived. She took off her sunglasses and tucked them into her purse as she squeezed down the already-crowded corridor toward her friends’ apartment.
    Inside, she paused for a moment to get her bearings, searched for a familiar face. Loud salsa music throbbed like a heartbeat, the floorboards vibrating beneath her sandals. The air smelled of warm bodies, nachos, and Dos Equis.
    This year’s party theme—A Fourth of July Fiesta.
    Neil found her before she found him, pulling her up into a rib-crushing embrace that made her giggle. “Cupcake, you came,” he declared, giving her a quick, smacking kiss on the lips. “I was starting to wonder if you’d had a last-minute change of plans.”
    She shook her head. “Got caught on the train. It was a madhouse.”
    “Well, now that you’re here, you can relax. Grab a beer out of the cooler and settle in. Josh is outside grilling fajitas. Your choice of chicken, beef, or Tex-Mex vegetarian.” He grinned and gestured toward the openwindow that led to a box-sized fire escape they’d euphemistically dubbed “the patio.”
    “Sides and dessert are across the hall in Lu’s place,” he continued, referring to their neighbor, Lulu Lancaster.
    A leggy bombshell with artfully dyed blond hair, Lulu was a dancer like Fred, though not exactly like Fred since she did chorus work instead of ballet. Ivy had met her only a couple of times in passing, but she seemed nice, with her Queens accent and no-nonsense attitude.
    Neil picked up a trio of empties off a nearby coffee table. “Trying to keep things at a dull roar,” he explained. “Go mingle. Go