Page 5 of Falling into Place

Chapter Three

Carly

You won’t believe the joint business pitch Sasha and I came up with. Not quite as bananas as that reptile café in Midtown, but close. I can’t wait to tell you about it, let me know if you can talk sometime this week. Miss you.

—Text message from Carly Porter to Benjamin Wheeler

“He’s in.”

Sasha’s announcement came the second Carly opened her apartment door. Half an hour ago, she’d sent a text:

Sasha: you home?

Carly: Yep.

Sasha: I’m coming over and I Have News

There was only one he she could mean by that. Rather, there was only one he that mattered, if Sasha had been thinking about the plan they’d cooked up as incessantly as Carly.

She’d been a little hesitant when Sasha first blurted out, We should do our own kind of reality show!

that night at Variety. It sounded pretty out there and more than a little complicated to coordinate.

But Sasha had kept at it, texting Carly every few days with updates about things she was working on—assessing local business interest, meeting with the editorial team about content placement and the like—to make sure the plan could work.

It was when Sasha suggested a formal partnership with Mode to dress the chosen bachelor that Carly decided to go all in.

A collaboration like this could be just the type of innovative idea to prove to Mai and Kyle she was someone worth investing in.

If all went according to plan, this could give LiveOKC the bump it needed and land Carly a coveted permanent position at Mode. And over the last few weeks, all the logistics had fallen into place nicely ... except one.

They had to find their bachelor.

“You found someone?”

Sasha danced her way into Carly’s apartment, pausing when she twirled around and landed in the kitchen. She dropped her hands and shook her head. “God, I always feel like such a slob when I see your place. How do you keep it so perfect all the time? It’s like a showroom.”

“Focus, Sasha. Who’s the bachelor?”

Her friend grinned as she leaned her hips back against the counter and crossed one ankle over the other. “None other than my very own brother, Brooks Martin.”

Carly’s mouth dropped open. “ Brooks? How’d you get him to agree to that?”

“He was happy to help.”

Carly cocked a disbelieving brow.

“Fine,” Sasha said. “I bribed him with food, beer, and guilt. Macy helped.”

“Ah.” Carly smiled a little. The closeness between siblings had always been sweet and entertaining to watch for an only child like her.

Based on her mother’s less-than-stellar parenting style, it was probably best for society as a whole that Carly never had a brother or sister, but still. Part of her had always wanted one.

“Your brother might be the last person I ever expected to be part of this.” And not necessarily because he was a bad choice.

Brooks just wasn’t someone who had crossed Carly’s mind over the last several years.

After he left for college when she and Sasha were about to start their senior year, it sort of felt like he’d dropped off the face of the earth.

“Does he even need me? A stylist, I mean?”

Sasha barked out a laugh so loud, Carly’s cat, Pepper, fell off his perch on the back of the couch. “Boy, does he.”

Carly’s eyes went wide. “That bad?”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know you love extensive makeovers more than the picky folks who already think they’re as good as runway models.”

It was true. Carly loved witnessing a complete transformation—not only on the outside but also what dressing well could do for a person’s confidence.

Fashion had been one of her only sources of it growing up, even when she’d had to get creative.

Back then she couldn’t risk spending much money, so she’d become a master at creating secondhand style.

She loved teaching clients how to dress for different body types and thrived when presented with a challenge.

That first look of awe tossed over their shoulder that said Oh my gosh, I look .

.. good? was the best part, hands down.

If Brooks really needed that much help, it was proof good fashion sense didn’t run in families.

Sasha would never need help from a company like Mode.

On the contrary, sometimes Carly’s ideas stemmed from something her friend wore.

For as long as they’d been friends, which bloomed somewhere in the middle of fourth grade, Sasha’d stood out.

While she’d never turned as many heads, Carly always worked to put her best foot forward when it came to her appearance, too.

Like it or not, it was people’s first impression of her.

Even during her day job, where she walked into the office only to sit at the computer and work with numbers, she never had a hair out of place.

Her therapist would probably say Carly’s tendency toward perfection was a way of concealing what really happened behind the aging, paint-chipped front door of her childhood home, but that didn’t matter now. She was independent, successful, and happy, which was more than a lot of people could say.

“If you want to know the truth,” Sasha said, likely interpreting Carly’s musings as reluctance, which wasn’t wrong, “I’m doing this to revitalize our business, yes. But I could have found another guy. Macy and I decided to ask Brooks because we think he needs this, too.”

Brooks needed what? Help meeting women?

That was absurd.

Ridiculous.

Impossible.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s spent the last decade and a half of his life in school and hospitals. Don’t get me wrong—I’m proud of him. But he’s not the same guy he was back in high school.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Carly said without thinking. Yes, teenage Carly’d had a mild crush on him, along with the majority of their friends, but even then she’d had enough sense to recognize Brooks had some growing up to do.

Though at the time, it only seemed fair to give the Martin siblings a pass for temporary behavior changes after losing their mom so suddenly. Sasha had been sixteen and Brooks seventeen. Carly didn’t know the oldest, Macy, very well but knew she’d been closer to twenty or twenty-one at the time.

Sasha had refused to come out of her room for a month after the accident, and when she’d returned, she’d made it clear she didn’t want to talk about it.

At all.

Brooks, on the other hand, handled the loss of his mom in a stereotypical, dramatic Hollywood fashion. He went off the deep end and pivoted from popular-but-straitlaced basketball star to a partying risk-taker who rarely said no.

“For the most part, no,” Sasha said, bringing Carly back to the question about comparing past Brooks with now.

“He nearly destroyed himself his senior year, and I’m thankful he put that behavior behind him.

But it’s like he went too far in the other direction, you know?

All he does is work. He hardly smiles anymore.

He’ll always answer our calls but never calls us himself.

He has no social life to speak of. He’s young and a doctor, for God’s sake.

He’s finally out of training and has some free time, though you wouldn’t know it talking to him.

He should be on dates every weekend. Instead, he got a cat and started a garden. Macy thinks he’s depressed.”

“Hey, I have a cat. I’m not depressed.”

“You go out. You have friends. It’s not the same. I’m just worried about him, you know?”

It was hard to picture Brooks as his sister described him.

After high school Carly had moved to Nebraska for almost ten years, so she’d missed a huge chunk of his life.

But still, an image of him sitting alone in a dark living room was all wrong.

He was too small there, the darkness larger than him, and that wasn’t the guy she remembered.

With all that dark hair, his long, lean body, and a killer smile, he’d filled every room to the brim with charisma and energy.

He brought jokes and fun and excitement, no matter how ill-advised.

When Brooks Martin sauntered through the doorway, everyone knew it, whether they laid eyes on him or not.

When he was nearby, people could feel it.

“Wow. I just ... I had no idea.”

“He doesn’t really let Macy or me in anymore, but I’m hoping it will be different with you. I’ll be honest: You have your work cut out for you. But I know you’ll work that Carly Porter magic and transform more than just his wardrobe.”

“The wardrobe’s the easy part,” Carly said, and Sasha laughed.

“Not this time.”

Carly frowned. “Now you’re making me nervous.”

Sasha waved a hand. “Nah, you got this. I promise. Plus he’s not married, so there’s no chance you’ll be accused of being a home-wrecker.”

“Thank God,” Carly said, thinking of all the training she’d just finished retaking, punctuated with her signature on Mode’s new code of conduct. “I don’t think I could afford another scandal. Even a completely made-up one.”

“You and I both know you’re the last person who would hook up with a client, and deep down, Mai knows it, too.

In a few months, that awful Princeton woman will be the last thing on your mind as Mai’s offering you a promotion and a raise, and you’ll never have to use a calculator again. Now, let’s go celebrate, yeah?”

“Yes. Let’s.”

“Where to?”

“Hideout?”

“Perfect.”

That evening, after returning home and changing into sweatpants and a T-shirt, Carly settled onto the couch with her laptop.

She unlocked her phone and pulled up the contact Sasha had shared a few hours ago bearing Brooks’s information, complete with his email address, phone number, and an adorable photo of him making a silly face to the camera.

This was the Brooks she remembered—energetic and fun, if a little overconfident, but just enough that it tipped more to the side of appealing than off-putting.

He looked young in the photo, though she couldn’t tell how young.

It was hard to imagine this new version of the man Sasha had described earlier that evening.

Hardly smiles.

No social life.

Depressed.

Carly homed in on those hazel eyes, dark and bottomless but that had somehow always been so expressive and full of mischief, and wondered how such a transformation was possible.

On second thought, losing both parents in the span of a few years would probably do that to a lot of people ... even if the response was a little delayed.

She opened a blank email and glanced at her cat. “Are we ready for this?”

Pepper stared at her with yellow eyes, flicking his tail in the air.

“Show a little excitement, will you? If this goes well, it could be our ticket to our dream job. And if I only have one job to worry about, that means I get to be home more often with you. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Pepper blinked.

“I thought so,” she said, and started typing.

Brooks Martin as her client. Well, this would certainly be interesting.