“That would certainly put a damper on the homework,” Julian said.
“You’re telling me.” She lifted her trusty travel mug, still warm in her be-mittened hand. “At least I remembered coffee today.”
He made a face. “I hope that’s not the crap you sell at that cafe.”
“Lord, no. I made this at home.”
“And this is somehow better than when you make it at Java Mama?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“I actually purchase good beans, so yes, it’s absolutely better. Taste it if you don’t believe me,” she said, taking the lid off and shoving the cup under his nose.
“I believe you,” Julian said, holding up his hands. He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “I don’t think I’d be able to taste the difference, anyway. I don’t drink coffee.”
“Weirdo.” Beatrice replaced the lid and took a sip herself. “But wait, what were you buying coffee for, then? Last week, I mean?”
He sighed a great sigh and shoved his hands back in his pockets. “My sister. She’s been crashing with me.”
“She enjoys bad coffee?”
“Hell, no. I had hoped she’d get sick of the coffee and get motivated to figure herself out. It sounds really petty now that I say it out loud.”
“I mean,” Beatrice said, “if it worked—”
“Well, I was strong-armed into buying her a coffee maker. And I’m still sleeping on the floor. So, no. It didn’t work. But what am I going to do? She’s my sister. I can’t not bail her out.”
The train rattled in, brakes squealing. People on the platform shuffled towards the edge so they could dash on board.
Beatrice adjusted her bag, nervous. She liked talking to Julian, even if he seemed annoyed most of the time. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but his annoyance didn’t seem entirely genuine. She’d gotten him to laugh, once. And she could have sworn the last time he’d called her weird—in the coffee shop when he accepted her pastry peace offering—it had sounded more like an endearment than an insult.
“Do you want to sit together?” she blurted out. “I won’t be great company because of the homework, but it’s better than sitting next to strangers, right?”
Julian blinked at her. He was going to call her crazy and find a different car to ride in. She felt like an idiot. Of course his annoyance with her was genuine. Why wouldn’t it be?
She flushed, and she was about to take back the offer when Julian spoke.
“Okay,” he said. “Sure. Why not?”
Eight
There were a lot of reasons why Julian shouldn’t agree to sit next to Beatrice on the train. Starting with the fact he’d been doing his best to avoid her since their run-in at Java Mama. His fixation on her had gotten worse after that. He’d found himself thinking about her at random times. For no reason at all. Which was a really bad sign.
There was a thrift store down the street from his apartment with two mannequins decked out in the most bizarre outfits, and every time Julian passed it, he couldn’t help but think of Beatrice and her terrible-yet-endearing fashion choices. He’d stopped going down Cyprus Street entirely because he kept glancing in the window every time he passed Java Mama to see if she was working.
He couldn’t get her face out of his brain. He’d even broken out his sketchbook in a fit of desperation, hoping if he got her features down on paper, he could get them out of his brain and forget about her.
But either he was rustier at drawing than he’d feared, or the idea was complete bullshit. No matter how much he sketched, her image stuck in his mind: The slightly upturned nose. The curve of her lips when she smiled. Those stark, brown freckles scattered over her skin like paint splatters, from her hairline down until they disappeared under her collar . . .
Julian was dangerously close to becoming enamored of her. He’d avoided getting involved with anyone since dropping out of high school. He couldn’t justify dragging some innocent girl into the overwhelming chaos of his life. Hell, he barely sustained a halfway healthy relationship with his own sister.
He figured the best cure for this budding interest in Beatrice would be to stay away. She was too kind. Too brave. And he was too lonely. It would be easy to forget all the reasons why dating anyone was a bad idea. Especially a girl like Beatrice, who was evidently dealing with her fair share of chaos at home already. She shouldn’t have to be concerned about Julian’s crap making things worse for her. And Julian’s crap always seemed to make things worse for people he cared about. If he didn’t nip this thing in the bud immediately, he was only going to let her down. Keeping his distance was the smart thing to do. For both of them.
Which was obviously why he’d arranged to sit next to her for the next hour and a half.
Sure.
Besides, she had a boyfriend. Which meant the only person’s feelings Julian would be risking if he kept hanging around her were his own. And he was confident he could deal with those himself.
Like, ninety percent confident.
She had a giant statistics textbook balanced with a notebook in her lap and was frowning as she scratched in equations and muttered to herself. Julian didn’t know what had been wrong with him in that study room when he decided she wasn’t pretty. He must’ve been thrown off by her hideous sweater. She did have a knack for showing up in the most appalling colors. Today it was a frayed wool peacoat in what might best be described as a mustard yellow, if the mustard had gone a little moldy. Mauve flowers with pea soup–colored leaves wound around the cuffs and hem. It was a color combo that, realistically, could only be marketed to the colorblind.
And yet here was Beatrice, walking around in it like she was actually fond of the thing. Which was maybe why her whole deal was so captivating.
“Dang it,” Beatrice muttered, shifting her books around. “I know I had my pencil here a second ago.”
She had, in fact, stashed it behind her ear so she could punch numbers into her calculator. Julian had noticed because he’d been watching her out of the corner of his eye while pretending to play a game on his phone.
Christ. He was hopeless.
Careful not to catch her wild hair between his fingers, Julian plucked the offending pencil from behind her ear. He doodled a tiny smiley face in the margin of her notebook before dropping it in the open seam of her textbook.
“Oh my God,” she said, clapping a hand to her forehead. “I’m an idiot.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Julian said, struggling not to laugh. “I once had a pencil behind my ear, another hooked on the collar of my shirt, and still got a third out of my bag because I’d lost track of the first two.”
“It doesn’t count if they were all different types of artist-y pencils.”
“They weren’t. They were cheap mechanical pencils for school.”
“I guess that’s pretty bad,” Beatrice conceded. “I once had four of them stuck in my hair and didn’t realize until I asked my friend to borrow one of her pencils and she gave me a Look. That was pretty embarrassing.”
“To be fair,” Julian said, eyeing her nest of hair, “it seems like it would be pretty easy to lose stuff in there.”
“Mmm,” Beatrice agreed. “Once, when I was brushing it out after school, a whole family of pigeons fell out.”
Julian snorted so loudly a few heads turned in their direction.
“We had a devil of a time getting them out of the apartment,” Beatrice said, only the barest crack in her deadpan. “Had to get the neighbors in to help. We were cleaning pigeon droppings off the furniture for weeks.”
Julian had doubled over in his seat with laughter, his hood pulled over his face. “Stop,” he begged. “Please. I’m dying.”
Beatrice giggled and patted him companionably on the shoulder. “You okay there, bud?”
“You’re so weird,” Julian said, getting himself somewhat under control. He wiped tears from his eyes. “A family of pigeons . . . Good grief . . .”
She straightened her homework, smiling
smugly to herself. “Don’t worry, I’m more careful about sticking my head into pigeon nests now.”
Julian shook his head at her, still grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hung out with anyone simply joking around. Before he fell into Beatrice’s orbit, he couldn’t have said when was the last time anyone had made him laugh this much. Or at all.
Oh man. This was such a bad idea.
No. It was fine. He was perfectly capable of just being friends with strange girls with bizarre senses of fashion. He’d been starved of friends lately. It wouldn’t hurt to have just one, right?
“So tell me about this art thing you’re working at,” Beatrice said, writing out another problem from her book.
“Aren’t you busy math-ing?”
She laughed. “I can listen and math at the same time. I already learned the concept from another class, so this is pretty easy, thank God.”
“Sure,” Julian said, frowning at the columns of numbers and symbols marching down the page. It looked complicated to him, but he’d never paid much attention in math. He’d never understood how anyone could expect him to sit there with a pencil in his hand and paper in front of him and not draw. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Art place, art place, art place,” Beatrice prodded, kicking him gently with her floral hiking books with each repeat.
“Good grief, woman. Fine,” Julian said, swinging his leg out of the way as he fought off a grin. “It’s not all that special or anything. They do a lot of art classes for kids, and they have a few studios they rent out for local artists, or artists in from out of town who need a place to, you know, art. And they’ve got a gallery they’re always promoting a ton of local artists in. They do a showcase for the kids a few times a year, and they’ll drag the older kids out to the Met periodically, which is pretty cool. A lot of the kids come from homes where that wouldn’t really be an option for them.”
“That sounds really cool,” said Beatrice.
“I mean, I’m just cleaning shit,” Julian said. “But if I have to clean shit for a living, that’s the place I’d want to do it.”
“Sounds more interesting than selling people terrible coffee,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “And didn’t you say you’d be teaching a couple classes, too?”
“I don’t actually know about that, yet. I’m not really qualified for it. I think the guy who hired me thinks my art skills are better than they are. His point of reference was from before I stopped drawing.” He flexed his left hand a few times, proving to himself the pain wasn’t as bad as he remembered. “It doesn’t matter. I’m happy to work there at all.”
She tapped the back of his hand lightly with the eraser of her pencil. Julian’s stomach did a weird kind of lurch in response. “Does your hand still bother you?”
“Not most of the time.”
“But you never got back into drawing?”
He lifted his gaze to meet hers. She watched him so intently, his stomach lurched again. She had the most incredible eyes. He’d never known anyone who could make him feel like they were so soundly in his corner just by looking at him.
“Sorry.” She shook her head, and her gaze snapped back to her homework, severing the connection. “I’m being nosy again. You’re allowed to tell me to shut up. It just seems like art is something you’re still into.”
“I wanted to be a comic artist when I was a kid,” Julian said, rubbing his thumb over the pale, inch-long scar at the base of his palm. “Or do graphic novels. I used to do this dumb ongoing strip where my sister and I were a couple of reindeer who were always getting into trouble. I thought I could really do it, too. Make comics for a living. I went to this fancy-ass high school with an intense art program, and I had all these plans to get into a great art school and . . . Well. Then life happened.” He shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets as he brushed memories of that time away. “It . . . didn’t work out.”
“So then you settle for cleaning floors?” Beatrice’s pencil had stopped making figures on the paper. The look she gave him was so sad, he wanted to apologize for bumming her out.
“It’s not as tragic as you’re making it sound.”
“Still,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He smiled, hoping it didn’t look as bitter as it felt, and tried to make a joke out of it. “Show me an artist in any field who hasn’t had to take some shitty job to support their habit.”
“It just sucks when life takes a crap on what you want for yourself,” Beatrice said, scribbling a jagged little daisy in the corner of her notebook, close to the smiley face Julian had drawn. “It’s not fair.”
Julian shrugged, not sure how to respond. She was being too kind again. Too empathetic. He didn’t know what to do with that. Fabiana was the only person he had left who gave a damn about him, and she didn’t exactly have a nurturing personality. Sympathy wasn’t something he was used to.
“You know, you could probably still do it if you really wanted,” Beatrice said, looking over at him again. “Comics. You just need a plan. And some patience.”
“And a crap-ton of luck,” Julian put in.
“Or a crap-ton of hard work and a modicum of luck,” Beatrice said, with the finality of someone reciting a mantra.
“Maybe.” In his experience, if your luck was shitty enough, it didn’t matter how many plans you made, or how patient you were, or how hard you worked. Nothing was going to pan out the way you wanted.
He shook his head. Time to change the subject. “Hey, you never told me what you’re majoring in.”
She hesitated for a split second, debating, he assumed, whether to let the abrupt change of subject slide. “Marketing,” she said, somewhat stiffly. “Nothing so interesting as art.”
“Are you a fan of marketing?” Julian asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“It’s okay,” Beatrice said, frowning as she cut a few sharp numbers into the page. “I do pretty well in the classes. And I know I can get a good job after I graduate. I have a few contacts already, and I think a couple of my professors would be happy to help out if they can. And it’s not pouring coffee. That’s a real plus for me.”
“You don’t sound that excited about it.”
She made a noise close to a laugh. “I guess . . . I don’t really feel like it matters. My dreams are kind of mundane. I want a little house of my own and a steady paycheck. I don’t care what I do, job-wise, so long as it gets me to a place where I can . . .” She made an empty gesture with her hand, the pencil cutting a yellow line between her fingers. “Where I can just . . . breathe, I guess. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Julian said, slumping down in his seat and watching the phone lines loop past the window above the brightly-colored foliage. It wasn’t so far off from what he wanted for himself, really. “Your dream is stability.”
“Something like that.”
Julian smiled ruefully at the power lines. That left him out of the picture, then. Stability and Julian didn’t get along. Never had.
Not that it mattered. Because Beatrice had a boyfriend. And they were just going to be pals. End of story. He didn’t need to feel a pang of regret at her words. He wasn’t going to date her. He didn’t want to date her.
He didn’t.
Nine
Julian stood against a pillar at Grand Central Terminal, tapping his pencil against the cover of his sketchbook. A lot of people were on the platform with him, waiting for their train to pull in, but the pillar Julian leaned against meant he wasn’t in too much danger of getting jostled. This time of day, the whole building was packed. At least the platforms themselves didn’t attract too many sight-seeing tourists.
Julian chewed on the inside of his cheek, scowling at the cover of his sketchbook. His stomach was tight with the idea of seeing Beatrice again. Even though she probably wouldn’t end up taking the same train. She seemed like the type of scholastic fanatic to stay late at the libr
ary poring over great tomes by candlelight. He didn’t know why candlelight would be illuminating a modern library, but that was the image he rolled around in his mind like a hard caramel.
It wouldn’t be a terrible illustration idea, actually.
Not with Beatrice at the table, of course. A witch character, maybe. An old one, who didn’t look like Beatrice in the least. Or some kind of anthropomorphic bird . . .
He opened the sketchbook to a new page, balked at the blankness of it, and snapped it closed again. He shut his eyes tight and made himself breathe, ignoring the anxious fluttering in his chest. He was putting too much pressure on himself. He knew that. But knowing didn’t take the pressure off.
Mr. Fisk had pulled Julian aside almost the second he walked in the art center’s door this morning and told him he’d decided to put Julian in as a temporary teacher for a class of preschoolers and two kindergarten classes. Mr. Fisk and two of the other teachers had been swapping teaching duties until they found a permanent replacement, and they thought the kids were getting sick of the parade of teachers. All Julian had to do was make sure the kids didn’t eat their crayons, according to Mr. Fisk. He asked Julian to shadow him for the next couple of days to get a handle on how things worked before Julian took over.
If Julian’s trial run with the kids went well—and if he could get together a portfolio by the end of the year—Mr. Fisk had said he’d like to make the job permanent.
He even pointed Julian to one of the center’s empty studios and told him he was welcome to use any of the art supplies there to execute the pieces he’d need.
Julian had felt equal parts thrilled and overwhelmed all day. And apparently the overwhelmed feeling had decided it was more important, if he couldn’t even look at a blank fucking piece of paper.
He took a breath, opened the sketchbook again, and put a big, random scribble at the top right of the page. There. Now he couldn’t ruin anything, because the page already looked terrible.
Take that, inner critic.
He boxed out a rectangle below the scribble and roughed in a general shape. Sketchy lines formed tall shelves, filling the bulk of the rectangle. Toward the bottom, behind a table stacked with hesitant indications of books and scrolls, he put an indistinct figure wearing an off-kilter triangle on its head. He put lines for candles all over the table, and then lightly scribbled in some shadows at the top of the image. It looked like a scribbly mess, but it was a mess he thought he could do something with.
Next Stop Love, #1 Page 7