by Lily Foster
I crossed my arms over my chest, looked away and pursed my lips. What could I say? That I’m hurt? That I don’t know what’s going on, that I feel young and naïve in your presence, that I want you to really want me—not some version of a woman you were devoted to once upon a time?
“I can’t read your mind, Veronica, but I know what was said back there hurt you.”
I whispered, biting back tears and hating myself for being so affected. “I’m not Kasia.”
He shook his head, never once taking his eyes off me. “You’re not. You’re entirely different, Veronica, and I want to get to know you.”
“You’re still in love with her. I knew it when I saw you together.”
He stepped back, jamming his hands into his pockets as he looked up to the stars. “She was the first girl I ever loved. And yes, it was epic…One of the best experiences in my life.” Looking back at me, he said, “And yes, there’s a part of me that will always love her. But that’s very different from being in love with a woman. It took a while for me to get over Kasia, but I did…A long time ago. I may be an idiot but I’m not fool enough to waste my life pining away for a happily married woman with four children.” When I gave him nothing, he moved in closer and asked softly, “Have you ever been in love?”
“I have to go,” I said, pushing past him to get into the car, closing the door right behind me.
I heard him rap on the roof of the car twice, the driver’s signal to pull away. Rachel busied herself eating pastel colored macarons as I sat there drowning in sorrow. Have I ever been in love? The word no sprang to mind the moment he posed the question. A high school boyfriend that I dated for the blink of an eye—he didn’t count. Larson and French? That wasn’t love. Both of those relationships were born of my own greed. I was in it for the conquest, for my need to be taken care of and to be wanted.
No, I’ve never been in love.
The realization left me feeling hollow.
She might have closed the door in my face but this wasn’t anywhere near close to over. I don’t back down that easily.
I wanted that woman.
I was going to have her.
So I was leaning on the hood of my car, waiting outside the store drinking coffee that very next morning, hoping she wasn’t the kind of girl who slept in late on Sundays. When eight turned to nine and then nine turned to nine-thirty, I was on the verge of ringing her buzzer. That would mean ringing every one of the six buzzers in the building’s vestibule, as none of them were marked with names. Thankfully the door swung open as I was contemplating the pros and cons of waking her up on her day off. Dressed in a snug sports top and leggings, her hair pulled up into a simple ponytail, she took my breath away.
“It’s a little cold for that outfit, no?”
“Well, well, well,” she said, looking down at one of those ridiculous sports gadgets on her wrist, “if it isn’t my favorite stalker.”
“I’m satisfied with being your favorite anything.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just wanted to see you…We left things unfinished last night.”
“Um, I’m taking a run, so…”
I was in step beside her. “You think that’s wise for your long-term breast health?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, laughing as she looked down at her chest.
Getting her to laugh was my goal so I stuck with it. “You’ve got beautiful, ample breasts. All that bouncing around can’t be good for them, right? Take a walk with me instead.” I unzipped my hoodie as she looked at me wide-eyed. “Here,” I said, placing the jacket over her shoulders. “You won’t be working up a sweat and I don’t want you to get cold.”
She stood still, looking away from me as she considered my offer. At least I hoped she was considering it. She adjusted the sweatshirt then, sliding her arms into the sleeves and rolling the cuffs up two or three times until it fit her.
“If I’m going to walk with you, I’d like a coffee of my very own.” Shaking her head, she asked, “Who shows up to someone’s apartment on a Sunday morning and only buys coffee for himself? That’s just rude.”
I poked her in the ribs as we began walking in the direction of Central Park. “I’ve been on a stake-out for the last hour and a half. I’ll gladly buy you a coffee now that you’ve finally rolled your lazy ass out of bed.”
“Tea,” she said when we passed a small coffee shop.
“I pegged you as a plain black coffee girl.”
“No sugar because I’m not sweet, right?” She was smiling but there was hurt there too.
“Not at all.” I thought the world of her and still she questioned me every step of the way. “I guess I just see you as sort of fierce, able to tackle the world on your own. Forget it, now I’m going to put two sugars in your tea.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “No sugar, just a little milk.”
We entered the park at Sixty-ninth Street, sipping our drinks, both lost in our own thoughts. In my case I was trying to come up with words to broach the topic that loomed large over us. She beat me to it when we reached the pond. “Kasia used to take us here.”
I took her hand and led her to sit on a bench overlooking the water. “Tell me about it.”
Veronica looked over at me, unsure. “It’s not just this place…She took me and Olivia all over the city. She was a lot more fun than my parents were.”
“You’re good to Rachel like Kasia was good to you.”
“I want Kasia to look down and be happy about that,” she said, nodding. “I also love spending time with her boys. They’re just…I just love them so much. When I was seventeen, when my life wasn’t going very well,” she bit her lip before going on. “I used to think I’d never want children.”
“Why’s that?” I had a good idea why, but I wanted her to open up to me.
“My parents,” she shrugged and then shook her head. “They’re not like my aunt and uncle. Kasia and her brothers grew up very differently from me and Olivia. My mother took a back seat and my father was strict, punishing. He used me for target practice whenever he was in a bad mood.”
My hand stiffened in hers. “He hit you?”
She considered my question before answering, “Um, no.” What the fuck does that mean? She sipped her tea, thinking, and then said, “He could be rough but he typically laid into you with words. He made a habit out of cutting me down.” She looked to me cautiously. “I hate him, Dylan. And my mother never stood between us, never defended me. I’m pretty sure that someone who can’t feel love for her parents isn’t the best candidate to be a parent herself.”
“That’s crap. I see how you are with Rachel. Believe me, you’re a natural. I’m the one who probably won’t ever be receiving a coffee mug with Number One Dad emblazoned on it.”
She bumped my shoulder. “Why would you say that?”
I kept my gaze out over the water. “I was married for nearly eight years. She wanted children and I put her off, lied to her…Did anything in my power to make sure she wouldn’t get pregnant.” I looked to Veronica, wanting to see her reaction but wary at the same time. “I was a rotten husband.”
She looked at me with sympathy and then fixed her gaze on a father rowing his two daughters in the small pond. “Tell me about your wife.”
“Her name’s Cecilia. I’ve known her since I was a kid. I kind of went running back to her after Kasia dropped my ass.” I saw her crack a smile at that. “It was a bad decision on my part. A rebound relationship I could never extricate myself from.”
“You weren’t in love with her?”
“I tried to convince myself of it, but I don’t think I ever was.” Shaking my head, I added, “That sounds so shitty.”
“I feel bad for both of you. And you split up right around the time Kasia died?”
“I was already heading in that direction, but yes, Kasia actually gave me the kick in the ass that I needed.”
“What?”
“Th
e day I went to visit her. You were there.”
“I remember.”
“She told me to stop wasting time. Told me to find happiness.”
Veronica looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “And the first stop on the road to happiness is getting a divorce?”
I couldn’t help but smile when I nodded. “For both of us.”
“So you’re happier being alone?”
“I don’t want to be alone, no. But I’m happier today than I was when I was with CeCe. I’m sure of that.”
“What’s she like?”
“Like most people…She’s a lot of things. She’s caring, but she dismisses certain people in a way that can be cruel. She’s beautiful but she can act pretty ugly sometimes. Loyal in some ways, unfaithful in others. I really can’t fault her, though. Everything that went wrong in our marriage, starting with me even proposing in the first place, is on me.”
“So what’s next for you?”
“Like today, or what’s next on my list of life goals?”
She turned and nailed the equivalent of a three-pointer, banking her cup off the lip of a trash can a good ten feet away. “I don’t want to know your life goals just yet. I do want to know what your game is, though…with me.”
“No game. I just want to take you out for dinner sometime…Sometime soon. Will you let me take you out next weekend?”
“What if I say I have plans?”
“To say you have plans implies you’d be lying. You don’t strike me as dishonest.”
“You make me feel...” She stopped short, shaking her head. “I don’t know what it is you see in me.” She looked embarrassed at the admission.
“I’m drawn to you, Veronica. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was drawn to you that first night in the club,” I needed to emphasize the next words, “before I had any idea who you were.”
She didn’t respond, just resumed looking out over the pond. A few moments later, she looked at me and said, “Come on, let’s head back. I’m driving up to Rye in a few hours.”
“Alex and Henry’s place?”
“Yeah, I need to talk to them about my schedule…About going back to school part-time.”
“That’s good,” I said as we made our way back towards Madison.
“First I have to take a good look at NYU’s course catalog. I don’t want to be a business major anymore.” Looking down at her feet, she added, “They’re footing the bill so I don’t want to waste any more of their money.”
“Are you floating any ideas?”
“Yes and no. I want to keep running the store and maybe have a shop of my own someday. And yes, that’s business, but those classes feel like a waste of my time. I want to study design or, I don’t know, maybe foreign language. I speak Polish and Russian, but I can’t read or write.” She looked at me sheepishly. “I’m all over the place right now.”
When we reached her door, she said, “This was nice.”
“I like spending time with you.”
She looked away, biting her lip before saying, “I’ll go out with you this weekend.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as I handed her my phone to enter her number. “Friday at around seven sound good?”
She looked up at me with what looked like hope mixed with some measure of fear. “I’ll see you then,” she said before standing up on her toes and kissing me on the cheek.
That kiss, I felt it down to the soles of my feet. She wrecked me. I wanted to take her face in my hands and kiss her deep, I wanted her in my bed, I wanted to take up space in her heart—I wanted it all. But nothing about this girl was easy. She was like a skittish cat, prone to run off at the first hint of danger.
“Dammit!”
“Here, let me see,” Henry said as he took my thumb in his hands, inspecting the gash. “Doesn’t look too bad.” Wrapping some paper towel around it, he raised my arm up in the air. “Keep it elevated, I’ll run to the back and get some bandages.”
My breath was uneven as he held my thumb under a stream of icy cold water at one of the prep sinks. “Sorry, Henry, I’m kind of a mess today.”
“Noticed that. What’s going on?”
“I have a date tonight.”
“All righty,” he said with an ear to ear grin.
“But I don’t know if I can be with this guy. He’s older—”
“That’s your specialty.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
He looked surprised. “You’re never this touchy and your hands are literally shaking.” He turned off the water and led me to a chair, lifting my arm up over my head again. “Relax, take a breath and tell Uncle Henry all about it.”
I laughed. “You know it sounds really creepy when you say that, right?”
“If I was straight it would sound creepy. Come on, stop stalling. What’s his name?”
“That’s kind of the issue. It’s one of Kasia’s old boyfriends.”
From behind me I heard, “You’re going out with Dylan Cole?”
I turned to see Alex with Hyacinth on his hip. Shock registered on his face, but not disgust or anger, which was what I’d feared.
“This is going to sting,” Henry warned as he dabbed some antiseptic on my cut. I didn’t even feel it.
“Alex, I don’t know…It just happened.” Shaking my head, I corrected myself. “I mean, nothing’s happened yet. He just asked me to dinner, that’s all.”
I saw Henry shoot Alex a warning look. “I’m putting a butterfly on this. You definitely don’t need stiches. But you won’t be making any arrangements today. No scissors for you in your current mental state,” he joked, leaning down to kiss my cheek when he was done. “So, tell us the whole story.”
“Not much to tell. I met him randomly one night and then I ran into him at the hospital when I was visiting Kasia. Apparently that’s how he found out she was sick.” I left out the drunken details of our next run-in because I honestly didn’t remember most of that night. “Then he invited me to a benefit his mother was hosting and…I don’t know, he asked me out.” I looked to my cousin. “Is he a good person, Alex?”
“My brother will tell you no…Tomasz basically hates the guy. I’m on the fence, though. He cared about my sister, that was obvious, but he was young, immature, and came off like a bit of an entitled ass back then. I don’t know the man he is today, but I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.”
Henry took Hyacinth from Alex’s arms. “I noticed him at the funeral.” Looking to Alex, he added, “C’mon, the man is spectacular.” Smiling at the annoyed look Alex was trying to play off, he said, “Anyway, he looked devastated and I was devastated that day too, so I felt some sense of solidarity with the guy. Alex told me who he was after the service.”
“I just keep asking myself, ‘Why me?’”
Alex came over and turned me so that I was facing the mirror. “I’d say take a good, long look at yourself for starters.” Meeting my eyes in the mirror, he added, “But there’s so much more to you than this. If Dylan has spent just a few minutes in your presence, then he’s already gotten a sense of what we all know about you. Veronica, you’re truly special.” I looked away from my reflection and he turned my chin so that I was forced to look back. “You’re a good person, you’re intelligent and you’re independent. You are every man’s dream woman.”
Henry chimed in from behind us, “Now that we’re clear on that, let’s talk about what you’re wearing tonight. At the Mass, Dylan was sporting a custom made suit and shoes that probably cost more than mine, which is saying a lot. I think we need to up our game.”
“Ugh, I don’t even know where we’re going!”
“Text him right now,” Henry insisted. “We need time to shop and to primp.”
I was proud of myself as I pulled away from her apartment on Sunday. When she mentioned NYU, my first instinct was to ask about her professor. Was she still seeing him? My intuition told me no, and really, I was too proud to give her the impression that I was even the slighte
st bit troubled where he was concerned. But I was uneasy. I didn’t want anyone standing in my way. I did do an internal fist pump when she said she was no longer pursuing a business degree, though. That would limit the chances she’d be running into him on campus.
As the week wore on, I busied myself with the pressing issues that came with my position—another potential strike in the Midwest, political unrest in a country that housed one of our smaller manufacturing plants—but my focus was never far from Veronica.
I had a lot riding on this date. I weighed my options, trying to decide what would please her most. I was invited to a party at Rene and Caleb’s home, but that was definitely out—too many people closely associated with Kasia. I was also expected at a dinner hosted by Melanie and her husband, celebrating Samantha Paulson on her engagement to some poor sucker. Obviously that wasn’t an option, as my ex would be there along with several other people I no longer cared to associate with. What I really wanted to do was cook for her at my apartment, but I thought that might seem a little too forward, like I wanted her in close proximity to my bedroom—which I did. I decided on dinner at a cozy spot in her neighborhood. I’d just have to wait and see how the evening unfolded.
When I got her text Friday morning asking me what to wear, I texted back to dress casual, but then questioned my plan. Was I better off treating her to a night that was more upscale? I dreaded the idea of shielding my face as I walked past the photographers stationed outside of spots like Daniel or Momfuko. I was used to the circus, but she might be turned off by that kind of attention. And while I was proud to have her on my arm, I wanted privacy. I wanted to protect her from all that bullshit. I stuck with my plan to take her to Eli’s. It was going to be a fairly warm night for mid-October and it was within walking distance from her place.
Stepping out of the car, I told James he was off for the night, that I’d catch a cab back to the West Side later on. He didn’t move the car immediately, and when I turned around I saw what held his attention. Veronica was coming out of the building’s front door and she waved to James before fixing her gaze on me.