Piece of Work

by Staci Hart

  “I won’t touch you.”

  I paused, assessing him.

  He watched me, adding like the insufferable jackass that he was, “Unless you ask me to.”

  My eyes narrowed. Never in a million years. “I don’t believe you.”

  He seemed to grow, filling the space in the room as he took a single step toward me. “I keep my promises, Rin. I need your help. Come with me.”

  I figured it was probably as close to asking me as he was capable of. “Swear you won’t touch me.”

  “Unless you ask me to,” he added.

  “I won’t.”

  “If you say so.”

  My anger flared. “God, you are so arrogant. I have no idea what gives you the idea that I’d ask you to subject me to…to whatever this is, but you’re wrong.”

  He smirked. The bastard smirked at me, and a heat that burned even hotter than anger spread low in my belly.

  “I could force you to go.”

  “Not if I quit,” I volleyed.

  “You won’t quit. You’re not a quitter.”

  I hated how right he was, and I took a breath that did nothing to soothe me. “Fine. I will go, but I’m not going for you. I’m going for David. I’m going for art and gelato and wine. And you will keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself. And your lips. And your…stuff.” I gestured to his hips.

  “Deal.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to get to the shipment. Go ahead and take the day to pack. The car will be by at six tomorrow night to pick you up. Bring a cocktail dress.”

  “I’m not having dinner with you.” I folded my arms across my chest.

  That smirk was back. “I’ll be there, and so will you, as will several curators and a handful of professors.”

  “Oh,” I said with my cheeks on fire. “Fine.”

  He watched me for a moment, his smile fading, his face darkening with something that might be regret. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  I held my head up and met his eyes, my confounded mind unprepared for those particular words that had left his mouth. But he didn’t wait for me to form a response before he turned and left the room.

  And thank God for that because hours later, I still hadn’t thought of a single thing to say.

  17

  Stone Cold

  Rin

  I glanced at the clock, standing over my suitcase with my hands on my hips and a frown on my face.

  “But he told me to bring a cocktail dress,” I argued.

  Katherine folded her arms from her perch at my desk. “No skirts. You are not allowed to wear skirts in his presence. Learn your lesson, Rin.”

  “But I packed every pair of pants I own.” I sighed and turned for my closet. “I’m taking the dress.”

  Katherine repeated herself over Val telling her why she was wrong, and Amelia and I shared a look and a shrug as I reached into my closet. The dress wasn’t anything fancy—just a simple black dress with cap sleeves, a boatneck, and a beautiful cut—but Marnie had sold me a necklace and a trio of bracelets to wear with it to dress it up. So, in it went.

  I was mildly appalled at the amount of luggage I needed to get me through a five day trip, including two pairs of heels, a pair of flats, a big bag of makeup, and a curling iron, among way too many pairs of slacks. It was ridiculous how high maintenance I had become.

  But it wasn’t just the luggage. It was me. And I barely recognized myself.

  Lately, that hadn’t been feeling like such a good thing.

  “What’s that look for?” Val asked, concerned. “You okay?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out since yesterday how I got here,” I gestured to the embarrassing pile of toiletries, “but I can’t.”

  “You mean, how you turned into a badass?” Amelia asked. “Because I am really, really jealous.”

  I frowned. “Jealous? Because I’m having an identity crisis?”

  Val made a face. “You’re not having an identity crisis. You’re becoming.”

  “Like a beautiful butterfly,” Amelia sang, flitting her hands at her shoulders and batting her lashes.

  “I’m serious,” I said even though I found myself chuckling. “I mean, who even am I?”

  “Do you feel different?” Katherine asked, the picture of pragmatism.

  “Well, yeah. Completely different. Hence the crisis.”

  “But good different or bad different?” she added.

  I thought it over. “Mostly good. But then I have these moments when I feel like a fake and a phony. Like I’m playing dress-up, pretending to be someone I’m not.”

  “But do you really? Do you feel like you’re not you?”

  “Well…no. I feel like me, but…I don’t know. Like when I wear all this, I’m not afraid. I don’t mind when people comment on my height because I chose to put on shoes that make me taller. I don’t care if people look at me because I’m wearing clothes that make me feel pretty and lipstick that makes me feel brave. Is that weird? Am I setting women back seventy years? Am I betraying feminism to feel pretty? I am, aren’t I?” I rambled, trying not to panic.

  “No,” Val answered. “If you want to wear red lipstick and curl your hair, do it. If you want to wear no makeup and shave your head, do it. If you want to clean house and take care of your kids all day, do it. If you want to work full-time and put your kids in daycare, goddammit, do the damn thing. Because that is feminism—the right to live your life however the hell you want regardless of whether or not you have a vagina.”

  Katherine nodded. “She’s right. And, historically, everyone wants to be beautiful. The Egyptians wore eyeliner and used frankincense to treat wrinkles. In China, people were painting their nails three thousand years before Christ. In Africa and parts of Asia, women wear coils around their necks to make them longer. People have always wanted to be considered beautiful, that’s nothing new. It was the Catholic church that told women in the Middle Ages that it was immoral to wear makeup.”

  Val shook her head. “Fucking patriarchy.”

  “They literally invented patriarchy. But that’s not my point. My point is that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel pretty, Rin. Especially not when it changes how you see yourself, how you carry yourself. Watching you turn into who you are right now, in this moment, has been nothing short of inspiring.”

  Katherine’s words weren’t passionate but matter-of-fact, as if they were a simple truth, and that notion brought stinging tears to my eyes.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, swiping at my cheeks as a few tears fell. “This is hard.”

  “Most things worth having are,” Amelia said.

  The doorbell rang, and we all ran to my window to look down at the street where a black Mercedes sat, trunk popped, attendant waiting.

  And Court Lyons stood on the stoop. In jeans. And a V-neck. And a goddamn leather jacket.

  He glanced up at the window, and we bolted back, hanging on to each other like we’d seen a man with an Uzi on the sidewalk, not a rich guy in Wayfarers.

  “Shit, he’s early,” I hissed, and we scrambled around the room. Val pushed me toward the stairs as Katherine and Amelia wrestled with my suitcase, and down I went, leaving the clattering behind me, hurrying to the door with my heart in my throat.

  My certainty that I’d gotten the shock of seeing him in…well, in anything but a suit was washed away the second I opened the door. I was afflicted by his proximity. He was so tall, especially with me in sneakers and my favorite sweater like I was, while he stood there, looking like he belonged on the cover of a magazine. His hair—normally coiffed, not too neatly, but neatly enough to be deliberate and professional—was casually mussed, his dark tresses tossed around with ruts the space and width perfect for his long fingers. And I could smell him, a mixture of soap and leather and something else, some spice I couldn’t place.

  He smirked and flipped up his sunglasses.

  Bastard.

  “You’re early,” I clipped.

  “I wou
ld have had my assistant text you, but she’s currently bedridden.”

  “You could have texted me.”

  “I don’t have your number,” he said simply.

  “Oh.”

  His eyes shifted to look behind me, and I turned to find my friends standing in a row with my suitcase in front of them, my messenger bag on top, and fake smiles on all their faces, lips together, their judgments about as quiet as a foghorn.

  “These your roommates?”

  “Yup,” was all I said as I turned and took my suitcase, hugging each of them down the line with promises to text when we landed. And then I turned to Court, rolling my suitcase in front of me like a riot shield.

  I tried to pick it up to carry it over the threshold, but it was heavy, and before I could get far, he swept it out of my hands like it was a loaf of bread and not fifty pounds of mascara and shoes.

  I waved at my friends, who offered encouraging smiles and hand gestures, and I closed that door, immediately regretting every decision I’d made to bring me to the moment I turned around.

  He stood at the door to the backseat, holding it open for me like a gentleman, which I knew he was not. But the look on his face of regret and deference, under the hard shell of his brooding, was almost too much to bear.

  So, I did the only thing I could.

  I ignored him.

  I ignored his gorgeous lips as they tilted and the sleek cut of his jaw as I walked past him. I ignored the sight of his long legs as he climbed in next to me and the smell of him that made me want to grab him by the lapels of his jacket and bury my nose in his chest.

  The driver took off, and I busied myself in my bag, looking for my headphones and book.

  His eyes were on me. I pretended like I didn’t notice.

  “You’re not wearing lipstick,” he stated.

  Headphones, headphones, headphones. “It’s an international flight, Court. Of course I’m not wearing red lipstick for a ten-hour flight.”

  A pause.

  “Rin, I—”

  Aha! I popped in my earbuds the second they were in hand.

  His lips flattened, his face unamused. Rin, his lips said, but I smiled and shrugged, pointing to my ears.

  “Noise canceling,” I said way too loud.

  His chest rose and fell with a sigh I couldn’t hear—I’d already turned on music, a playlist we’d built the night before, geared toward resisting douchery and unwanted-slash-totally-wanted advances—and he reached into his own bag, a leather affair at his feet, his hand disappearing into the bag and reappearing with a book, which he handed to me.

  He watched me with his expression shrouded as I paused, my eyes on the offered book. An image of Penitent Magdalene by Tintoretto filled the cover, and I met his eyes, pulling my earbuds out by the cord.

  “I thought you could use this. For your proposal,” he said, giving nothing away. “I…a colleague of mine wrote it, so if you have any questions, I can connect you. If you want.”

  I took it from his hand, surprised and disarmed. “Thank you,” was all I said.

  He opened his mouth as if to speak again, but closed it, and with a nod, he reached back into his bag for his own book—Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.

  I put my earbuds back in place, trying not to bite my lip, but it found its way between my teeth despite the effort at the sight of him sitting there, dressed like that, reading Margaret Atwood. After giving me a thoughtful gift, a book he had known I would want, one I would need for my dissertation.

  Court Lyons made about as much sense to me as a scrambled up Rubik’s Cube.

  I leaned against the door as I flipped through his gift, doing my best to sort through the rush of questions and confusion as Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sang about being cheated by the opposite of love. And I found I knew exactly the feeling.

  Court

  All the lights were out in first class, except one. Mine.

  I’d left it on under the pretense of reading my book, but it had been abandoned in my lap for a little while now, my hand resting on the cover, my gaze on Rin, asleep in the seat next to me. The lines of her face were smooth, her lashes two ebony half-moons brushing her cheeks, her bare lips puckered in the ghost of a kiss. They were the color of the flare of a conch, pink and soft and pale, and I found their nakedness somehow more sensual than the red I’d become so accustomed to.

  My fingers flexed against an urge to brush her hair from her face, to pull the blanket up to her chin, to hold her jaw in my hands.

  But I’d meant what I’d said—I wouldn’t touch her, and I was a man of my word.

  After the way I’d treated her, I owed her that.

  She hadn’t spoken to me since we got in the car, keeping a solid wall between us by way of her headphones. And more than a few times, I considered tugging one out of her ear to force her to deal with me. To look at me. To hear me.

  I didn’t understand what had happened to me, couldn’t comprehend why. Why was I so averse to her unhappiness? Why did the thought that I’d hurt her make me feel like a criminal? Why did I want to apologize? To make her feel better? Why did I want her forgiveness? Why did I want to explain myself?

  What has she done to me?

  My affliction nagged and scratched at my thoughts, my lungs, my heart.

  I’d known I was wrong the second I saw the betrayal in her eyes, heard the pain in her words, felt the sting of her palm that brought me to my senses far too late.

  I was wrong, and she was right. And that knowledge changed everything, skewed my perspective, spotlighting the truth.

  You’re the one who keeps putting me here, she’d said.

  And I had.

  Everything I’d accused her of, I had done to her. I’d harassed her at work and then blamed her for it. I’d accused her of using me when all I did was use her. There had been no reason not to trust her. I’d bullied her and projected all my fears on her strictly because she stood in a circumstance too close to my past. Too close for comfort.

  But she’d done nothing; it was me who had crossed the line. Twice. It was my words that had hurt her. My hands that had touched her. My lips that had told her only part of the truth, that I wanted her body.

  What I’d only begun to admit to myself was that her body wouldn’t be enough.

  But she wasn’t mine. She never had been, and she never could be.

  I watched the slow rise and fall of her blanket, traced the lines of her face one more time, and tucked the vision away in my banged up heart.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  And then I turned out the light.

  18

  Brick Wall

  Rin

  I woke just before the flight attendants began moving through the cabin, waking people who’d requested breakfast, disoriented for a moment before I realized I was on a plane. On my way to Florence.

  With Court.

  I chanced a glance at him, finding him asleep, his seat almost completely reclined. He was stretched out, his legs too long for even the first-class space, his knees bent toward the window and shoulder blades flat on the seat. His arms were crossed tight over his chest, hands tucked into the space between his ribs and biceps, fanning them in display. But it was his expression that struck me; it was so soft, relaxed, the only lingering sharpness in the aristocratic bones of his lovely face. His brows were smooth with no distrustful bracket between them, and his lips were parted gently, the bow of his upper lip protruding sensually in its lax state rather than flattened in a grim line of suspicion.

  He looked carefree and easy, and I wondered if that version of himself existed somewhere underneath the man I knew.

  I pushed aside the aching desire to coax that man from inside the Court I knew—cruel and arrogant, angry and reactionary, impatient and patronizing. Because I couldn’t be the one to bear that responsibility. I wasn’t willing to subject myself to any more pain and humiliation from a man who couldn’t even deign himself to apologize.

  No
t that I’d given him much of a chance.

  We were a circle of contradiction. Desire and disgust. Pleasure and pain. Possession and rejection. And it was neither healthy nor productive. The only way to break it was to stop participating, which was the hardest part of all. Because it was clear he had something to say, I just didn’t know what that something was. Maybe he would explain what the hell was going on, why he had been so erratic. Or maybe he didn’t know how to reject me. Maybe he didn’t know how to apologize—this wouldn’t surprise me. The thought of him truly apologizing, of having an open, honest conversation about anything besides art, was beyond comprehension. Maybe he was giving me space, which was technically what I’d asked for even though it was the last thing I really wanted.

  But that was the funny thing about hearts. What they wanted and what would hurt them were sometimes the same. And in the battle of head over heart, I had always sided with my head.

  This time hadn’t been so easy.

  My brain reminded me of all the ways he’d hurt me on a loop. But my heart hadn’t let it go. My heart wanted that apology. It wanted to hear that he was sorry, that I meant something more to him than he’d let on.

  Otherwise, it was hard to stomach what had happened between us.

  He dragged in a sharp breath through his nose as he woke, and I looked away, reaching for my bag in an attempt to busy myself. I immediately put in my headphones, and he watched me with cool, dark eyes—I could feel them on me like the charge on a thunderhead.

  I ate breakfast in the solitude of the bubble I’d created and read until we landed. Begrudgingly, I put my headphones away as we waited to deboard, my nerves high and zinging with anticipation of what he would say, if he’d try to talk to me about the things I didn’t want to discuss, surrounded by weary travelers in a fuselage or standing in a crowd next to the baggage carousel. But he didn’t. He didn’t try to speak to me in the taxi on the way to our hotel or when he checked us in at the front desk.

  It wasn’t until we were standing in front of our rooms, which were across the hall from each other, that he finally spoke.