The Thinnest Air

by Minka Kent

  He folds the sticky note in half, placing it in the pocket covering his left breast. A million dollars says he forgets all about it until he finds it in the washing machine, soggy and illegible.

  “Thank you,” I say again, extending my hand one last time. “I appreciate your help with everything.”

  Turning to leave, I make my way outside toward the waiting cab.

  With everything going on today, I haven’t had the chance to tell Harris I’m coming back. He hates surprises just as much as I do, but he’ll just have to deal.

  Besides, I want to see the look on his face when I show up.

  That just might be the only thing that’s going to get me through this red-eye.

  CHAPTER 29

  MEREDITH

  Seventeen Months Ago

  New York sans Andrew is . . . different. But ever since the trust fund letter came to light, he’s been loosening his tether on me, giving me space like he’s afraid he’ll lose me if he holds on too tight. He hasn’t come out and said it, but he knows I could walk out the door at any time if I wanted to, and I think that’s made him reevaluate everything.

  Last week over dinner, I casually mentioned that I wanted to visit my sister for a week. The next morning his assistant booked my flight, and Andrew put me up in the presidential suite of our favorite hotel.

  When I arrived in the city yesterday, there was a package on my bed with a note from him. He’d had my favorite local treats delivered, as well as a Chanel handbag to mark the occasion, an advance copy of the newest Diane Chamberlain novel—autographed—as well as a list of reservations he’d made for me at various wait-listed restaurants and high-end day spas.

  He’s almost trying too hard now. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

  I just want to pal around the city with Greer, eating hot dogs and pretzels from carts near Central Park. Popping into our favorite little shops. Grabbing frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity if the mood strikes. Riding the subway for hours with the sole intention of people watching, just like we did when we were younger.

  The bells on the door of Steam jangle when I pass through them that morning, and Harris glances up from a noisy cappuccino maker. For the first time in forever, he doesn’t groan or sulk or sigh or furrow his brow when he sees me.

  We’ve been talking on the phone almost nightly for the past month. Most of the time I wait until Andrew’s in bed, and I sneak out to sit in the car or tiptoe to the guesthouse under the veil of night.

  I’m not cheating.

  I’m not emotionally attached to Harris or fantasizing about him in any way.

  He’s 100 percent just a friend.

  Andrew wouldn’t understand. And despite our differences, I trust Harris. I trust his brutal honesty because he has no skin in the game.

  “Hi,” I say, stopping short in the middle of the crowded coffeehouse while some indie rock band plays from the ceiling speakers. This feels like a scene from a movie.

  I smile. He smiles.

  “Hi,” he says.

  This is . . . new.

  “Where’s Greer?” I ask. For the first time in forever, I’m not actually surprising her. Being in town for an entire week, I had no choice but to fill her in so she could make time for all the things we were going to do together.

  I take a seat at the edge of the bar, watching as Harris whips up drinks with the help of a part-time barista whom I’ve never seen before—some guy with dyed black hair, a nose ring, and tattoos covering both arms. He’s young enough to still have the bane of dealing with acne, and he keeps his head down and works his ass off, probably because he knows Harris is watching him like a hawk.

  “Who’s the new guy?” I ask.

  “Oh, him? That’s my protégé,” he says. “Little Harris.”

  I smirk, rolling my eyes. “What’s his real name?”

  “Jake. But Little Harris has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “You’re so full of yourself.” I pull my phone from my bag, checking my e-mail out of sheer boredom. The only e-mails I get these days are when Nordstrom has a sale or Net-a-Porter has free shipping on orders over $500. “Make me an iced chai, will you?”

  He places a mug in front of me.

  It was already made.

  “Whoa.” My eyes meet his. “When did you . . . ? I didn’t even notice . . . Wow. Thank you.”

  “Don’t act so surprised. I’m not always a giant fucking asshole.” He returns to Little Harris, instructing him on the best way to make a foam leaf on the top of a cappuccino, and when he comes back, he rests his elbows on the counter. “I just want to apologize.”

  “What for?”

  “For always being so hard on you.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  He glances down for a second. “Talking to you this past month, getting to know you . . . I realize that you were just lost, doing the best you could with what you were given. A flaky mother. An absent father. A control freak sister.”

  He smirks. So do I.

  “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” I say, my hands around my sweating cup.

  “Neither do I,” he says. “No one does. We’re all just . . . doing the best we can. Trying to make sense of things that probably never will.”

  “Do you have regrets?” I ask when Ronan comes to mind. He’s been playing like a loop lately, and I haven’t the slightest clue why. Sometimes I can go days, weeks, without thinking of him. Other times I can’t get him out of my head . . . wondering how he’s doing . . . if he’s thinking of me, missing me and what we had. Wondering why after all these months it still matters . . .

  He shrugs. “Life’s too short to fixate on that shit. Suck it up. Move on. And try to do better next time.”

  “Have you ever cheated on Greer?” I place my hand over my heart. “Swear to God, I won’t say anything.”

  His nose wrinkles, as if my question has insulted him, and he tucks his chin against his chest. “Never.”

  I don’t think he’s lying, but then, I’ve never been the best judge of that.

  “What Greer and I had was messy and complicated. But I never strayed,” he says. “I never strayed because I loved her. I truly loved her. When I was hers, I was hers completely.”

  “I loved Andrew,” I say, wondering why I’m using the past tense. “Love . . . Andrew.”

  “No, you don’t.” He shakes his head. “You only think you do. You don’t even know what love is because no one’s ever showed you before.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve known you a long time, Mer,” he says. “I’ve seen the guys you’ve brought home, the ones in your social media news feed. I’ve seen the men who hit on you, who want you for reasons you can’t see because you choose not to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on,” he says. “Do I really have to spell it out for you? Andrew.”

  “Andrew loves me.”

  “No.” He swipes a hand through his hair. “Andrew loves the way you make him feel about himself. That’s what Andrew loves.”

  Shaking my head, I say, “You’ve met him all of one time. I don’t think you’re qualified to make that call.”

  “Oh, I’m making that call. I’m calling it,” he says, half teasing, half clearly frustrated with me for not buying what he’s selling. “He’s a wealthy, insecure man. You’re a young, beautiful woman. Nothing good can come from a combination like that.”

  I blush. Harris has never called me beautiful. I don’t even think I’ve heard him call Greer beautiful.

  “What do you have in common with him?” he asks. “What drew you to him in the first place?”

  I start to answer, but he cuts me off.

  “He’s older. Wiser. More experienced. He has money, which means security and safety,” he says. “He looked at you like you were the hottest thing he’d ever seen, and he made you feel sexy in a way the younger guys never could.”

  Harris sums up the
first six months of my relationship with Andrew in under ten seconds.

  “Like I said, you have daddy issues.” His hands lift in the air. “So does Greer, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

  I vaguely recall a wild phase in my sister’s early college years, hearing stories of her sexual recklessness and finding new tattoos and piercings on her body each time she’d come home for a break.

  All that changed when she met Harris.

  He grounded her, balanced her out, gave her the kind of stability she’d never known before.

  “Anyway, where is G?” I ask, tapping the counter and glancing around. “I thought she came in at nine?”

  “She comes in when she wants to come in,” he says. “I don’t keep track anymore. My guess is she stayed up late last night trying to get ahead on work. Taking the week off is really stressing her out, but don’t tell her I told you that.”

  I feel like this is a common thing between us now . . . “Don’t tell Greer.”

  “Now I feel bad,” I say.

  “Don’t. She needs this. She needs a break from here. And I need a break from her.” He laughs, and I get it. She can be intense. And last I checked, she’s still not over him. I bet she hangs around him every chance she gets, her codependence a trait that evolved over the course of their relationship.

  “Stop talking about me.” Greer’s voice fills my ear, her warm palms on my shoulders. I don’t know when she walked in or if she heard anything we said, but judging by the smirk on her mouth, she’s teasing. Shooting Harris a look, she says, “You done ragging on my sister now?”

  Harris and I exchange looks.

  “Yeah,” he says, leaving it at that.

  Sliding off my seat, I follow my sister back to her office. She promised me she’d only work for a half hour today, an hour max, and then we could bounce.

  “I should stay with you in your fancy suite. I bet it’s twice the size of my apartment, maybe more,” she says a moment later, firing up her computer. “It’s not every day I’ll have a chance to see how the one percent live.”

  Rolling my eyes, I shake my head. “Whatever. But yes, you can if you want. I think there’s a pullout sofa.”

  Perusing the oddities in her crammed office, I settle on a photo of the two of us kids on a Ferris wheel at a seaside amusement park in New Jersey that I’m pretty sure no longer exists.

  Her arm is around my shoulders, and we’re grinning ear to ear.

  Mom’s boyfriend at the time took the photo with his fancy camera in an attempt, I think, to impress her. He was always talking about his photography business and how talented he was, but I never saw him actually go out and do any work. The guy was a permanent fixture on our living room sofa, watching sports all day while Mom was at work.

  “I remember this day,” I say, plucking the silver frame and holding the picture closer.

  “You remember the corn dog?” Greer asks, fighting a smirk.

  “Yes, I remember the corn dog,” I moan, rolling my eyes. She’s never going to let me live that down. We’ll be old and gray, sitting in a nursing home, and she’s still going to ask if I remember the freaking corn dog.

  “God, it was so disgusting,” she says, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth. “I’ll never forget that smell.”

  With a belly full of processed meat and fried corn bread, I had climbed into the fastest roller coaster in the park, which I was barely tall enough to ride. When we were finished, Greer told me my face was green, and before I could reply, I threw up all over her white Chuck Taylors. But instead of freaking out the way most teenage sisters would, she walked me to the bathroom, held my hair as I emptied the remaining contents of my stomach, and told me we could leave if I still wasn’t feeling well.

  My mother threw a fit, complaining about how much money she’d spent and how we’d taken a subway, a train, and a bus, and wasted most of the morning to get out here.

  But Greer stood up for me, snapping back at my mother the way she always did and insisting that we leave.

  It was a humid ninety-degree afternoon, but I was shivering and sweating, my stomach in knots. Turns out it wasn’t the corn dog. It was the flu.

  My mother insisted I toughen up and force myself to enjoy it. She said we were never coming back if we left after only two hours.

  Greer took my hand and led me to the gated exit, leaving my mother and her camera-toting boyfriend with no choice but to follow.

  “You’ve always taken such good care of me,” I say.

  Greer shrugs like it’s no big deal. “You’re my favorite person.”

  Placing the photo back on her desk, I move around to her chair, flinging my arms around her shoulders and burying my face into her neck.

  “What’s this for?” she asks, playing it cool.

  “For always looking out for me,” I say. “Worrying about me when no one else does.”

  “Like I have a choice,” she says. “You’re my sister. Worrying about you is my job.”

  “Love you, G.”

  “Love you more.”

  CHAPTER 30

  GREER

  Day Nine

  “Jake, where’s Harris?” I fully expected to walk into Steam this morning and find Harris posted behind the cash register, shooting the shit with one of our regulars, but instead it’s only Jake, the tattooed college kid he’s been grooming for the last year and a half after I told him he needed either a clone or an assistant because he was working way too damn much.

  Jake grabs a ten-dollar bill from a man in a leather fedora, counting out his change in a whispered hush before turning his attention to me. “What do you mean?”

  “Is he in the back?”

  Jake’s nose scrunches. “I’m confused.”

  “No, I’m confused.” I press my pointer finger into my chest, eyes squinting.

  “Assumed he was with you? Looking for your sister?”

  I shake my head slowly. “No . . . he was staying back, manning the stores.”

  Jake tends to another customer, and my impatience almost eats a hole through me. He moves closer, whipping up a tea latte, and glances up at me.

  “He left, like, four days ago, I think?” Jake stops what he’s doing, his head tilting. “Called me early that morning, put me in charge, said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back, but he’d keep me posted.”

  “Has he checked in with you at all?”

  “Nope.” He takes the tea latte to the man in the hat, who promptly deposits a handful of change in the tip jar. Cheap ass. “I’ve been watching the news, though, trying to keep up on everything. Sorry about your sister.”

  “She’s not dead.” I don’t mean to snap, but everyone assumes that “missing” equals “dead,” and until there’s proof of life or death, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. “I mean, we don’t know anything yet.”

  “I just meant I’m sorry you’re going through this.”

  Now I feel bad. “Thank you.”

  He attends to two more customers, a pair of gossip queen–types with platinum-blonde extensions, matching Karen Walker sunglasses, and overdrawn Kylie Jenner lips. They’re not our usual customer, but whatever. They each order huge iced macchiatos and cinnamon scones before asking if Jake can break a hundred-dollar bill.

  “Okay, so help me understand exactly what happened,” I say. “Harris told you he was going to Utah to look for my sister? And you haven’t seen or heard from him since?”

  Jake rests his hands at his hips, glancing at the ceiling, exhaling. “He didn’t say where he was going. I just assumed, but yeah, he left and didn’t say when he’d be back. Figured he’d at least call and check in or something, but nothing.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I say, though Jake doesn’t seem to comprehend the gravity of this situation. I don’t blame him. He’s just a barista barely making enough to afford the bottom bunk of the bed he rents in a shitty studio apartment in the Lower East Side. He doesn’t understand the delicate complexities of
my relationship with Harris. He doesn’t know that Harris told me he loved me for the first time in years last week, all the while leading me to believe he was still in New York running the stores. “He’d have told me if he wasn’t going to be here.”

  I think back to that morning standing outside his apartment door. The sympathy in his tired eyes. His apology. His hug. The promise that he’d be there for me.

  The entire time I’ve been in Utah, he’s answered each time I’ve called, never rushed to get me off the phone. Let me vent. Let me whine. Let me wallow in the tragedy of this situation, offering his poignant words of support.

  I don’t want to believe it was all a ruse, but . . .

  Leaving the store, I try his phone.

  It doesn’t ring.

  His voice greeting plays, but I hang up.

  Hailing a cab to his apartment, I scale the stairs to the third floor as soon as I arrive, not having the time or patience to wait for the slow-as-molasses elevator, and when I get to apartment 3F, I pound on the door with both palms.

  “Harris! Harris, are you home?” I ask a question to which my intuition already knows the answer, but I have to try.

  I think back to the last time we spoke on the phone, if anything seemed different, if I missed any red flags, but I’ve been so focused on Meredith this entire time that I wasn’t paying attention to anything that didn’t directly pertain to her.

  An older man exits the door down the hall, eyeing me with intense scrutiny, like I’m up to no good. I don’t recognize him, which means he probably moved in after I moved out.

  “Have you seen Harris Collier?” I ask. “It’s an emergency. I’m a friend.”

  There’s a slight limp in the way he walks, and his lips are twisted into a permanent scowl.

  “Nope,” he says as he passes. “Never heard of him.”

  Typical New York ass.

  Before I can press him for any additional information, he disappears around the corner, headed toward the elevator bay.

  I need access to his place.

  Dashing toward the stairwell, I make my descent two steps at a time until I get to the landlord’s apartment at the end of the hall. I may have moved out, but my name is still on the lease because Harris insisted on signing a thirty-six-month agreement to lock in the ridiculous discount they were offering at the time.