by Neve Wilder
So I shrugged. “Nah. I’m just not keen on going back to the office tomorrow. I really needed this break.” It was a non-answer wrapped in a distraction which I topped with another, indicating the shoebox of letters that sat on the bottom stair. “My father was having an affair. Had an affair. I’m not sure which.”
Alex’s expression twisted in a version of distant if discomfited sympathy.
“Oh wow, that must be a weird thing to find out now. Sorry.”
“It is.” My shoulders lifted in a shrug. “But I guess it makes no difference. I saw no sign of it, have no idea if my mom knew or not. Just one of those strange mind fucks.”
Alex blinked.
“What?” I asked.
“It always throws me for a loop when you curse, I guess.”
“Yeah?”
His turn to shrug. “It’s sort of like you’re walking down this nice grassy path in a big field and suddenly a shark comes out of nowhere and bites your leg.”
I must have appeared confused.
“Never mind. Bad analogy. It just always comes out of left field is what I’m saying.”
“My mind is nothing but curses and circling sharks,” I assured him.
He gave me a look that was at once teasing and serious, his smile a thing that threatened to swallow me whole. “That’s good to know. I’d never have guessed.”
In that moment, standing there in the foyer with the too bright lighting bleaching all the golden tones from his skin and making his eyes incandescent and glossy, I wanted him to a degree that sent a pang through my stomach like hunger left ignored for too long. As if there were actual stomach acid sloshing fruitlessly around in the emptiness.
In an act of self-preservation, I tossed him the box of Cracker Jack I’d forgotten to give him earlier.
“Another reward for work well done, huh?” His eyes were on me again, bright and assessing.
“Something like that,” I muttered, bending to scoop Winslow up. He nipped at me as if he had the foresight to know where he was going.
“This dog is so damn fickle he’s practically a cat.” I shook out my hand as Winslow squirmed.
“Takes after his master, I suppose,” Alex murmured, unsealing the paper from the box of Cracker Jack.
“I’m not fickle. I’m practical.”
“Practical. Hard to read, whatever.”
“You don’t have to read me, Alex, I tell you what you need to know.”
“Is that how this works?” He took a step closer as I bent to shove Winslow into the carrier. When I stood again, he was right there, just as he’d been last night. I got the idea he liked to do that, too. Test me, get in my space, see how I’d react.
“What do I need to know right now?” His smile taunted me as he slid a piece of Cracker Jack into his mouth.
I could smell the caramel, a faint hint of his shaving cream or shampoo. This close, his irises were pitted with what looked like chips of mica, these brilliant little bits of gold and blue. He held up a piece of the popcorn and when I shook my head, he gave it to Winslow.
I smiled back as charmingly as I could. “You need to know that Winslow eats twice a day. A half cupful of the food I stuck in that bag there. And he needs to go out at least three times a day. And if you keep feeding him Cracker Jack, I am not responsible for what happens to your floors.”
The flare of heat in Alex’s eyes extinguished, replaced by a devilish twinkle I liked just as much. “You got it, Captain.” He stooped to pick up the carrier. Winslow growled and Alex opened the door, backing through it and stopping at the threshold. “You know what I’m digging about Pride and Prejudice? It reminds me of you.”
I blinked. “How’s that?”
“You make simple very complex.”
The next morning, I made the drive straight to the office, bypassing a stop at my apartment out of sheer cowardliness. This time of morning, the sunlight would come in slants over my bed, skating from drab beige carpeting to the beige wall beyond. The rooms would have that slightly stale smell of confined spaces, the unmistakable scent of vacancy. I was strangely afraid of it, that my apartment was no more than a container for the feelings of emptiness that plagued me before I’d left to handle the house on Nook Island, and when I walked inside, I would be walking into that gray fog all over again. That it would be like a patina on the granite countertops, or woven into the terrycloth of my towels, confronting me at every turn, reminding me.
Henrik & Associates was located on a tree-lined street off East Broughton. I parked my car and went inside, riding the elevator to the fourth floor where it spit me out before our front desk admin, Elena. She gave me a perky smile, then reached beneath her desk, dragging out a thick stack of mail as I strode over.
“Welcome back, Mr. Macomb.” She paused. “Or are you back yet?”
“Just checking in for the day to make sure someone hasn’t tried to steal my view,” I teased. I had a view of the live oaks shading the street that was prime territory in our building.
“Sean’s been camping out there.”
I stiffened and Elena blanched. “I’m kidding! Oh God, sorry. I don’t think Sean would ever do something like that.”
I blinked, laughed, and reached for my mail as I tried to recover.
“Maybe I better rig up some trip-wire just in case.” As far as I knew, no one else in the office had known about our relationship. I aimed to keep it that way.
I passed Sean’s office, catching a glimpse of his elbow in a neatly pressed blue shirt from the corner of my eye, but just as with my apartment, I wasn’t ready for him yet. I needed at least an hour and another cup of coffee. After stopping by the kitchen, I shut myself in the office and pored over our accounts. Once I was caught up enough to see what Sean had done in my absence, I stormed into his office.
His face registered surprise first, then a litany of expressions that slid from confusion to desire to anger and stalled out in a wan, forced smile. “Rob.”
I kicked the door shut behind me. “Who are you trying to fuck here: me, the clients, or yourself?”
He frowned. “None of the above.”
“Well, you’re doing a stellar job with all three. You’re behind on filings for one.”
He sat back in his chair and let out a long breath. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been…I’ve been having a hard time.”
“Doing your job?” Now it made more sense why Richard had been so concerned. I wanted to take Sean by the shoulders and shake him.
“Not just that. With…everything.”
Now I was the confused one. I was certain the same array of emotions that had passed over his face passed now over mine and corkscrewed into my stomach. Minus the desire. I might have been angry at Sean on a personal level but when it came to the job, he’d always been above average, ambitious, and reliable.
“You broke up with me, remember? You lied about everything, then you broke up with me. I’m having difficulty seeing where your hard time comes in.”
Sean pressed his lips together until they bled white. He’d been the more volatile in our relationship. What fights we’d had always resulted in a mark on the wall, a chair, a broken piece of pottery, whatever, courtesy of him. This was familiar territory for me, and in an unhealthy way, it was comforting. I dropped into the chair in front of his desk and crossed my arms. “Don’t break company property.” I kept my tone casual as I watched him clench his fist.
Sean took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to.”
“Lie to me or break up with me?” I tilted my head, studying him. We’d not had much of a conversation about this, never properly. The actual break up had been a simple, if brutal affair preceded by an agonizing few weeks in limbo.
“All of it, I guess.” He appeared uncomfortable now, which I considered fair turnabout. He unclenched his fists and scrubbed at his face, then put his elbows atop the desk. He let his forehead rest against his splayed palms.
“I thought it was just going to be a one-off.” H
e spoke to the surface of his desk. “And then I—I wanted more. It was hot. You were—are—hot and I just…I couldn’t get enough.” I wasn’t used to this halting way that he spoke, and I was insulted that the summary of our relationship seemed to amount to “hot.”
The coffee in my stomach turned over and over, then sank. I wished I’d left the door open. It felt like the room needed to be aired out.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
He nodded mutely, his arrogant features drawn and timid. I suppose he wanted some commiseration, but I didn’t want to give it. I didn’t want to give him anything more than he’d already gotten from me.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, a welcome respite that shook us both out of the moment. I silenced the buzz and stood up.
“This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to fix the oversights—and I use that term loosely—and you’re not going to miss any more deadlines. You need this promotion. I know you do, so stop fucking it up for yourself. When I get promoted, I’m going to request a new team member and recommend you for another team so we don’t have to work breathing down each other’s necks. If you continue to screw this up, you’ll be fired.”
Sean regarded me carefully, with what I thought might have been a little bit of wonder, before he nodded. I put my hand on the door knob before glancing back at him. “And stop calling me late at night when you’re drunk. If it’s not work-related, I don’t want to hear your fucking voice.” I left before my own voice cracked.
Back in my office, I slid behind my desk, hands trembling, and pulled out my phone. The text from Alex was a picture of Winslow wearing a harness of colorful silk scarves, captioned: “Forgot to grab the leash from your place. Think he’ll be mad he looks like an escaped circus act?”
I laughed in spite of myself, or maybe because of what had just happened. The juxtaposition was so night and day that the discord struck me as humorous, edging out the dismal awareness of Sean in his office down the hall. When I stopped laughing, I replied back: Better sleep with one eye open.
10
Alex
“The shiny pants,” Lainey said, flopping onto my bed.
I stood in front of my closet, which shared space with about three dozen boxes of Christmas ornaments my mom had stuffed there, and flicked hopelessly through my clothes. I was not a clotheshorse. Or, well, I could have been, but art had pushed me into practical territory. Very few things I owned didn’t have some sort of media stain on them. But Tom and a few of my other friends were taking me out for my birthday, and since Max—my friend since freshman year figure drawing class—insisted on a club, I was trying to find something clubby and birthday appropriate. It was harder than I expected.
“Shiny pants?” I tried to figure out what she was talking about as she twirled her Barbie in the air. Then I understood and flipped through the hangers to pull out a pair of faux leather pants I’d had since my more fashion-conscious days of high school when I was convinced clothing factored heavily into the magical equation that would result in me getting laid.
“Those!” Her nod was so aggressive her ponytail bobbed.
“No. Way too hot.” Leather and Georgia were never meant to be put together. I’d tried my damndest a few times and always ended up like a nuclear reactor in meltdown. Lainey mock-pouted when I shoved them back into the closet. She then proceeded to dismiss every other option I showed her as “ugly.”
Just before I’d flipped through my entire rack of clothing, I arrived at a pair of sand-colored linen trousers. Lainey curled her lip, but didn’t make any objections. I read that as reluctant approval. Linen was good. Linen I could work with. Aside from the annoying wrinkling, the pants were cut well and would breathe, at least. Alain, my sophomore year boyfriend had picked them out for some art opening we went to together. He was two years older and a Hamptons kid, which was pretty much the only important thing about him aside from his ability to dress. He’d done that well. And I suppose his mouth had been nice enough. While it lasted.
“What are you smiling at?”
I blinked. “Nothing, just thinking of—nothing.”
Lainey rolled onto her stomach, already bored. I threw my pants on top of her and she giggled. Then I turned back to my shirts. Couldn’t do a T-shirt with the pants. Bummer. I went with a lightweight white button down instead, scanning for any stains as I removed it. Alain had probably picked it out, too.
Winslow trotted in and inserted himself on the bed between my linen pants and Lainey. Lainey and Winslow were a raging case of instalove, with Lainey attempting to use him as a horse for her Barbies within five minutes of me letting him out of his carrier. To my surprise, the affection seemed to be mutual. Winslow had followed her around all day.
She settled her Barbie onto his back and started giggling when Winslow craned his head to gnaw on the doll’s sculpted legs. “Bad horse!” she exclaimed, then rolled onto her back, pulling a face at me upside down with her head hanging off my bed. “Marissa’s spending the night and Mom says we can have a movie marathon with popcorn and everything. Can we use your room and you have mine? Plllllleeeeeeeaaaassssseee?”
My room had the only other available TV since Dad had commandeered the living room TV for his bedroom. I considered a moment, then shrugged. “I guess. I can probably just stay at Tom’s anyway.” I didn’t think I’d be home at what Mom considered a reasonable hour and she hated when I came home in the wee hours of the morning, because she said it either woke her and then she couldn’t go back to sleep or she couldn’t fall asleep in the first place until I got home. Mom logic. I didn’t understand it.
“But, you have to feed Winslow and take him out before bed and also in the morning. Deal?”
“Done!” Lainey slid off the bed and took off running for the stairs, like she thought I might change my mind. She thundered back down again a few seconds later, scooped up Winslow, who’d been standing there confused, then thundered back up again.
After I dressed, I went upstairs and Mom called to me from the kitchen. When I went in, sitting on the middle of the kitchen counter was a small birthday cake stuffed with candles. Dad sat in one of the kitchen chairs looking green, but he smiled when I came in.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do anything for my birthday,” I said, slinging an arm around Mom’s shoulder.
“We did. But you still have to have a cake.” She lifted her finger to me and leaned, shouting, “Lainey, did you tell your brother happy birthday?”
Silence, and then from a distance, “Happy birthday.”
“She’s so excited about her sleepover.” Mom scooped a bit of icing from the bottom of the cake and sampled it. “God, I’m going to have a teenaged daughter soon.”
“Is that worse than having a teenaged son?” I grinned.
“A son means you only have to worry about one dick, a daughter means you have to worry about many dicks.” Dad said it like he was Confucius.
“Jesus, John.” Mom rolled her eyes.
“Actually,” I said, following suit and sticking my finger in the icing. “That’s not necessarily true if you have a son like me. All the dicks, Dad. All the dicks.”
Mom shoved my shoulder.
“But no teen pregnancy.” He had a point. “Though, condoms. Remember. Always condoms.”
“Yeah, Dad. I think you’ve officially met your quota of prophylactic reminders for the day.”
“Are you two done?”
“Maybe?”
Dad kept on grinning and I soaked it up, the lightness of it. I was trying to be conscious of these moments, taking them where I could get them.
“Do you want some cake?” Mom held a knife poised above the cake.
I shook my head. “We’re grabbing dinner first. You go ahead.” But she didn’t. There was no chance that Dad would eat any, and I knew the cake would still be sitting there untouched tomorrow. Well, unless Lainey and Marissa got to it, which was highly probable.
I gave Mom a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m staying at Tom’s tonight, so I won’t ruin your sleep.”
“You’re a good son.” She gave my shoulder a squeeze.
I bumped my fist against Dad’s shoulder.
“Bonus reminder: condoms. And no drinking and driving.”
“I know, I know.” This was the part I disliked about having to move back home. Never mind that I’d been taking care of myself just fine for the past three years. Now I was back to the same warnings I used to get in high school.
Razz was a neon-glowing, body-packed behemoth. Like, could-hardly-move packed. The bar looked impossible, so we split up, half of us in the queue for drinks and half of us circling like rabid sharks for any sign of a table where we could park. Sam was the big winner, winnowing through the crowd and scoring us a high-top table the size of a pinhead. Tom and Max returned twenty minutes later laden with an assortment of mixed drinks and an entire bottle of vodka.
“Figured I’d better plan ahead,” Tom shouted as Max unloaded shots. The surface of the table disappeared beneath a liquid carpet of bright blue, pink, and orange.
I sniffed at something fruity and orange before knocking it back and watching Tom’s head careen to follow a hot blonde in a tiny pink skirt mincing toward one of the raised platforms for the go-go dancers.
With communication at, well, any volume, effectively ruled out, we hung around the table trading unintelligible toasts and swallowing shots.
Max dragged me to the dance floor first and we left Sam and Tom behind. God help him if he tried to put the moves on Sam. I imagined she’d put him in his place fast. She was spit-fire confident and gave zero fucks about saying what was on her mind. And also making her preferences known. She liked pretty boys and butch girls, and Tom was neither of those things.