by Rose, Katia
We’re still standing on the sidewalk next to some kind of clothing store. The mannequins in the windows watch me struggle to find an answer.
“I mean, Monroe for one. She’s given me so many opportunities over the years. The rest of the staff, too. They deserve someone they can count on.”
She gives me a hard look, like she knows the real answer as well as I do.
No small talk.
“And me.” I let out a heavy breath. “I want to prove to myself I can do it. I need to know I’m not gonna screw up my first real shot at something after...”
“After what?”
I shake my head. If I think any more about this, I’m going to end up bolting down the street away from her, like I probably should have done the second she walked in for her interview.
“Hey.” She steps forward, raising her hands to rest them on my cheeks. The contact has my blood racing as soon as I feel the heat of her palms. “It’s okay. Come back, all right? Wherever you just went, come back now. You don’t need to go there now. I shouldn’t have asked that. I just...”
“You what?” I have to keep her talking or I’m going to kiss her. Those lips are so close to mine.
“If being the manager at Taverne Toulouse is really what makes you happy, if it’s really what you want out of life, then I know you’ll make it happen. It’s just that I see you struggling sometimes, and it’s almost like...like part of your heart just isn’t in it, like you’re pushing yourself closer and closer to the point where you’re going to break, and I...I know what it’s like to break, Dylan. I would never, ever want that for you.”
“God, Renee.” It’s all I can say before I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her as she presses herself to my chest. I rest my chin on top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair.
“I spent three years doing something just because I thought I should, and they were the worst three years of my life,” she confesses. “They nearly took everything from me. I’m just starting to get myself back, and maybe there’s a whole lot of reasons why we should let this go, why we should forget anything ever happened between us, but I don’t think I can put myself through that again. Maybe we only get a rear-view mirror for this. Maybe we can’t see the crash yet, but I don’t want to stop the car.”
I hold her as tight as I can, like maybe if I keep her here long enough, she’ll melt right into me and feel just what it does to me to hear her repeat those words I spoke so many years ago.
“I really don’t want to let go of you,” I murmur into her hair.
“So don’t.” She tilts her head back to look at me. “Don’t let go of me.”
She’s talking about more than my arms around her.
“How?”
I don’t ask it defensively; I ask with a genuine urge to know. How do we make this work?
She strokes my cheek and says, “Let’s walk and talk.”
We’re only a block away from Square Saint-Louis now, and we head toward the park. It’s more of a fountain lined with trees than an actual park, but the brilliant red and orange leaves clinging to the branches and scattering over the ground have turned it into an autumn landscape worthy of a painting.
“I’ve thought about how we could make this work,” Renee begins, “and what I’ve decided is that we should take it slow. As much as I want to, it would be stupid to just jump into this when I’ve only reached a turning point sometime in the past few weeks. I should get to know you better first. I need to know myself better first too. Plus, as far as our jobs go, it would look a lot better if we ended up together after a couple months instead of a couple weeks, right?”
“Makes sense.” The leaves crunch under my feet as we enter the square. “You really have thought about this, haven’t you?”
I almost sound smug, but really I’m just incredibly flattered. She’s thought about me this much. She’s imagined a future for us the same way I have.
“On Saturday night, it really just...hit me,” she explains. “I’m so done with the way things have been for me. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but for the first time, I feel ready for it. I’m ready to fight, and if I’m already fighting for myself, I might as well fight for you too, right?”
I bump her shoulder with mine. “Little lioness.”
She throws her head back and laughs.
“What? Bad nickname?”
“It’s just that’s what my dad always calls me: ma petite lionne.”
“Okay, that’s weird. I’m not calling you what your dad calls you.”
She laughs again. “It’s not that weird. You say it in different languages.”
“Nope. Still too weird.”
Now she’s bumping into my shoulder. “Whatever, weirdo.”
I want to reach for her hand, but I don’t know if that’s on the table.
“So what does taking it slow mean? What are we aiming for here?”
“Well...” She starts kicking up leaves as we walk, sending arcs of colour into the air in front of our feet. “What if we do some more walking and talking for a few weeks and see how that goes? Coffee can be part of it too, unless you think that’s too dangerous.”
“I’m really going to regret telling you that story, aren’t I?”
She shrugs. “Probably.”
“Walking and talking. I can get on board with that. And at the bar...?”
“At the bar we keep it professional.”
“Because we’ve already been so good at that,” I joke, and she swats my arm. “But I agree. I don’t think anyone there should know about our...walking and talking.”
We pause in front of a bench by the fountain, and Renee gestures for me to sit down with her.
“I have another question for you,” I tell her once we’re settled, our thighs less than an inch apart.
“Shoot.”
“I want this to be the best that it can be for you. I want you to be comfortable, so I’m just going to ask now: when you say walking and talking, do you mean—”
“I also mean this.” She threads her fingers through mine.
“Oh. Okay.”
Then her face is tilting up towards mine. “And maybe a little of this.”
She tastes like chai tea and the chill in the air. My thumb brushes the back of her neck as we kiss, and I feel her shiver against me.
“I don’t ever want to stop kissing you,” I murmur against her lips.
“So don’t.”
Fourteen
Renee
CONSONANCE: The harmonic resemblance and repetition of consonant sounds within a sentence or phrase
Have fun on your date!
Tahseen follows up her message with a GIF of two puppies licking each other’s faces. I send her a confused emoji along with my question.
Is that supposed to be me and Dylan?
She tells me it is.
Creepy and weird. Also it’s not a date.
I get a string of emojis laughing so hard they’re crying in response to that one. I’m about to clarify that Dylan and I are ‘walking and talking’ rather than dating before I realize how insane that sounds. It makes sense in my head, and it seems to make sense in Dylan’s, so I guess that’s all that matters.
It’s been a week since our first coffee date. Rain dots the window of the bus as I ride over to the same cafe. It’s more of a mist than an actual downpour, the watery haze on the glass blurring the edges of the world outside. I turn my attention back to my phone, and Tahseen and I make a plan to hang out later this week. She’s getting hit pretty hard with assignments, and I’ve been promising her a trip to Starbz as a reward for her making it through a presentation tomorrow.
It feels good to make plans, to be out of the house on a regular basis. My parents still text me several times a day to make sure I’m all right, but when I told them I was meeting a friend from work on my way out of the house this morning, my mom pulled me into a hug and my dad said I should fit a family dinner at a restaurant into my busy schedule somet
ime soon. It should have embarrassed me to have the revival of my social life be cause for celebration, but it didn’t. I wrapped my arms around my mom for a second hug as soon as she let go.
Even my therapist complimented me. I sort of freaked out on her about Dylan, but after we’d talked everything through, she told me I’ve been making an incredible amount of progress and that she’s proud to see me putting my health first.
The bus pulls up at my stop, and I make my way up the aisle, calling a “Merci!” to the driver as I step out the door.
It only takes my eyes a second to find him. He’s huddled under the cafe’s awning to keep out of the light rain, leaning against the wall in dark jeans and a grey hoodie. My stomach dips as I take the sight of him in, all broad shoulders and messy hair, and my heart kicks up with the urge to throw myself at him and put that wall to good use.
I settle for a more socially acceptable hug instead. The contact is still enough to send a rush of heat up my neck and into my cheeks.
We’ve seen each other at work a lot over the past week, but we’re both being extra cautious there. I don’t want anyone thinking we’re together until we really are together, and if the announcement has consequences when we finally make it, I want to be ready to face them, so it’s been covert glances only when we’re at Taverne Toulouse.
There’s nothing covert about the way we’re holding each other now.
“Hey.” I speak for the first time once I’ve got my arms around his neck.
“Hey.” He inhales deeply through his nose, and I can’t resist calling him out.
“Did you just smell my hair?”
His body stiffens. “Um...no?”
“You totally just smelled my hair.”
“It smells really good!” he protests, his hands still pressed against my lower back. “And it’s right in my face! I can’t not smell it.”
“Yeah, but you like, savoured it.”
He steps back from the hug. “I did not savour it. That would be creepy. I’m not a creep, Renee.”
“I don’t know about that. It was pretty damn creepy.”
“Liar.” He smacks my butt and pulls me into him again. “You loved it.”
He only meant to joke around, but the result is an entirely different kind of teasing. Other than in the alleyway, that’s the first time his hand has touched my ass. It’s the first time he’s ever smacked my ass, and it sends a tremor of desire through me I’m sure I don’t manage to hide.
“We should, uh, go inside. The rain, you know.” Dylan’s voice has gone hoarse, his hands frozen on my waist like he doesn’t trust himself to move them anywhere else.
“Mhmm. Yeah. Let’s go inside.”
I pull myself off him and do my best not to look like a woman desperate to be ravished by the man behind her as I lead the way into the cafe. I’m still hyperaware of the foot of space that separates us as we stand in line behind a little old French lady who takes about seven years to order a coffee. Every inch of distance between his body and mine feels like too much and not enough all at once. I don’t think I could handle being any closer, but all I want is for him to step up and claim my space as his own.
“Madame? Excusez-moi?”
It takes me a second to register that the cashier is talking to me. That’s quickly followed by the realization that Dylan is not so subtly laughing at me. Clearly the cashier has had to repeat herself a few times.
“Un chai latte, s’il vous plait,” I answer in the mix of French and English—Franglais, as it’s called—that might as well be Montreal’s official language.
Dylan orders his Americano and clinks his paper cup against mine as we make our way over to the corner table. I take it as a sign of good luck that it’s empty; it’s my favourite seat in the place, but it’s rare to find it unoccupied.
“Aren’t we predictable?” he jokes about our drink order.
“I really liked this last time,” I defend myself. “My best friend definitely would have gone for the pumpkin spice. She is all about the Starbz.”
“Starbz?” Dylan repeats. “Does she really call it Starbz?”
“She’s the only person I’ve ever met who says that without a trace of irony.”
Dylan takes a sip of his drink before setting it down and fixing up the pillows behind him on the bench. “Tell me more about her.”
“You might remember her. She used to go to the workshops. Her name is Tahseen.”
His eyes light up with recognition. “No shit? You’re still friends with Tahseen? She’s an incredible poet. I haven’t seen her at a slam in a while, but she always crushes it.”
“Yeah, she’s amazing. She’s been pretty bogged down with school for a while, so poetry has taken a back seat. She misses it.”
“She’s at McGill?”
I nod. “She’s hoping to go into law.”
“She’d make an excellent lawyer. I wouldn’t argue with that girl.”
“Oh trust me, she’s very difficult to argue with, and she loves making a point.”
“What about you?” he asks.
I squint at him. “Do I like making a point?”
“No.” He chuckles. “I meant are you still writing, or did poetry...take a back seat?”
I contemplate the foam in my cup. “I guess you could say that.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s fine. I...I kind of want to talk about it. It’s just hard to explain.”
“Hey.” He waits for me to look up at him. “We have all day, unless someone sets Taverne Toulouse on fire, so take as much time as you need.”
“Thanks.” I brush my finger over his knuckles on the table top, pulling my hand back when my whole arm zings with the rush of the contact. I know I’m not getting any explaining done if I keep that up. “Once the anxiety started, it just got harder and harder to...think like that. It was like all the words were gone. Sometimes I’d feel them. It’s like they were so close, locked behind this door I just didn’t have the key to, and I’d pound and pound on it, but they wouldn’t come out.”
If I was talking to anyone else, I’d be blushing by now and apologizing for sounding crazy, but I know Dylan will understand. He may never have lost them before, but he knows what it’s like to reach for the words.
“It was like losing part of myself, like finding police tape I couldn’t cross wrapped around the best part of who I am. If I’d still had poetry, it would have been so much easier to handle all the things I went through, but no matter how many times I tried to get to that place I’d always been able to find before, I couldn’t. The worry got in the way. Eventually I just...stopped trying. It was breaking my heart to keep losing that fight.”
I’m wearing my blanket scarf again, and Dylan starts toying with the edge of it, letting me know he’s there, that he’s listening, that I can reach for him if I want.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Poetry has always been...I mean, it’s the one thing I’ve always felt like I can turn to, like it can keep me going when nothing else does. I know how much it must have hurt to feel like you were losing it.”
I nod, leaning into his touch when it comes to rest on my shoulder.
“And now?” he asks. “Is it still the same?”
“I think so.” I can’t keep myself from sounding ashamed. I am ashamed. It’s like I lived my whole life with a superpower just to wake up without it one day. If anything could continue to make me feel weak, it’s the loss of my poetry. “I’m almost scared to try.”
“I don’t think it’s gone forever. In fact, I know it’s not gone forever.”
He sounds so sure of himself, so sure of me. It floods my whole body with warmth.
“Can I tell you something?” I ask.
“No,” he jokes. “No, you cannot.”
“Too bad. I’m going to anyway.”
He tugs on my scarf. “How did I know you were going to say that?”
“Because I’m a little shit?”
<
br /> He shakes his head and puts a hand over his heart, pretending to be overwhelmed by my little shit-ness.
“There have been moments...” I begin. “There have been moments...with you...where I’ve felt it. I’ve felt like I can reach the words again. It’s only ever for a second or two, but it’s like—like this light comes on all of a sudden, like the key turns in the lock.”
“You’ve felt that with me?” He stares at me with wide eyes. I nod. “Renee, I...”
“I know it’s kind of crazy and it’s happening really fast, but...you’re starting to mean a lot to me, Dylan.”
He grabs my hands with both of his and presses a kiss to my knuckles. We might be sitting in a coffee shop in plain view of the whole store, but all I see is him. All I feel is the heat of his mouth on my skin and the fervent tremor of his hands where they’re wrapped around mine. The world goes as silent as the first few seconds of a snowfall. It feels like the most intimate thing anyone has ever done to me, to see his head bowed before me, his lips brushing my knuckles like even just that inch of skin is the most precious thing they’ve ever touched.
“You’re starting to mean a lot to me too.” He doesn’t drop my hands until he’s kissed them again.
We both escape to our drinks after that, filling the silence with long sips as the weight of the moment continues to cling to us. I start to wonder if I said too much, if I should have waited before announcing something like that, but then his foot nudges mine under the table.
I nudge him back.
He nudges me twice.
I nudge him twice.
“Okay, enough!” I protest once I finally manage to swallow. “I’m going to spill this everywhere.”
“Fine, fine. You’re right.”
I take another sip, and of course, he chooses right then to nudge me again. It really shouldn’t be this funny, but I have to cover my mouth to keep from splattering him. That only makes him laugh harder as I give him the finger with my free hand and choke down the chai.
“Who’s being a little shit now?” I complain after I’ve swallowed.
He shrugs and leans back against the wall. “I’m just trying to show you what it’s like.”