When I look at Will, the world stops for the time it takes him to blink and move forward to shake Naveen’s hand. They clap each other on the back. Will catches my gaze over Naveen’s shoulder, but I can’t read it. Then they’re out of my office and into the hall outside, talking about some photographs Will’s going to be showing next month.
And I’m alone.
Somehow, I find the concentration to finish paying bills and filing invoices, following up on emails and phone calls and chasing down bank statements to prove to artists that, yes, someone really did cash our checks and if it wasn’t them, they’d better take it up with whoever had learned to forge their signatures. An hour passes, then another. There’s other work to be done, but it’s on the desktop in my Philadelphia office, and while I usually bring my laptop and flash drives with everything I need, this morning I was so distracted I forgot. So now I sit and stare out the window at the city and pretend I’m not straining my ears for any sound of Will’s voice.
I fucked him.
There is no way around this, no way to make it pretty or anything other than what it is. I went to his apartment, and I let him put his hands and mouth on me, his prick inside me, and it was not by accident or coercion or because I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing. I fucked Will Roberts because I wanted him.
That’s when the shudder hits me, a tremor in my fingers, a twisting in my guts that bends me in half. My heart pounds so hard I press my fingers to it as if I can keep it from beating right out of my chest. I shake and shake and shake. My breath whistles in my throat until I press my lips together and force myself not to breathe for the count of one, two, three.
Calmer, steadier, I open my eyes.
Will stands in the doorway as if it’s a line he’s not allowed to cross. “Hey. Coffee?”
I should tell him I can’t go. I shouldn’t want to go. But I’m already standing, ready to follow him anywhere he takes me.
Chapter Seven
Because I still haven’t learned the neighborhood, we walk around the block until we find a place. Any other street in New York would have a dozen coffee/bagel/pastry shops, but not this one. We settle for a small diner that shows off what looks like decent pastries and questionable sandwiches in the case by the hostess stand. The coffee, as it turns out, is terrible. Will orders a slice of German chocolate cake. I ask for a muffin.
“Sugar?” Will asks, fingers hovering over the small ceramic container in which the sweetener packets have been shoved haphazardly, a rainbow of pastels.
“Two. Please,” I add quickly. So polite. So distant. Three days ago I had him naked and inside me, and now I can barely let my fingers touch his when he hands me the packets. I taste the coffee with a grimace and ask apologetically, “Can I have another, please?”
We warm our hands on the mugs and stare at anything except each other. The waitress brings the cake, but tells me they’re out of muffins. My disappointment is out of proportion to my need for a shitty diner muffin, and I can’t stop the frown. She offers cake, but I don’t want cake. Or pie. Really, I think as I watch her rattling off the list of desserts, all I want is for her to shut up and go away. I order lemon meringue and expect to hate it when it comes.
“So,” Will says after a second, when she’s finally gone and we have no excuse to keep ignoring each other. “How are you?”
“Fine. You?” I sip bad coffee and burn my tongue.
At first, he says nothing. Then he gives me a slow smile, sweeter than the extra sugar I added to my coffee. His smile is the kiss of ocean spray and the keening cry of gulls.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be at the gallery today.” A pause as perhaps he considers what to say next. “But I was hoping you would be. That’s why I stopped by.”
Tension eases inside me, and I find my own smile. “I’m glad you did.”
Again, he says nothing.
“Will...” I begin, stuttering on the flavor of his name. I can’t decide exactly what it is, but it feels gritty. Like sugar. No, like sand. “About what happened...”
An emotion I can’t decipher flashes across his face, and everything about him goes very still. His fingers turn the coffee mug. Turn and turn and turn. He leans forward, shoulders hunching, and rests his elbows on the table.
“Yeah. About that.”
Before he can say more, my phone trills. I didn’t program that ring tone, Jacqueline did, to set her apart from her sister and, I suppose, from everyone else. I’d ignore the call, but the look on his face says he’s expecting me to take it. And the truth is, I’m glad for an excuse to stall this conversation, because I’m not at all sure where it’s going.
“Hi, honey.”
Jac walked at nine months and talked at eleven, and she hasn’t slowed down or stayed quiet since. She is my in-charge child, bold and opinionated, capable of compassion but not so great with tact. She resembles me more than her sister does, but she’s absolutely her father’s girl.
“I wanted to wish you Happy Birthday today, because I’m going to be camping on the weekend. No cell service.” She launches into the conversation without much preamble, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “Happy Birthday, Mama! Sorry I won’t be home for it.”
“It’s fine. When you get to be my age, birthdays aren’t such a big deal.” Ross is the one who believes that, not me. I’d make my birthday a month-long holiday if I could, but it’s kind of hard to celebrate it alone. “Thanks, though. Who’s going camping?”
“Just me and Jeff. State park. Roughing it.” Jac’s laugh is almost identical to the trilling tone she programmed into my phone, all burbling bubbles, the warble of a bird. “Tents and everything.”
“Sounds fun. Be careful,” I add, because I have to and she expects it, not because I fear my daughter will be reckless. She always knows where she’s going and how long it will take to get there.
I envy her that.
“Gotta go. Happy Birthday!”
“Thanks.”
“Make Daddy take you to dinner or something.”
“I will,” I tell her, though at that very moment I’m not sure I’ll be hungry for a long, long time. “Bye.”
Call disconnected, I give Will a small smile. “My daughter.”
“It’s your birthday?”
“Sunday,” I tell him with a small shrug.
“Got any big plans?”
“No. It’s kind of a milestone birthday,” I say suddenly, revealing something I wasn’t expecting to tell him. “Not a big one. Halfway to the big one, I guess.”
Will’s smile crinkles lines at the corners of his eyes. “Forty?”
I’m so convinced he’s pulling my chain, I burst into laughter I hide immediately behind my hand. He looks confused, still smiling, his head tilting a little to look me over. “No?”
“Um, no. Thanks, though. Not quite. I’ll be forty-five.” It doesn’t sound so bad out loud, though in my head I’ve been testing it out for the past few weeks. “Seems like a lot bigger step from forty-four than it did from forty-three.”
The number five to me is the color Crayola used to call burnt sienna and we always called “baby poop brown.” It could be why it’s my least favorite number. Why this birthday, perhaps, has hit me so much harder than the last few, because when I think of being forty-five, the four—which has always been a nondescript and inoffensive cloud-gray—is overshadowed by that ugly color.