As though the thought of him summons the text, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Russell: What are you doing tonight?
Jules:Gus is with Ettie, I’m just going to binge watch some Gilmore Girls. Aren’t you supposed to be in surgery?
Russell:It was canceled. Want to binge at my place instead?
Jules: Sure, when were you thinking?
I stop in the lobby, phone in my hand, and when I look up through the glass, I see Russell stopped on the street outside, his hand resting on the steering wheel as he texts me back.
When he looks up and catches my gaze, I’m torn through with too many different feelings. First, wanting to straight-up ask him if he was having sex with a stranger that night five years ago. Second, knowing that if I go to his place right now, I’ll be binging, but just not a TV show.
“Jules,” he says, leaving his car and meeting me at the door, a smile stretched over his face and making his dimples pop. “Come on, I already ordered our food.”
Russell’s place is, somehow, even better than what I could have imagined.
He greets the woman at the front desk—who’s in full red lipstick and a sleek paneled dress—and ushers me over to a private elevator, which we ride upward for longer than what feels realistically possible.
“I’m starting to think this is the elevator from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I whisper, right before the gentle chime that alerts us we’ve reached the right floor.
“I declined the self-ejection feature,” he murmurs, and when the elevator doors slide open, I let out an embarrassing gasp.
His building is in River North, one block back from the water but tall enough to easily capture the view. The moment we step out of the elevator, I feel a wave of vertigo, the floor-to-ceiling windows and wrap-around deck giving me the sense that I could just walk right off the side of the living room and plummet to the ground below.
“It will pass,” Russell laughs, skimming his hand over my arm and guiding me inside. “Made me dizzy the first time I came up here, too.”
“And now? How can you stand it?”
“Just wait until the morning, and you’ll realize it has its perks.”
“I mean,” I say, swallowing, stepping into the living room and past the couch, getting as close to the windows as I dare. Chicago stretches out and around us, dark but for the blinking, shimmering lights. “This is pretty fucking perky.”
“Want anything to drink?” he asks, pulling open a cabinet that’s actually a fridge. I stare at him, swallowing at the sight of him in the sleek white and bamboo kitchen, standing so casually in a room that must have cost more than myentireapartment building.
When I don’t answer, he closes that door, then opens another to reveal a wine fridge, pulling out a bottle and setting it on the counter.
I’m turning in a slow circle, heart hammering as I take it in.
Last year, for my birthday, Ettie got me a suite at one of the fanciest hotels in Chicago. We had a great time wrapping ourselves up in the fluffy robes and rolling around in the king-sized bed while the kids stayed with a flustered Sienna. I thoughtthatwas the pinnacle of luxury.
But now, standing in his apartment, I’m breathless with the reality he lives. I’ve seen it, through his clothes and his car, the way he throws money at Gus and me like it’s nothing, but this is different. I can no longer deny that there’s something fundamentally different about me and him.
“Juliette?” he asks, stretching out my whole name. I turn to look at him, swallowing at the sight of his socked feet on the floor. I’ve touched him, held him, let him do what he wants with me, and yet, the sight of him in nothing but socks is making me feel suddenly like this is far too intimate.
The question is on the tip of my tongue—and should be easy to ask.Were you at the ball? The night your dad announced his diagnosis, did you…?
But how can I ask something like that? I like to tell myself that I’m not ashamed of what happened that night—I was a grown woman with a grown man. I was on birth control. Yes, it was an accident, but Gus is still the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
And yet, I don’t want to ask Russell if he was there, because it would be revealing the truth of how Gus was conceived. Being reckless and sleeping with a man I’d just met—a man whose name I didn’t even know.
“Do you want a tour?” Russell asks, surprising me out of my thoughts, and I think—yes, of course I want a tour of your stupidly grand apartment.
“Yes, of course I want a tour of this stupidly expensive apartment,” I say, which isn’t much of an improvement, but it makes him laugh and turn, abandoning the wine on the counter to show me around.
A double fireplace, half inside the unit and half outside on the patio. Two separate living rooms, an exercise space, and in the center of it all, somehow, a staircase I hadn’t even noticed.
“A two-story apartment,” I mutter, shaking my head.
