He clenched his teeth against telling her that he didn’t feel very safe for her either.
“The school programs are run by professors in the art history department,” he said. “I went on one to the Netherlands.”
Caroline brushed that aside and dug in, unwilling to let it go.
“We should probably get plane tickets soon,” she said. “Bern? Geneva?”
Adrian sighed. “No, neither. I was thinking of Art BaselMiami, but that’s during your finals, as you said.”
“Oh,” she said, absorbing that. Her clever mind turned it around and examined it, even though her eyes were bright and cheeks pink from the wine. “In Florida?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you wanted to go. For professional reasons?”
Adrian didn’t answer, but she was only confirming it.
She hooked a hand around his elbow and pulled him back when he would have turned away.
“Why don’t you go? I don’t mind if you go without me,” she said. “I’ll be busy studying anyway.”
He gave her a tight expression, because it was fairly obvious why he wouldn’t go without her.
Caroline frowned, still working through it. “Of course I’d give you the money to go. Why didn’t you just ask?”
The discomfort of her question was choking him. He pulled back against her hand until she released him, but she didn’t let him back away.
“Caroline. I can’t take your money.”
She snorted. “Yes, you can. You do! Every week. Isn’t that the entire point of this? I’m supposed to get you the things you want.”
He struggled to articulate the distinction between taking money for his time (and letting her pay for everything, and drive you around, and help you move, an insistent inner voice pointed out) and openly asking her for things he couldn’t afford.
“You’ve probably guessed I didn’t earn this money,” she said in a more self-deprecating tone when he didn’t respond. “So it’s not like it’s really mine. And giving you money so you can go to an art show is practically like giving to charity. Like building a museum.”
Adrian didn’t want to be her charity. He didn’t even want to be her... employee, or whatever he was. It wasn’t any better than the slow humiliation of letting Nora pay all of their bills while he was present in that relationship less and less, because he wanted this one to be real. The things Caroline wanted from him ought to have been free. Ought to have come from someone who wasn’t him in thefirst place but should have been free. As Caroline gave him more and more—more of her time, more of her money, more of her care—he was taking advantage of her every day that he accepted it.
“It would cost almost five thousand dollars to fly down and pack all my paintings for shipment,” he objected. That was a low estimate, assuming he stayed in a hostel with the international artists rather than the W South Beach, which Nora had preferred.
“Okay?” Caroline said, still not following him.
He settled his shoulders. “Can you even afford to waste five thousand dollars on something like this?”
“Yes, of course I can. I wouldn’t have hired you in the first place if I couldn’t. Were you worried about that?” she asked, pointed chin turning to the side in confusion.
He vaguely gestured at her outfit. The same black dress she’d worn out to every evening event since the night they met. “I wasn’t sure. You always wear the same dress.”
Caroline looked down at her body. “Is there something wrong with wearing this here? I get it dry-cleaned after I wear it.”
“No,” he said, voice halting, because it did look fantastic on her, every time, and the way it clung to her hips had probably taken years off his life already. “I just wondered if you couldn’t afford other ones.”
Caroline’s eyes widened. “You should have told me if I needed to buy more.” She took out her phone and typed something into her calendar, presumably a note to herself to go shopping.
“It’s fine,” he said quickly. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
She gazed at him with doubt, as though wondering what else he was holding back. Then she rustled aroundin her big yellow purse again, coming out with her checkbook. She was up to number 1008, all written to him. Over his noise of objection, she wrote out a check for five thousand dollars, then tucked it into his resistant palm.
“I want you to be able to depend on me,” she said firmly, curling his fingers around the paper. “I can hold up my end of this. We both get to have the things we want. That’s how this works.”
