“Okay, you know what,” he said when he returned, “the restaurant’s just hosting a rehearsal dinner tonight. If you want to come on over here, we’ll do some e-commerce damage while I’m not carrying plates of quail kebabs, all right?”
Caroline agreed and hung up the phone. There, that was minor progress. She’d get new pants. Now all she needed was a real boyfriend, a career, hobbies, and a social life.
Adrian grunted as he lugged his heavy duffel bag down the block to Tom’s restaurant. His roommate had called to offer him a hundred bucks to touch up the mural in the banquet room, but he’d been vague on what kind of damage and what kind of paint was even involved. Adrian had nearly told him that he wasn’t an art restorer, but as the only artistic endeavor he’d completed in the past twomonths was fixing his own art, he’d agreed. Also, it would be a good thing to earn even a little money he didn’t take from Caroline. So he was lugging both acrylics and oil paint with him to the Greek restaurant, even though he hadn’t painted with acrylics in years, and his paints were all dried out—
There was a handwritten sign taped to the front door declaring the restaurant closed for a special event. Adrian thought closing on a Thursday night was probably a bigger problem for the restaurant than having a flaking mural of the Temple of Athena Nike in the banquet room, but he was no businessman, no matter what Caroline thought.
He’d spent the day stalking the website for Mike’s gallery, trying to decide whether his work still compared favorably with the other artists listed. Not actually calling him, no, because that would be too productive. He still couldn’t admit he had no other options besides taking Caroline’s money and going to Art Basel. He’d heard exactly nothing from any other gallery he’d contacted.
He pushed past the door and stomped sleet off his boots in the vacant entryway. Directly past the host’s stand was the bar, where Tom was mixing drinks. When his roommate spotted him, Tom waved but hastily turned and headed through the back door to the kitchen, where Adrian couldn’t follow him. Adrian was confused until he entered the main dining room and spotted Caroline in the back corner. He assumed that was why Tom had run off.
The dining room was freezing; the restaurant saved on the heating bill by relying on ambient heat from patrons and the kitchen to warm the place, even in winter. Caroline was the only person in the room. She was seated with her back to the door, and the contents of her purse were strewn across the table along with some dirty plates andempty glasses. Her hair was piled in a messy half bun on top of her head, barely visible over the back of her down coat. She had one of her spreadsheets up on her laptop, and she didn’t notice Adrian until he was standing next to her, looking down over her shoulder.
“Oh, hey,” she said, twisting in her chair to peer up at him. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Her smile was tentative but genuine. The rush of warmth it sent through him was undercut only by his observation that her eyes were puffy. She gestured at the seat next to her, and he dropped his bag and slid into it. He would have taken her hand, but he’d spent the entire week stewing on how he needed to keep his distance if he couldn’t keep himself—his head, his heart, any other unruly body parts—under control. He compromised by pressing his knee against hers under the table, as though some observer might assign him points for restraint.
“How was your day?” he asked, hoping that was not too pointed a commentary on how she looked.
“It was fine,” she lied.
He gave her a hard look, which she deflected as easily as one of his volleys. She waved it away with a small gesture before pushing her laptop to the side. “Have you had dinner? The kitchen’s closed, but Tom’s been bringing stuff out from the party in the other room.”
“I brought leftovers to the studio,” Adrian said, rejecting the implied offer. He spotted a couple of plates of dessert at the far edge of the table and quickly changed his mind. “Are those honey doughnuts?”
“Yes, but those are mine, actually,” Caroline said. Her chin was thrust out at him in mock aggression.
Adrian lifted his palms in surrender. He knew all about pretending things were fine. Caroline waited a second tolet the taunt land, then rearranged the plates until the desserts were at his seat. When he didn’t make a move to take a pastry, she picked one up and held it out in front of his face like she expected him to eat it from her hand.
He gently took it from her fingers and ignored the way she wrinkled her nose in disappointment. He ignored her sucking the honey off her fingers and the implication that he could have done that for her. He caught an explicit image before it could solidify in his mind and resolutely scrubbed it blank. He told himself it was respect and not cowardice dictating his actions, even if that line was blurring further than he could follow.
“Are you doing homework?” Adrian asked once he’d eaten a few bites of pastry. He also wanted to ask what she was doing at Tom’s place of employment, but he didn’t know how to phraseAre you just here for dinner, or do I need to have another stern talk with my roommate?
“No, job applications,” Caroline said. “Or, well, making a spreadsheet of job applications, deadlines, materials.”
“Oh,” he said, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“What?” she asked. She stuck her finger back into the honey on his plate and licked it clean again. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, thinking about her fingers in her mouth.
“I didn’t realize you were going to work after you graduated.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Some people don’t,” he said awkwardly. There had been several trust fund babies in his MFA class, because painting was an excellent career for people who didn’t need to earn an income. “Especially if they don’t need to.”
Caroline looked off into the distance, transparently calculating numbers in her head.
“I guess I technically don’t need to,” she said as she thought through it, apparently for the first time. “But I always thought I would.”
Adrian leaned in to read over her shoulder. “You’re applying to work at an i-bank?” he asked, barely keeping the horror out of his voice.
She shot him a wounded glance. “Well, I don’t know. They were in the employers’ list.”
Adrian snorted. “I don’t think anyone goes to work for an investment bank unless they need the money. Ask Tom. His ex worked at one, and she hated it.”
“Is that why they got divorced?” Caroline asked, seeming more interested. “Money issues?”
“No, they got divorced because Tom was a dickhead,” Adrian muttered.
Caroline drew back at this slander on someone who now seemed to be their mutual friend, but as Adrian had been the one left to deal with the aftermath, he felt entitled to say it.
