“Pretty sure you’ve been dating her for, like, two months, but whatever. What are you going to do?”
“Get a job. Sleep in my studio. Maybe see if Tamsyn is looking for a roommate now that she’s single.”
“You’d rather do that than stay with Caroline? You know she’d let you.”
“What if she only let me because I have nowhere to go?”
“Nora kicked you out anyway.”
“Caroline’s not Nora. I would worry Caroline didn’t actually want me there.”
“That sounds like ayouproblem, not aherproblem.”
Adrian put his hands in the air. “Sometimes things are just terrible. Sometimes there is no good solution.”
Tom laughed scornfully. “And sometimes they’re not! Are we not going to talk about that five-thousand-dollar check that’s been sitting on the kitchen counter for weeks? I put it in the junk drawer, by the way.”
Adrian glared at him. “I can’t take Caroline’s money. We’re together now.”
“You took Nora’s money for years.”
“And look how that turned out.”
“It turned out that way because you wouldn’t let her fuck around. She wanted to marry you! If you’d wanted to marry her, she’d be buying me a ticket to your obnoxious destination wedding in St. Barts right now.”
“Didn’t you tell me to stop letting Caroline pay me?” Adrian asked testily.
“I just wanted you to tell her you’re her boyfriend. You have to work this money shit outwithher.”
“Don’t worry,” Adrian said, standing up to go take inventory of the food on hand. “I’ll handle this. There’s no reason I can’t have a job during the day while I keep looking for another gallery. That’s what I should have done already.”
He’d begin a new series. Find some new inspiration. The winter landscape of New England made a good starting point, and he bet Caroline hadn’t left the city much, if at all. If she really didn’t have plans over winter break, there were places they could visit within a quick train ride’s distance. It wasn’t going to look much like things had been or would have been if he’d signed up with Mike, but he’d enjoyed the city during his college years on very little spending money. Maybe he could juggle a relationship, painting, a job, and the gallery search. He’d have to.
Tom snorted again. “Fine, your funeral.”
Adrian’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out and saw Caroline’s selfie illuminating the screen.
He nearly let it go to voice mail. He was in no shape to be appropriately enthusiastic about the discussion she’d proposed, and he wanted to be happy when he talkedwith her about it—because hewashappy about it; it was the single, solitary thing in his life he felt happy about at the moment—not reeling from the disintegration of his career.
But he forced himself to answer, readying excuses for why he couldn’t see her until the next day.
The rough, wobbly quality of her voice had him ducking into his room instead.
“Hi,” she said, with an audible sniffle. “I know I said tonight, but, um. Something came up.”
“That’s fine,” Adrian said gently, waiting for relief to come. It didn’t. “Are you home?”
“Yeah. Well, actually, I’m somewhere in Brookline, about to go home, but it looks like all the rideshare services have hour waits right now.”
“The snow,” Adrian said inanely.
“Yeah, the snow.”
She sniffled again. Adrian’s hand tightened on the phone.
“Do you know where Washington Square is?” he asked. “You can take the light rail to Park Street—”
“Is that the T? How do I get on?”
