The window we came through slides up, the sudden air pressure shattering the bubble.
“Why can Ineverfind you?” Jean complains, popping his head through. “Oh. Andy.”
“See you later,friend,” Sloane says, her voice soft with smoke, as she pushes up off the roof before disappearing through the window, already regretting the kiss I didn’t take.
14
Sloane
I hold the sweater near my neck, admiring the subtlety in the golden fibers woven throughout the brown wool. It’s earthen and rich and soft, and it pulls my own blonde hair warmer, less severe than it is when I stick to cool tones. Olivia dangled it before me, her eye for refinement much better than mine. It could do with a fringe, or a frayed edge. Maybe a cold shoulder.
I quickly put it back when I realize it reminds me of Andrew’s eyes, suddenly thinking about the way he didn’t want to kiss me. About the way I offered the easy kind of intimacy he wanted to begin with, and he rebuffed it. It’d be a lie to say my pride wasn’t somewhat sore; that I haven’t thought about what it would’ve been like even more often than I did before. It’s a hazard of knowing someone like him—tall, imposing, charming, like a nineties movie star. Just a hazard, one I’m managing fairly well when I don’t see sweaters that remind me of his gaze.
“That sweater would’ve looked fabulous on you.” Olivia slides on her black Prada sunglasses, designer shopping bags slung across her arm as she sips from the to-go coffee wesnagged from the Nordstrom cafe. I’m struck once again by how different she is from the way I saw her at the team dinner.
Wallflower, she is not.
I discerned that just from our visit at Veronica Beard. She commanded the space, gave every employee a task and yet they seemed to be eating out of the palm of her hand. Her entire presence opens up without Will around. Her posture straight, her shoulders back, her head arched up ever so slightly, her eyes intense when she’s pinning you with a question. I admire it but can also see how some may find it a little intimidating. And maybe I would too if I didn’t watch this magnificent force dim the moment her shitty boyfriend made a backhanded compliment. I tighten my hold on my own shopping bags at the memory. At how one mediocre man could have such a hold on not just her, but Gen, too.
I put my aviators on and watch Olivia inspect me from my periphery. I’ve noticed her doing this a few times, cataloging in the same way I’ve catalogued her. Appreciating, envying, judging every little detail.
We constantly compare ourselves to women who aren’t even our mirror but a framework for a different life we could’ve led.
I feel that sickening sense of being perceived, of someone etching a story in their brain that isn’t quite right but is, nevertheless, the one I’ve thrown into the world. The story I’ve decided people will remember me by, even if it is a fiction so carefully laid over the facts that it’s hard to distinguish what's real.
I shake the thoughts away and turn my face to the sun on a sigh.
“I’m starvin’,” I say, looping my arm through hers and can feel her tense at the unexpected physical touch, before quickly relaxing.
“There’s a cute little brunch spot up the street. They have incredible french toast,” she smiles, warmer than what you might expect from her, and it’s an honest detail that means something.
“Sounds perfect,” I nod and we begin our trek down the cobblestone street. I breathe in the freshly cool air, the muggy greenness of the summer giving way to a canvas of yellow, orange and red.
I’ll give Boston one thing: it’s beautiful in the fall.
We pass an art gallery and I linger on a window placed portrait of a mother and son. It’s a mixed media piece, done using a photo transfer technique that leaves them looking almost haunted.
“Do you want to go in?” Olivia asks, noticing. She nods her head at the door, her eyes curious.
“You don’t mind?” I ask but my foot’s already halfway through the door. She laughs, untangling herself so I can explore freely. The gallery assistant is clad in all black, in a way I’ve noticed they always are. An attempt to look like they are from New York, especially when they aren’t. I gaze at the different collages, sculptures, and everyday items altered to have a whole new meaning when my eyes land on a large, familiar white canvas littered with dried citrus.
The sticky sweet juice from slicing and squeezing haunts my finger tips now. The death it’s had since I breathed life into it is startling, and I still, studying it as my gut churns.
On first glance the canvas radiates warmth, an endless summer that I can almost smell, can almost remember, but the longer I stare the more the illusion fades. And that was the point—to cover the fruit in a thin layer of resin, preserve its texture but not its vitality. Highlight the edges of the oranges that curl in on themselves, the dark moldy spots of the lemons that even I, the artist, somehow missed at first glance, thepulp now brittle from time. Some of the fruit has become translucent, so the audience can see the love notes underneath, promises written in my hand that send a familiar wave of nausea through me.
I have the urge to tear them from the canvas and burn them.
“Oh, we just got this one in—it’s an Elliot Walker original.” The curate rounds her desk and grins, waiting for me to be impressed.
My eyes fixate on the small white card near the canvas.
Sun Dried,love exposed to life.
My gaze settles on the love note under an almost rotted blood red orange, the familiar slope in theEmatching the one permanently etched to my inner arm and it’s like I feel him, his breath, his touch, the way his stubble would brush my neck. It’s suffocating and terrifying, the way I miss it. The way I can’t seem to unframe the version of me he painted, his damage radiating through every stroke. I fear that, regardless of how much time has passed, regardless of how well my mind releases all claim to him, that piece of him that no doctor could ever purge will haunt my bones. Will ring through me and make me remember who I almost was with him.
I turn my back to the woman whose slightly pretentious smile senses none of the torrent of emotion roiling within me and I head straight back through the gallery door, the brisk Massachusetts air a reminder of all that I’ve lost as I rush down the long street. I finally stop, shutting my eyes and leaning against the cold brick of a store I don’t recognize.
“What the hell just happened?” Olivia’s breathy voice interrupts my thoughts as I watch her swat away the stray hairs that sprang from her long ponytail in her jog to catch up, her shopping bags spun so messily in her arms that she gives up on them, dropping them on the brick street. “You ran out ofthere…?” Her eyes are asking a million different questions but she must catch something in my expression because she nods to the building across the street. “French toast?”
