Thinking about it too hard, how happy I’ve felt, worries me. I didn’t even feel this happy with Elliot; with him there was this constant swing, a dangerously dark low that always had to compliment the highs we’d reach. He saw me, he used to tell me, but when I didn’t conform to his vision, we’d just fall. I could be such a disappointment. All of a sudden, though, I wouldn’t be, and God was that addicting. It felt purposeful, to have someone guiding me into my best self.
Once we met two of his old friends for drinks after dinner. We never did dinner—it was always drinks, after nine, in some obscure, insufferably artsy part of town. Maybe so we wouldn’t run into people, but I was impressed by the way he knew everything there was to know about being in the art world. We sat there, Elliot and I, the painters, Cleo, who worked with charcoal, and Ulrich, who also painted but exclusively with oil, and drank clear cocktails that reminded me of the rubbing alcohol Evie would pour over our scrapes. I felt so big, especially when the conversation turned to me and my work, how Elliot and I were fusing our talents together.
The grip he’d had on my thigh was the guide that night; when I spoke too much, he’d tighten it, when he liked what I was saying, he’d relax or stroke the skin there and I’d have to fight to stay focused. Cleo asked me what my plans were after I finished the program, and I told her about spending time abroad with some friends, doing the whole Europe, starving artist thing. My thigh went cold, his hand gone entirely. Later,he told me wandering around Europe was immature, and that he knew I was better than that.
“Don’t look like nothin’,” Connie cuts into my thoughts, and I pull in a deep breath.
“You ever look at your life different after some time?”
“All the time,” she scoffs, rolling her shoulders back. “Can’t see nothin’ clear up close. And not the first time ‘round.”
“Hmph,” I hum to myself, offering her my hand as she slides off the bed into the slippers I placed there when I let myself in a few hours ago.
“You hear from Beau and Evie?” Connie wades into the small kitchen, its glossy black counters so unlike anything she’d pick out for herself and lifts her kettle.
I shake my head. “They know better than to call me. I won’t answer.”
“I wish you would,” she says on a tsk, boiling water for the instant coffee she insists on making. A perfectly good, if not premium, coffee maker sits right there. “You missed that flight on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Of course I didn’t!” I lean my elbows against the bar, eyes wide with amusement as she cackles and pours heavy cream into her mug.
“So who was this friend you stayed with?” She turns around slowly, warming her hand with the side of her coffee, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she takes me in.
It’s like looking in a mirror, she told me while we waited for her to finish infusion. She said that seeing me reminded her of all the things she could’ve been. It was the saddest thing I’d ever heard, even though she said it with a smile on her face. She has no regrets, she told me on a different occasion. Not the saddest thing I’d heard, but maybe the most painful.
Nerves flicker in my chest, because I haven’t spoken about Christmas with anyone yet. My mother is the first toknow, and that feels so right. “Andy, actually. I take his sister home from the conservatory most days. That’s how I ended up there, when everything snowed in.”
“So can I meet him?” she asks, like any regular old question, and I startle. Mischief skips in her gaze.
“For what?”
“For fun,” she laughs, coughing on the tail end of her amusement and I rush to her side, opening a cabinet to find her inhaler. “Sloane, please,” she says on a wheeze, swatting me away. “Unless you don’t want him meetin’ a sick old lady, which?—”
“Well I can’t say no now, can I?” I shake my head, stifling a smile as I watch her meddle in real time. A mirror. “He actually asked to meet you.”
“I like him already.” She takes a big gulp of coffee, her brows lifting expectantly.
“I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.” Every time I imagine bringing Andy into this soft, scary bubble, I feel like I showed up to class naked. Overexposed and scared for anyone to look too close.
My mom’s eyes flit across my face. “Can I give you some advice?”
People who think they’re dying are full of advice for the living, I’ve realized. I don’t want her advice for that reason alone; it suggests she won’t be here to give it to me later. Somewhere there’s an hourglass, each grain of sand falling through the cinched passageway like a sick taunt. She asks if she can give me advice and I hear the grain fall, and I can’t say no even though I want to, even though I want to pretend like we’re not nearing another permanent shift in the makeup of my universe.
“Sure.” Glancing out the window, I notice it’s started to snow again. A snowy New Year’s Eve.
“Let people love you,” she says, her smile turning fragile.
I scoff, my lips hesitantly curving. “I loveyou, I love Grant, I love Gen, I love Beau, I love?—”
“Not what I said,” she says, her smile pulling tight. “You’re so good at lovin’ on other people, but receivin’? I fear you got that from me. That’s my only regret. I told you I have none, but I lied. I regret not lettin’ people love me. Might’ve saved me a whole lotta heartache.”
“I do let them love me, that’s the problem,” I mutter, walking over to the window to watch the snow flurries float to the ground. They disappear into the ground, changing form so quickly, and I envy the ease with which they shape shift. No friction or resistance, just easy, languid conformity. I was never good at that.
“I think you do when you’re not worried the well will run too deep,” she says, suddenly right beside me. “Clementine. Gen. It’s easy for you to let them love you because they’ve got their own lives. But you’ve never done well up close. Even as a baby. You’d get so whiny if I held you too long.”
“Maybe I don’t like bein’ smothered,” I retort, furrowing my brows before sinking into her couch.
“Maybe,” she laughs. “You get prickly when you feel someone’s pourin’ everythin’ into you, same way I used to.”
