You are just one of…what? The possibilities curdle in my stomach when someone knocks on the door and I jut up, eager for a distraction. Outside I find Andy, in his leather Astor bomber, his nose red from the brisk wind, arms full of Chinese take out.
“You’re an angel,” I say on an exhale, my anxiety settling low in the background of my consciousness as tenderness presses to the fore.She won’t call again, I think.Just ignore it, she’ll go away, he’ll go away. “How’d you know I was minutes away from eatin’ my own hand?”
“Because I know you, Sloane,” he chuckles and it’s not like they say in the movies. The world doesn’t tilt. I don’t feel the butterflies I did when I first arrived in Boston—no. It’s worse. It’s that quiet static that seems to hum between us, the way his eyes meet mine and I’m excited to see the small creased linesthat form at the corners, the ones I’ve memorized, that I know are coming because they always come when he sees me. It’s not a whirlwind, it’s not a storm; it’s softer, steadier, scarier.
I step aside, shutting the door as he drops the cartons on the counter, and when I turn around I’m in his arms, so warm, despite the cold he just emerged from. A hand low on my back, he pulls me into him, his other skating around my neck as he consumes me with his kiss.
Falling into it is easy; it always is. But what I want is to dive into him, desperately, to forget every problem that tethers me to the person who will eventually fuck this all up.
He rears slightly back, studying me with the kind of concern that I’m still not used to seeing. “What’s going on?”
He asks and it’s like he’s knuckle deep inside of me, ripping me open, but it isn’t violent at all. His warm eyes constantly check if I’m okay and the desire to scrub the memory of myself from my own skin overwhelms me. To become something softer or quieter, the vulnerable thing they always end up wanting me to be no matter how many times they claim to like that edge that refuses to dull, because let’s face it—they all want to be the one who finally smooths it out.
It terrifies me that if I let him in, that moment will come where he asks me to be less. But even scarier is that desperate, exhausting realization that I would try. For him I would try and all I can do is hope that unlike the others, unlike Elliot, Andy won’t ask.
“I just got a call from a reporter,” I finally say, and his brows furrow as his hold on me tightens. “About my old professor. Who I…”You have to tell him eventually, Sloane.“Who I dated. I dated my professor before I came here and it ended kind of badly,” I say in a rush, wincing, my smile small and fragile as I wait for him to release me.
Something about my relationship with Elliot always feltrebellious but we’d convinced ourselves it was the world that was the problem. We couldn’t be seen laughing at a joke together while in seminar becausethe worldwas prudish and would judge me. Wouldn’t takemeseriously. It was never about him. As if he was immune to the judgement I was laden to.
Something about saying this out loud now, to Andy, feels different. Like my brain has finally come to terms with the thing that my heart still can’t. The sensical part of me can so easily blame Elliot. He was older, he should haveknownbetter, he took advantage in the way only a girl can be taken advantage of when she's young and believes she is what everyone claims her to be.
I can see this truth for what it is—a girl manipulated and broken by a man. But in my heart I blame myself, could always feel the judgmental eyes of my peers when Elliot spent too long complimenting the brush work on one of my watercolors. Always heard my roommates quietly whisper when he’d drop me off at my apartment, blouse haphazardly buttoned because his wife was home and we had to use the back seat of his car. And the heart always beats the brain doesn’t it? You can be so sure of something but that drowning feeling like a stone in your gut remains.
Andy’s jaw twitches and I wonder if he blames me, too.
“You’re mad,” I say quietly. “You think I’m horrible, don’t you?”
“What?” His concern swirls into a silent frustration, but still, he holds me. “Sloane, no. I…” he pauses, closing his eyes like he’s carefully considering his words. “I don’t think there are enough words in any language to fully explain how I feel about you, but mad could never be one of them.” His breath skims the top of my head and I suck in a breath. “If I could reach back through time, if I could step in front of every moment and every person, that ever made you doubt yourself, I’d find them. If only to remind you, again and again, for as long as it took, exactly who you are.” He shakes his head, making an attempt to soften his features. “I hate that you’ve ever believed you were anything but perfect.” I watch as he packs away his frustration, neatly storing it for later.
The gentleness of his fingers against my skin is deliberate, and when I finally let myself relax it feels like falling, like letting go before knowing what's waiting at the bottom and searching for something solid, a foothold to stop the inevitable crash…and finding him, his fingers tracing circles on the freckles of my skin.
“This reporter though, if they keep bothering you…”
Something about the way he’s holding me a little tighter, his mouth brushing the top of my head; I’ve never felt more protected. Never realized that I wanted to feel this way, actually, and my teeth tug at my lip nervously because it terrifies me.All of itterrifies me. I pull away, brushing invisible dirt on my pants, striding toward the lo-mein.
“I don’t even know what she really wants. I hung up on her.”
Andy quietly pads through the apartment, pulling plates and glasses from the cabinet, before joining me on the floor by the coffee table, a contemplative look etched into the strength of his brow. “And?”
“That’s it.”
“But it’s bothering you,” he challenges, sliding more than half the container of noodles on my plate, and I can’t help but grin over at him. Two spring rolls get plopped there, too, plus a heaping portion of sesame chicken. All of which happen to be my favorite.
I lock eyes with him for a second, a warmth circling my heart and squeezing so tight, I worry I’ll never feel this goodagain.This good, in the midst of all the other shit. That’s the magic in being taken care of, being seen; that’s the unexplainable that I worry will one day make perfect, deconstructable sense.
His brows lift, a reminder of the conversation he’s trying to have.
“Yes, it’s botherin’ me. I closed that chapter of my life and I’ve got no desire to revisit it,” I tell him, feeling confident and sure, my brain winning, if only for a moment and he nods. There isn’t anything about that time that calls to me—not right now, anyway—and I watch as he lets me steer this ship. Lets me share what I want and leave alone what I don’t. A privilege I’ve rarely been given.
Just past where Andy sits, I can see my bedroom door cracked open, can see my unfinished canvas and the late afternoon sun that fractures over the drop cloth. Like it’s speaking to me, a silent petition to be finished.
His tongue grazes his bottom lip as an easy smile tugs there, and as hungry as I am, I’d rather feast on him instead. “Eat,” he says, reading my mind or the heat in my gaze. “We have all the time in the world.”
God, I want it to be true. More than anything. So I let myself lean into this thing I’m constantly scared will slip through my fingers.
“Was my brother nice to you today?” I ask him, spooling the noodles around my chopsticks. Andy’s eyes roll as laughter chimes out of him and he leans back against the couch.
“I think he’s only hard on me in front of you. Honestly, he’s a peach,” he says, shrugging his shoulders before popping a fried wonton in his mouth.
