“You belong in jail.”
He laughs. The strap of my dress has fallen halfway down my shoulder, revealing the swath of skin between my breast and my arm that I’ve always secretly found elegant. That I’ve always wanted someone else to admire. I feel Reid’s eyes drift right to that spot, and then, as he remembers himself, quickly shift back up to meet my face.
I am suddenly aware, unselfconsciously, that I am being perceived by this man in exactly the way that I’ve yearned to be: unburdened, charismatic, like I, too, might have a second, deeper meaning. I want to tell him that he cankeep looking; that I want him to. That, somehow, I feel safer within the cradle of his gaze than outside of it. He doesn’t need to leave the door open for me. I don’t want anyone else to find me here.
“I’m worried about what time it is.” I realize I’m whispering, that suddenly this moment feels so fragile. “But I don’t want you to leave the party.”
“I don’t really want to leave either. But I’m free tomorrow night. And the night after that. And—I don’t want to be presumptuous here—but also the night after that.”
“But you won’t be here next week.”
He leans back on his hands, tilting his head to seek out the invisible stars above. “No, I won’t be here next week. I’ll be back in LA then.”
A pit opens up in my stomach. It is absurd, really, how much dread I feel at the prospect of a person I barely know not sitting next to me a few days from now.
But the boundaries of time also create a sense of safety, and I resolve to treat this as a test: How deeply can I allow myself to feel? How much can I release myself, to really transform into the person I think I can become—the one I feel like I am when in his gaze? If I fail, if my shell refuses to crack, if I’m halting and unsure and overthinking, then there will be no repercussions—no potential humiliation, no lingering awkwardness. Reid will simply disappear from my life, securely tucked away on the opposite coast, and I’ll never risk seeing him again.
But then, I can’t quite acknowledge that those are also the repercussions if I succeed.
Reid turns to look at me again. The little rambling garden below us is spangled in fairy lights, and it’s like each tiny bulb has unlatched and floated up here to glitter in his eyes.
You’re done for, I think, counting every tiny flash. I don’t even want to hide from his prolonged eye contact—that’s how much I like this guy.
He slowly raises his hand, and his knuckles graze my cheek. I lean into his touch, desperate for more and prepared to plunge headfirst into the challenge I’ve laid out for myself.
So I lean in and kiss him. When our lips meet, there’s less a spark than a current, like a circuit being completed. His fingers reach for the hair at the nape of my neck that’s frizzing with the humidity, and I thrill in that private scent of him, clean and musky at once.
But the sound of my name breaks the spell: It’s Nisha, yelling for me from the bedroom. Cat’s voice, yelling for Reid, follows.
Panic crosses Reid’s features. We get up and climb back into the room.
I see Nisha’s face first, glistening with tears. Before I can ask her what’s wrong, Cat grabs Reid and me both by the arms.
“He’s here,” Cat says. Her tone is hushed and reverent. “Jeff Buckley is fuckinghere.”
III
“Do you feel like you’re in a fever dream?” Reid asks. He neatly folds a piece of lettuce back into his sandwich. “Because I do.”
“I absolutely do,” I say.
We’re in Bryant Park, sitting at one of the green cast-iron tables that look like dollhouse set pieces. The heat from yesterday is holding on, but we’ve managed to find a slice of shade in the shadow of the library. Today I’m in an outfit that won’t show sweat: a navy cotton dress that hits right at my upper thighs, my hair twirled up into a claw clip.
Reid’s jacket is off and his sleeves are rolled up, but his tie is still knotted around his neck. He barely seems to notice the heat, though. I realize I’ve known him for under twenty-four hours, but those twenty-four hours have been some of the hottest on record, and I have yet to witness this man perspire.
I watch the long lines of his body settle back into his comically tiny chair.
Before Reid left the party last night—twenty minutes later than he’d needed to—we exchanged numbers and made plans to have dinner tonight. But he’d called methis morning and asked if I wanted to meet him on his lunch break too.
I don’t want to wait until seven to see you, he’d said.
I’d intended to spend the day finally preparing for the upcoming semester and catching up on the required reading I’ve failed to do—but this invitation made those things feel impossible.
“How’s Nisha holding up?” Reid says now.
“We’re hoping she’ll make a full recovery by 1994.”
I’m proud of how Nisha kept her cool last night. After she retrieved us from the bedroom, she dried off her face, touched up her eyeliner, and headed back out into the party. We found Jeff Buckley sitting on the floor of the living room, leaning against the couch and thoughtfully nursing a beer, surrounded by wide-eyed acolytes. The scene brought to mind a sixteenth-century painting my mother discovered in a dusty garage in Jakarta, one depicting a young, svelte Buddha lounging underneath a banyan tree, encircled by his lotus-posed followers. The Buddha was rendered in gold leaf so pure that, according to the dealer who sold it to her, centuries of aspiring art thieves had attempted to scrape the pigment off and sell it. None succeeded, due either to some ingenious preservative mixed into the paint or good old-fashioned karma, depending on the eye of the beholder.
