“No, I’m not. I’m not holding it against you. I’ve—listen, I’ve not had a good day.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“It doesn’t.” He takes a breath. “It’s just that . . . some days, here, it feels to me like no one says what they mean. No one means what they say.”
“Here?”
“Here,” he repeats, gesturing to the air around us with his to-go cup. “This city.”
I blink with a fresh wave of hurt. My hidden letters, his hatred of this city.This,this whole entire thing is what I should have left alone all those weeks ago. I shouldn’t have taken that card as a sign. All these walks we’ve been on, and nothing,nothinghas changed between us.
“It’s not the city,” I say, my voice hard, harsh—unrecognizable even to me.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
“You think you know it here? Your extensive network of people onWall Street?” All my disdain, I put it into those italics. “At your big job that you never talk about, anyway?”
He stares at me, his jaw clenched.
“It’s not the city,” I say again. “It’s the way peopleare. Not everyone says exactly what they’re thinking all the time, in the most blunt way possible. People have to be nice to some jerk at their job so they don’t get fired. Or they have to grin and bear it while a family member is being obnoxious so they don’t make it worse. Or they have to put up with some annoying personality trait a friend has, because it’s not the worst thing, in the grand scheme of things. People are only trying to . . . they’re trying toprotectthemselves.”
My mouth snaps shut, my face flushes.Too much, again. I’ve unblocked myself into another dimension, and that shaky-stomached feeling is back.
“Meg,” Reid says softly, and this sympathy—it humiliates me further. All I can think of is distracting him from it.
“You think it’s not easy to understandhere,” I say, loud enough that I think a few heads turn. “But that’s not everyone else’s fault. It’syours.”
As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I know. I know it’s a direct hit, the worst thing I could have said to him. I think of Cameron, saying to Lark the exact thing that seemed to hurt her the most. I think of my parents. I think ofmyself.
Neither of us says anything for a few seconds. We both seem to have to stay still to absorb the shock.
“Maybe we ought to forgo the rest of this walk,” he says, finally.
“Reid, let me—I didn’t say that right.”
“You said it right.” These four words—they are so sans serif they slice me in half.
He raises his head, quickly scans our surroundings. The park is busy, the sun not set yet.
“Will you be all right getting home?”
I nod, still shocked. I couldn’t add a smile if I tried.
But when he starts to turn, I make my second—or third, or fourth, who even knows by this point—impulsive move of the day. I reach out to stop him, and I don’t know what happens—don’t know if I jerk back in surprise at myself, or if he’s startled, or if some electric current lives between us—but suddenly Reid’s cup of tea is upturned, spilling across his arm, all the way up to the crook of his elbow. All over the white expanse of his perfect shirt.
The cup hasn’t even finished rolling on the ground before Reid has yanked open the buttons at his wrist, his face set in pained tolerance. I’m close enough to feel the heat from the liquid that’s soaking into his skin.
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!”
I set my smoothie on the ground, take his suit jacket from his arm before it slips. He pulls his sleeve to his elbow, getting the hot fabric off his skin.
“Reid,” I breathe, failing to keep the alarm out of my voice. “What happened?”
Because this, what I’m looking at—this cannot be a burn from that tea. Along the edge of that forearm I’ve longed to see, there’s a bright red patch of skin that tracks from the middle of his wrist to the bend at his elbow. It’s wet from the tea, but I can tell it must’ve been dry before—it must’ve been itchy and uncomfortable and so, so painful.
I look up. Reid’s face is blank, severe. He holds out his hand for his jacket.
“Nothing.”
