I give a soft laugh. “Believe me. I relate.”
“You moved here for a guy?”
“No, I moved here to . . . to start over. But when I came, I only knew one person.” My eyes trace over to the boxes dotting the space of this much-loved, much-memoried apartment, and I try to press down another inconvenient feeling of urgency.
“At first,” I say, “I really only saw the city through her. It took me awhile to find my own way.” I don’t tell her that I’m one hundred percent sure Sibby has better eyes to see the city through than Cameron does.
“It does get easier, once you get out there,” I add.
She nods, but her expression is distant. I think about everything I know about Lark: how she seems to think fitting in here means wearing head-to-toe black. How she thinks anyone in Brooklyn would really care if she went into a coffee shop. How she somehow thinks Cameron—a man who wears a shark-tooth necklace!—is more qualified to make it here than she is.
“You know,” I say, keeping my voice light, the right kind of light for this, its own kind of confrontation. “I know this city pretty well. Anytime you want to get out, you should let me know.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“That’s really nice, Meg. Especially after the way I acted. I’m so sorry for that.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Even as I say it, though, I know it’s incomplete. I know it’s not all I have to say. I’m making her feel better, but not myself.
I take a deep breath.
“But I do think—if you want us to keep working together on your house—I’d prefer if I’m taking direction from one person. It’s difficult, in my position, when there’s a lot of conflict over the commission. I totally understand if that doesn’t work for you.”
There’s a long, awkward pause before she speaks again. It’s possible I can hear the dust motes talking to one another; that’s how quiet it seems in here as I wait for her to tell me whether the deal is off. It doesn’t matter that I’m coming off a great couple of weeks of work for Make It Happyn: at this moment, Sibby’s packed boxes feel encroaching, a reminder of why it’s important for me to keep this job, too. My body seems to straighten, to take on a preparatory posture. I think of Reid, wondering if this is how his body feels to himself all the time. It must be exhausting.
“My other friends don’t like him, either,” Lark says, finally. “Back in LA.”
Myotherfriends. I hear this as the gesture I think it is, a reciprocation of myAnytime you want to get outoffer. Lark considers me herfriend, not just her employee.
I shrug. “Well, hey. It was only one meeting.”
I don’t say it because I think Cameron improves over time; I am almost certain he doesn’t. I say it because—as her new friend, I guess—I don’t think it would help, right in this moment, to pile on.
I think it would help her to hear something else.
“Think of yourself as having two people here, at least, okay?”
She looks over at me and gives me her closemouthed smile. “Thank you,” she says softly. She swallows again, her face flashing with emotion briefly before she arranges it again into something neutral, unaffected. Then she looks over at me and breathes out a small, sarcastic laugh.
“Men,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Am I right?”
I blink in surprise, seeing this side of Lark, this more Princess Freddie side of her. But I recover quickly. I know this is a fragile step in this new, fledgling friendship.
“Maybe that should be the quote for the wall,” I say, doing my best deadpan Reid impression.
She tips back her head and laughs, no covering her mouth this time, and then I laugh, too, and it’s the kind of laughing that takes you by surprise, the kind of laughing you do not because the thing that got you started is particularly funny, but because you’re in the presence of someone else’s laughter, because there’s a point at which the laughteritselfbecomes funny.
Lark lifts a hand and sweeps it, palm out, in a big arc in front of her face, as if she’s revealing a marquee. She says “MEN” again, like she’s announcing a big show, and it’s somehow the funniest thing. I see it
made of lightbulbs, and I laugh harder; I think of the whole thing flaming to life in a blaze of glory. I hold up a fist, making the popping noise I imagine as my fingers burst open, each bulb—well, except maybe one, one very special bulb—burning out in a loud, disappointing flare, and what’s funnier is that I think Lark gets it, and she leans forward with her laughter, clutching at her sides, and we laugh and laugh, and I guess that’s why I don’t hear it when the door opens.
I guess that’s why I miss Sibby coming home.
Chapter 15
“Holy shit.”
