“Why?” In my head I see a very whimsical arrangement of letters asking me “why” I would even want to know this. It’s unusual for me to press this way—towantto press this way. I keep it light; I keep it cheerful.
I keep the peace.
But everything between me and Reid feels a little unusual.
He still has his hand on his cup, but he hasn’t turned it, not yet, and I sense that when he does, it’ll be the end of this, whateverthisis. He pulls his lips to the side, and I may have no earthly idea what his job entails, but I’ve got a feeling this is the expression he wears when he’s doing one of those math models. That he wore when he looked at my letters for the first time.
“Let’s just say it has not been an easy place for me to understand,” he says, finally. He makes the last turn of his cup and lifts his eyes to mine. “There haven’t been many signs for me here.”
I have a sudden, shocking urge to protest.But there are signs everywhere here! Street signs, business signs, billboards, subway ads, window decals, graffiti . . .
Of course I know it’s not what he means. But it’s part of what the city means to me.
But I can’t get my thoughts together before he stands, taking his cup and saucer with him in one hand.
“I am grateful for yours, I suppose,” he says, and then he holds out his free hand. On autopilot I shake it, feel the warm, dry strength of his palm enveloping mine, a gesture that feels shockingly unbusinesslike to I’m sure me alone. Good thing I’ll never see him again, because these are highly inappropriate feelings to have for this particular man.
When he releases my hand he gives me one of those devastating nods.
“Goodbye, Meg,” he says, and with one stop by the counter, tidily returning his cup and saucer to the bussing tray, tall, triple-take-face, time-machine-transported Reid Sutherland walks right out the door.
Chapter 3
Iwake up to three unusual things: a hangover-sized headache, the rectangular press of my phone underneath my left shoulder, and the sound of Sibby still in the apartment.
I can thank the evening espresso for the headache, that plus staying awake until 3:30 a.m., finishing up the May spread I’d stumbled over, determined to keep my renewed promise to myself—no tricks, no codes, no signs allowed.
I’d tried to sleep after, but that had been futile, my head full of Reid Sutherland’s words and manners and shoulders and face, my hands fairly itching with the need to make headway on my new project. When that had been another creative bust (be you’ve lost your touch), I’d still worked late, as though I was doing penance, crossing off item after item on my regular task list, first at the small desk I have shoved underneath the lone window in my room, then eventually—uncharacteristically—from my bed. I’d lain in the dark with my phone, tapping out generic but friendly replies to the commenters on my latest videos (xoxo, thanks!—M;keep practicing! XO—M;try using a bigger drop shadow! <3 M), scheduling posts for today, organizing some deliveries for planners I’d finished over the weekend. Usually I keep a hard and fast rule about working this way, doing my level best to follow all the advice out there about screen time at night, about setting work-life boundaries in your space, particularly when you often work from home, but last night I’d been doing anything, everything, to get that meeting with Reid out of my head.
They felt like a sign, he’d said.
I roll to the side and unstick my phone from my skin (Reid is clearly not out of my head, since I picture the face of mild to moderate disgust he’d make at this), squinting at the screen to confirm my suspicion that it’s way too late for Sibby not to be at work on a Monday, and yeah—9:30, when she’s usually out the door by 7:00. On instinct I sit up quickly, grabbing for my sweatshirt off the back of my desk chair. I’m still pulling it over my head when I open the door, still pushing a cloud of wavy frizz off my face when I step out.
She’s coming from the kitchen, her laptop closed and tucked under one arm, a mug of coffee in her other hand as she crosses to the couch. Her curly black hair is piled high and messy on top of her head, her face clean of the winged eyeliner and red lipstick she wears almost every day, no matter that the five- and seven-year-old she spends most of her waking hours with could give a shit about how she looks. But Sibby loves a dramatic face, always has, and it’s jarring for me to see her this way at this time of day.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, arrested in my spot outside my bedroom door, the small square of floor that Sibby and I always joked led to the “sleeping wing” of our place, which had seemed huge to us when we first moved in, a luxurious comparison to our previous apartments in the city.
“Yeah, I’m good.” She sets down her coffee, settles herself on one end of the couch, laptop in the cradle of the legs she crosses underneath her. No further explanation forthcoming, I guess, but even so—it’s too rare these days, having time alone here with Sibby where she doesn’t seem so determined to be in a different room than me. She doesn’t even make a move to put earbuds in.
I feel the familiar stir of hope I’ve felt so many times over the past few months, since this plane of distance between us opened.This is it, I’m thinking.This is when we’ll work it out, whatever’s gone wrong between us. This is when it’ll go back to normal.I walk the length of the living space, make a stop at the refrigerator that’s to the right of our front door—it’s bigger here, sure, but it’s still got one-quarter of a kitchen in the living room—and reach in for a cup of yogurt. We keep our stuff separate these days, as if there’s a chalk line down the middle of all the shelves. It is thoroughly inane, especially because we still shop at the same bodega, buy almost all the same foods.
“Aren’t you late?” I lob casually.
“I asked for the morning off. Tilda’s getting the kids ready for school.”
“That’ll be a disaster,” I say, and it’s a slow pitch I’m sending her way, an easy hit for once-familiar unloading about Sibby’s boss, who doesn’t work but who manages to stay out for twelve to fifteen hours a day and who seems startlingly unfamiliar with both of her children’s routines. The last time Sibby was sick, Tilda forgot about the youngest’s lactose intolerance and the results of an impulsive, tantrum-preventing ice-cream cone were felt for days and days.
But Sibby only says, “She’s good with them,” and there’s a thread of censure to it, as though she needs to defend a woman who once made her stay overnight and sleep in the bathtub closest to Spencer’s room in case he had another nightmare aboutFrozen. Another way I’ve been shut out: not even worthy of a good, old-fashioned “my job sucks” diatribe.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, because I basically agree with anything now when she deigns to talk to me.
I went along, I think, Reid’s voice so clear in my mind that I speed my pace gathering my breakfast, trying to flush it out with the tinkle of silverware in the drawer, the clink of a glass on the countertop, an unnecessary shake of a box of granola. My face feels flushed, and at this moment I’m grateful that she avoids me so thoroughly. Whatever it is she’s doing now, hanging out in the same space as me, she’ll probably soon enough go back to her room or take a shower.
But she doesn’t leave. She says, “Meg,” and it almost,almostsounds the way it used to. It almost sounds everyday, the sound of your name in your best friend’s voice, surely one of the best sounds there is. I’m so glad I wasn’t pouring the granola when she said it.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
