What a question. This place held the best memories of her childhood, her adolescence. And now, she’d happily moved her whole life here for it. She could talk all morning about this building, thus her PowerPoint idea. Maybethiswas an opportunity to bring up the wallpaper! Though probably it made more sense to talk about the people first, and—
They were interrupted again, this time by a shrill, urgent beeping, and the man quickly patted his leg.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry.” Within seconds, what she could see of his face was being lit by the bluish screen of his phone. The hand that wasn’t holding it rubbed absentmindedly through his hair, and she watched, transfixed. He had lovely hair, which was a compliment she absolutely would not offer out loud.
“I gotta run,” he added. “Other type of golden hour, I guess.”
“Right.” She felt suddenly, overwhelmingly flustered. She hadn’t had time to say thatshehad known Donny. She hadn’t had the chance to ask him so many things—what he knew about the apartment, for one, but also the small matter of his actualname. And she hadn’t had time to answer his question, which seemed like the most important thing of all.
Shelovedit here.
“Wait,” she began, wanting to say this one last thing before 4:00 a.m. was finished.
It was clear he hadn’t heard her, though. He was already moving toward his door.
Before he ducked inside, he looked up at her one last time, the glare still winking off his glasses.
“I’ll see you,” he said.
But he didn’t stick around for her answer to that, either.
Chapter 2
Well, he figured he already knew the answer.
You couldn’t like it there.
First of all, there was a smell. Not a terrible smell, Will had to admit, but not the kind of smell you’d want greeting you every time you walked through the front door. It was sort of like opening a musty wooden box and sticking your face inside it. The only thing in the box would be dust bunnies and maybe a handful of old pennies.
Second of all, there were the lights. Like any person who spent the majority of his days (and often nights) under the grim, fluorescent tray lighting inside most hospitals, Will appreciated a good old-fashioned incandescent, or even a modern-day LED. What he did not appreciate, however, was a bronze chandelier—hung low and made lower by a bunch of dangly glass things—that he hit his head on in the entryway, or a series of also-bronze wall sconces where round-cheeked cherubs seemed to watch his entire journey down the hallway.
And speaking of the hallway: the wallpaper. It was . . . gold, or at least it’d once been gold, though under the lights from the (dangerous) chandelier and the (creepy) wall sconces, the color looked more faded mustard than fancy metallic. Every six inches or so, the texture changed, and Will had set his palm on it and thought,It couldn’t be.
But it was. It wasvelvetwallpaper. Striped velvet wallpaper.
Who could like that?
It couldn’t be, he thought again, but this time, he wasn’t thinking about the wallpaper.
It could not be her.
The girl on the balcony from sixteen years ago, and the woman he met this morning. That . . . could not be.
She’d said so, after all, or at least she’d said as much. Last year, that’s when she’d moved in.
So it couldn’t be clearer, obviously.
It could not be her.
It was only that . . . there had been something about her. Something about her voice when she’d saidHey, something about the sound of her laugh, something about the ponytail that had slipped over her shoulder as they’d talked. Something about the way she’dlookedup there on that balcony, no matter that she’d been far away, no matter that it’d been dark. Something about the way his heart had moved when he’d seen her, like a hiccup in his chest.
But he could not let himself think about that.
“Could I, uh—?”
A voice interrupted, and Will blinked up to see the familiar barista he’d given his order to reaching gently for the travel mug he held in one hand. She gave him an understanding smile, used to seeing staff from all corners of the hospital space out in front of her while they waited for their next fix, while they recovered from whatever made them require it.
“Yeah, sorry, Janine,” Will said, handing it over. “I’ll take an IV bag of the same, if you’ve got it,” he added, which was a bad joke, the coffee shop equivalent ofHot enough for ya?, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances, and the circumstances were that he’d been up since three o’clock in the morning, he’d seen about twenty patients since he’d shown up here four hours ago, and he also could not stop thinking about the woman on the balcony.
