He clasps his hands together with a boyish excitement, grinning from ear to ear. “Please tell me you like road-trip games.”
“I’ve never played one.” I shrug. “To be honest, I didn’t want to sit in the back of a car for three hours alone with my thoughts. I actually hate driving. I risked it out of desperation.”
His eyes slide past me to the trashcan lying on its side by the curb. The corner of his mouth twitches—not a full smile, just the beginning of one trying to escape. “And how’d that go?”
“Don’t start. Believe me, I’m already aware I am a horrible driver.”
“No, I believe you.” Now he’s fully smiling, and it does something inconvenient to my chest—a small crack in the ice, warmth leaking in where I wasn’t ready for it. “You have to watch these trashcans. Vicious little things pop out of nowhere and attack innocent luxury vehicles.”
“Hardy-har-har.”
I want to be annoyed, but the absurdity of the moment is settling over me like a blanket someone draped across my shoulders without asking. The trashcan. My ruined face. The impossibly handsome escort in his perfect suit, smiling at me through my car window like nothing about this scene is strange. Yet it’s the first human interaction I’ve had in days that hasn’t felt forced.
He taps the window frame twice with his knuckle. “Unbuckle and unlock the door.”
I do, and he opens it from the outside then offers me his hand. His fingers are warm, his grip steady and sure, and I let him guide me out of the driver’s seat like I’m being extracted from a small disaster, which I suppose I am. I’m in heels—black Louboutins, because even in grief I am constitutionally incapable of not dressing like myself—and the pavement is uneven. Instinctually, his other hand goes to my elbow to keep me from wobbling. He is tall. I knew he was tall, I registered it when I first saw him at Forrest’s custody hearing months ago, but standing next to him on a Brooklyn sidewalk with my hand in his, it hits differently. I come up to his chin. I am wearing four-inch heels.
He lets go of my hand, reaches into his breast pocket, and pulls out the navy kerchief I included as an accessory.
“There was a tie that matched this.”
He pats his back pocket. “I will absolutely put it on if you’d like…but also, please don’t make me. I have a thing with ties. They are like fancy nooses.”
My lips twitch, but the smile doesn’t fully land. “I’ll spare you this time.”
With a gentleness that doesn’t match his size, he uses the handkerchief to dab at the skin beneath my right eye, then my left. I stand very still. His face is close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his blue eyes, which is information I absolutely do not need to focus on right now.
“I want to be honest with you,” he says, still dabbing.
“Okay.”
“This isn’t going to cut it.” He pulls the kerchief back and examines it. Black mascara is smudged across the linen like a tiny Rorschach test. “We have a situation.” He folds the kerchief neatly and tucks it back into his pocket like he’s preserving evidence. “Did you bring makeup?”
“I have a bag in the trunk.”
“Great. Because right now you look like a very beautiful raccoon, and I say that with the deepest respect.”
A laugh cracks out of me—short, surprised, almost painful. The kind of laugh that sneaks past grief when you’re not guarding the door. Saylor grins, and it’s the grin of a man who knows exactly what he just did. He reached into the wreckage and pulled out something small and light and handed it to me, and I took it, and for three seconds the world didn’t feel like it was ending.
“How about you let me drive?” he says, already moving toward the trunk. “I have street cred with the trashcans. They never jump out to attack me.”
There’s a click-clack against the asphalt as I follow him. He pops open the trunk, and after depositing his overnight bag next to my Hermès Togo Travel Bag. To my shock, he opens it and starts fishing with a level of comfort that should not have been earned in five minutes. Before I have a chance to react to his audacity, he finds my emergency kit—the leather case with the Tom Ford foundation, the Charlotte Tilbury concealer, the Dior mascara, the Chanel blush, the Pat McGrath eyeshadow palette, and the Hermès lipstick—the arsenal that normally lives in my purse because Celeste Brinley does not exist in public without a contingency plan.
He hands it to me. “Is this what you need?…What’s wrong?”
“You opened my bag. I have…intimates in there.” I cradle the leather bag in my hands.
He sucks in his lips in an attempt to hide his smirk. His attempt fails. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking and I wasn’t after your intimates. Fetching things is second-nature for me. My mum is…” he trails off. “Never mind.”
Instead of pushing the automatic button, he closes the trunk manually with the easy physicality of someone whose body is a tool that simplyworks, no vanity required, and moves around to the passenger side. I hurry after him, my Louboutins clicking against the pavement like tiny exclamation points.
“Why never mind?” I ask, surprised by my sudden curiosity. “What about your mom?”
He opens the door for me.
It’s such a small thing. His hand on the frame, a step back to give me space, the briefest touch at the small of my back as I step up into the seat. I was married for fourteen years to a man who stopped opening car doors for me approximately three weeks after our first date.
“Sorry, small slip,” he says. “When I’m with a client, it’s all about her. I keep my baggage all locked up.” He juts his thumb toward the trunk, emphasizing his pun.
