“You can tell me what’s on your mind. It’s a welcome distraction.”
I’m reaching for my seatbelt when I notice he’s paused. He’s standing in the open door, one hand on the frame, and he’s looking at me. Not staring. Not the way men in clubs look at women, or the way Greg looks at the twenty-two-year-olds in our office. It’s more involuntary than that. Like a person rounding a corner and catching a view they weren’t prepared for. Something crosses his face, quick and private, and then he blinks and redirects his gaze to the seatbelt buckle, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.
“Are you checking me out?” I don’t mean to sound as shrill and uptight as it comes out.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Quietly. Like he means it. “I just—” A small shake of his head. “It’s impossible not to notice you.Sorry.”
Something warm sparks in a region of my chest that has been in cold storage since Greg told me, during our last real fight, that the market for women my age was “niche at best.” I feel it flare, brief and bright, and I extinguish it immediately.
“How old are you?” I ask, even though I already know.Too young for him to be smiling like that.But I need to hear him say the number. I need it to fall between us and do its job.
“Twenty-six.”
Twelve years my junior? He’s a puppy.
“Cool,” I answer. The word feels rusty in my mouth, like I’ve pulled it from some linguistic time capsule buried in two thousand five. My God, am I really trying to seem hip to a twenty-something?
“And how old are you?” he asks, because he apparently didn’t take that training course informing him that it’s practically a misdemeanor to ask a woman her age after her twenty-first birthday.
“Way too old for you to be looking at me like that.”
I let it land. Then, because his face has gone slightly uncertain and I don’t want to punish him for being honest—not to mention, there’s something in me that’s dangerously close to being flattered and I need to shut that down before it gets ideas—I add, more gently, “This weekend, I’m not expecting anything from you except friendship. Think of yourself as a very supportive little brother.”
Saylor cackles.
Not laughs.Cackles.His head tips back against the car frame, and the sound is bright and unguarded and completely unselfconscious, and for a disorienting second I want to bottle it.
“Little brother,” he repeats, tasting the words. Finding them hilarious. “Okay,cool, Celeste. I can do little brother. I’m very supportive.”
I’m almost certain he’s teasing me with that word, but I don’t give it more attention. “Good.”
“Do little brothers get to pick the music, or?—”
“Don’t push it.”
He’s still grinning as he closes my door and comes around to the driver’s side. He adjusts the seat, sliding it backward until his long legs have room—a silent commentary on our height difference. He handles my car the way he handled me on the sidewalk: easily, naturally, like it doesn’t require his full attention.
I find that both reassuring and mildly offensive.
“It must be hard to drive in shoes like that.” He glances over to the passenger side floorboard. “But they’re pretty. Forresttold me you’re a high-end fashion designer. Did you design your shoes and that bag in back?”
“No. We only do clothing.” I lift my foot to show him the red bottoms. “These are Louboutins. My travel bag’s a Birkin.”
“Your dress? Is that Celeste?” Saylor asks casually as the engine purrs to life.
I chuckle to myself, looking at my plain black funeral dress. “Target.”
He looks at me, puzzled. “Forty-thousand-dollar bag, forty-dollar dress?”
“Roughly,” I admit, looking ahead because I don’t like the way my stomach flips when we make eye contact.
“Why not wear one of yours?”
It’s a fair question. But it’s too difficult to convey the complexity of emotions. I don’t just have guilt. I havelayersof guilt. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
I stare forward at the trashcan I assaulted, at the trash bag half-splayed on the sidewalk and road. A cornucopia of candy wrappers is visible beneath the veil of plastic. “Whit was my best friend for twenty years, and I’m just now realizing how much my business and ambitions dominated our conversations. So today, out of respect, I didn’t want it to be about me. I don’t want to beCelestetoday. Just Lessi.”
