Every time I close my eyes, I feel his mouth. Not as a memory. As a haunting. The ghost of his tongue, the pressure of his hands on my thighs.
Am I as bad as Greg, getting off in the office? Am I the world’s biggest hypocrite now? Hmmm. Feels kind of good.
Perhaps it’s time for new rules. Perhaps it’s time tomove on.
At six thirty, I surrender to the uselessness. The copper gown hasn’t moved. The swatches haven’t spoken. My brain, as Saylor accurately diagnosed, has been reformatted, and whatever creative operating system typically runs this company has beenreplaced by a screensaver of him kneeling on my office floor with that look in his eyes. That focus. The concentration of a man solving a problem he considers both urgent and sacred.
I pack my bag. Switch to the flats I keep under my desk for the commute. Let my hair down because the pencil holding it up vanished during the incident and I’m not crawling around my office floor searching for it on my hands and knees with no panties. As I leave, I catch sight of Patrice looking naked without her sash.
I glare at her and her unfinished dress. “You just stood there and watched? Quite the voyeur. I always knew you were a bit of a freak, Patrice.”
In the elevator, I try to find my reflection in the mirrored walls but the woman staring back is new. Not younger, not prettier, not any of the metrics I’ve been measuring myself against for twenty years. Just awake. Tapping my toe against the floor impatiently because I have somewhere to be and I’m looking forward to it. Suddenly home doesn’t feel like such a rented space.
The car ride home normally takes about twenty minutes. Traffic was forgiving for some reason, which in Manhattan must mean Godzilla is on the way and someone spread the word. I’ve never seen the streets so uncongested. Instead of twenty minutes, I’m home in ten.
The elevator opens directly into my foyer because penthouses have that privilege, and I stop walking.
My apartment looks like a very stylish hurricane swept through a college dormitory and deposited the wreckage across my living room floor. Every blanket I own, plus several I’m fairly certain were hiding in closets I forgot existed, has been arranged into a sprawling nest between the couch and the television. Pillows everywhere. Snack bowls crowding every flat surface. My television, which I use exclusively for the news andthe occasional fashion documentary, is frozen on the opening credits ofBring It On.
And in the middle of it all: Saylor. Gray sweatpants. Backward cap. White T-shirt that makes his shoulders and chest look like a problem I’m fully prepared to tackle. He’s standing in my pristine apartment like a very handsome squatter who decided to remodel my home into a reincarnation of the year two thousand.
“What is all this?” I ask.
“This is our date.”
I look at the sheet face masks stacked on the coffee table that have pictures of animals on them. My collagen masks have gold speckles in it, “guaranteed to give you Korean glass skin.” There are gummy bears in a Hermès bowl. I don’t tell Saylor he just filled a sixteen-thousand-dollar art piece with Haribo gummy treats. Wine coolers are sweating condensation onto furniture I had custom-made. There’s Chinese takeout, still in its containers on the counter. Next to it, unmistakable in its blue-and-yellow packaging: my popcorn. My favorite brand.
“You did all this for me?” My voice does something embarrassing. Cracks, just slightly, around the edges. Like a teacup with a hairline fracture that only shows when you fill it.
I set my bag on the floor and kick off my shoes, letting them ceremoniously skid into the corner by the entrance. I silently apologize to my Manolos because that was kind of rude of me. But I’m giddy and excited, suddenly full of nervous energy that I haven’t had since the first time I said “I do.”
I pick up a wine cooler and examine it. It’s the cheap kind.The really cheap kind.Absurdly sugary, like liquid candy. I haven’t held one of these in fifteen years. It feels like a time capsule in a bottle. After twisting off the top, I take a big swig.
“Bleh.” I swallow, needing air as a chaser.
Saylor chuckles. “That bad? What do those taste like?”
I examine the bottle with a cheesy beach scene on the label. “They taste purple, if that’s a thing.”
He laughs again until the silence fills the space between us.
“It’s obvious I can’t compete with money, Celeste.” The playfulness leaves his voice. What replaces it isn’t sadness or self-pity. It’s clarity. Plain and undecorated, the verbal equivalent of showing up in sweatpants and not apologizing for it. “You know that. I’ll never book a corner table at whatever French restaurant charges four hundred dollars for a tasting menu. I can’t buy you jewelry that comes in a velvet box. I don’t know what the opera is actually about and I’ll never be convinced that foam belongs on food.”
“Saylor—”
“But I can do something I don’t think any man has ever done for you.” He comes to me, takes the wine cooler from my hand, and sets it on the counter. “I can listen. I can pay attention. I did all this because from everything I’ve gathered in the couple months I’ve known you, this was the happiest time of your life. That sacred two years before Greg started suffocating you with his expectations. The two years you had alone with Whit to just enjoy growing up.” He gestures at the blanket nest, the snacks, the frozen screen. “I wanted to bring you back to your happy place.”
I look at this man. Really look at him. Not like a situation to be solved. But the answer to a question I haven’t been brave enough to ask.
When did I give up on love? When did I stop realizing its magnitude? Why did I think I’d want to experience the rest of my life alone?
Maybe until right now, I didn’t have another option. But here he is. Seemingly two decades late, but he’s here.
“So how’d I do?” he asks tepidly. “Are you feeling at least a little magic?”
I point to the coffee table in my living room. “Are you going to wear those face masks with me?”
“Hell yeah. Dibs on the panda one.”
