She’d detested the suggestion. Tea was quaint and elegant, but coffee was curt and corporate. But Ellen had been firm that Rae deserved answers, and so, seven hours later, she’d replied,Sounds good.
“Make sure he knows you’re seeing other people,” Ellen said now. “Just weave it in subtly. It’ll be a nice kick in the balls to help him realize what a fool he was.”
“Clearly he doesn’t give a shit about that,” Rae said, but she rehearsed a few phrases in her head to embellish her love life into something much more glamorous than swiping through hundreds of digital profiles a day from her office bathroom stall.
She redid her bun twice more to optimize the careless effect, then changed from one pair of black jeans into another and pulled on her coat, one with a hood that she used as a cocoon on crowded subway trains.
She walked down the stairs and into the late afternoon, toward the Elk, the coffee shop on Charles Street that she’d suggested. She’d wanted Dustin to do the commuting but hadn’t wanted to meet at her regular spot at the corner of Perry and Bleeker. No need to taint the space.
The Elk was a small, rustic spot with wood-paneled walls and an old-fashioned menu written on a brown paper scroll. As Rae walked inside, she was immediately reminded of why she rarely came here. The space was too quintessential for its own good and always packed. It felt very squished, and the door closed so slowly that every person who walked in let in several wind gusts.
Dustin was already there, seated at a stool at the window counter. He was as accidentally attractive as ever, hair longer than when she’d seen him last and a shadow of scruff on his face, outlining his jawline. For a horrible half second, her insides leapt.
She sat down beside him, making sure their stools were a safe distance apart. “Hello,” she said, cold syllables colliding with the cold draft.
She kept her gaze out the window, at the bare trees that lined Charles Street, somehow growing tall despite being planted in just a small square of soil in the middle of the concrete and cobblestone. Bundled-up people hurried along the sidewalk, many of them couples. Probability would ensure most of them broke up, but the thought didn’t comfort Rae as much as she’d hoped.
“I got you green tea,” Dustin said, gesturing to a steaming cup beside his own. “Is that all right?”
This perturbed Rae. He’d suggested coffee. “Thanks.” She didn’t pick up the cup.
She waited for Dustin to launch into whatever lame apology he’d rehearsed, something about how he was juggling so much at work and just didn’t have the time to prioritize her like she deserved.
But he just watched Rae watch the passersby.
“So,” Rae finally said, forcing herself to meet his gaze. His eyes were no longer a striking hazel mosaic but rather a wishy-washy jumble of muted colors, with dark crescents hanging below. Probably too many late nights partying with lingerie models. “How have you been?” she asked.
In the time it took him to answer, the door clapped in six more gusts of wintry air. “Not great,” he said.
Anger jabbed Rae. He was trying to spin the story to elicit sympathy. Her dad had used similar tactics on her mom during those post-affair conversations Rae had eavesdropped on from the top of the staircase all those years ago.
“Why not?” she asked Dustin, trying to hurry him along by staring expectantly. “I have to go soon,” she added. She tried to addto get ready for a date, but the phrase didn’t come out.
Dustin lifted his gaze.
“I spent most of last year living with my parents in Connecticut,” he said, speaking as evenly as ever. “Which is why I hadn’t seen a lot of my friends in a while until the Christmas party.”
It was a departure from the linear narrative she’d crafted. “Why?”
“I was getting treatment.”
Rae’s stomach scrunched as her heart was punched with regret about every assumption she’d made. When she finally found her voice and ditched her pride, she gritted out, “Not cancer?”
Two women shoved their way onto the stools next to them, and the baristas shouted about macchiatos and matcha and oat milk. Manhattan was intruding, like it did best.
“No,” Dustin said, eyes mosaics again. “Just depression.”
Rae didn’t know what she felt, and she didn’t spend time trying to label the emotion. She just let her hand fall to his forearm. “Tell me the story?”
He looked like he was about to say no, but he just said, “Not here.”
Rae procured takeout cups, because for some reason, amid everything she’d just found out and was about to find out, it had become very important that they not waste this tea.
Paper cups in hand, they walked outside. Rae followed her feet westward along Charles Street, down West Fourth, over to Washington Place and the spirited heart of Greenwich Village, until they reached Washington Square Park.
The ten-acre park was brown and leafless this time of year, littered with comedy and jazz club pamphlets, orphaned mittens, and cardboard pizza boxes from John’s of Bleeker Street. A man in tattered clothes sat in the middle of the walking path, holding an old accordion in his hands but not playing any music. Dustin closed his eyes for a moment, as if he could hear a melancholy song seeping out, and then dropped a couple bills into the man’s collection bucket.
They cut through the park’s central plaza, where tourists posed by the Roman archway and tossed coins into the large circular fountain. Stifled by the crowds, Rae led them toward a grassy section of the park and chose a bench to sit on, as far out of the way as you could be on an island of five million.
