She hoped observing everyday art would lift Dustin farther away from the darkness. And even though she didn’t jot down more than the subjects of these poems-to-be (flapping cardboard,dragging scarf)in the Stall Street Journal, the activity helped her feel like her creative muscles weren’t completely wasting away.
“The leftover whipped cream with no croissant left to put it on,” Dustin said, gesturing to their empty plate, just a few croissant flakes and the remainder of the whipped-cream side that Rae had requested. “An unrequited-love story.”
“You know I’m a sucker for love stories,” Rae said, taking a spoonful of straight whipped cream. “Especially edible ones.”
Initially, right after finding out about the depression, Rae had only had the bandwidth to think about Dustin’s health. She hadn’t been focused on dating, or at least she’d been focused on not focusing on it. Now, though, as their time together was developing its own quasi-consistent rhythm, she couldn’t help extrapolating forward, imagining the day they’d be sitting at this same counter, hand in hand, painting each other’s cheeks with whipped-cream-flavored kisses.
Rae knew it in how all her deepest, deadened parts twitched with new life every time she was within ten feet of him—Dustin was her person, the exquisite combination of mind, body, and soul that she’d been waiting for.
It wasn’t fear of ending up alone that made her want to be with him. It was how he made her feel known, like no other guy ever had and, Rae was already sure, like no other guy ever would.
He wasn’t just someone to help her close the marriage deal. He wastheone to help her open up to the mesmeric world, the littlemoments of magic hidden in plain sight that, before him, she’d seen as mundane, if she’d seen them at all.
And one day, when the depression was gone, they’d reach their inevitable ever-after spelled out in the city-light stars.
For now, though, they were establishing a firm foundation in friendship before he was well enough to move to the next phase of their relationship. It was actually good they hadn’t raced into some hot-and-heavy romance, Rae supposed, so they could develop solid platonic fundamentals that would benefit their long-term trajectory.
“I have to say, I think our friendship equity is going up in value every day,” Dustin said, looking at Rae in that tender way that made her believe he’d thought about their future, too, and that he wanted it just as much as Rae did—he just had more blockades in his way.
“Agreed,” Rae said, glad she was a misfit between the corporate and creative worlds, since Dustin was a misfit too. “Lots of synergies.”
They’d been trying out different tea and coffee shops around Williamsburg, and today they had come here to Poetica Coffee, as Dustin insisted the name had been chosen specifically with Rae in mind. It was a sustainably sourced café just down the street from Dustin’s apartment, with potted plants hanging from the ceiling and a greenhouse seating area out back. They were the only two people at the front window counter, but they were seated close together, as if squeezed for space.
A blond-haired guy sauntered by on the sidewalk, dressed in a familiar Barbour jacket. Rae’s stomach tumbled before she saw it wasn’t her ex after all.?“What is it?” Dustin asked.
“Nothing. Just thought I saw a ghost.” She realized how long it had been since she’d thought about him. The guy she’d once expected to exchangeI dos with was now just a muted memory, a faded feeling, an estranged stranger. Time could sometimes be a little too good at its job, Rae thought—erasing the past like it never happened.
It was sort of like that with her dad. She almost missed the dayswhen she’d missed him so violently that she couldn’t breathe. Now, nine years after the divorce, all that was left was a limp sort of sorrow, with occasional jabs of real emotion. It was good how much she’d healed, she supposed, but it made her feel more distant from him, too, like the pain had been their last real attachment point. If he walked by the window now, it would almost be like she was seeing a stranger.
With the angles of his eyes, Dustin asked if she wanted to talk about it.
Rae didn’t want to weigh down Dustin’s shoulders with any of her baggage. He was carrying more than enough on his own.
“Go again,” she said, elbow nudging his, like it was all very casual, like she didn’t want to wrap her whole self and then some around him. “Find another poem.”
Silence lapsed long enough for Rae’s breath to settle back into its Brooklyn cadence.
“The dust on the windowsill,” Dustin said. “How, when a ray of sun shines on it, it turns into glitter.”
Their eyes tangled, then turned to the street to pluck more poems from sidewalk grates.
“We could fling paint at our wall and get the same effect,” Ellen muttered as she and Rae passed an abstract display at a pop-up art fair on Prince Street in SoHo a few weeks later. The road was blocked off to traffic and clogged with dozens of vendors.
Located just south of the West Village, SoHo was an eclectic and ever-shifting shopping district, popular among chic supermodels as well as clumsy tourists. It was a bit too frantic for Rae to want to live here, but she liked having the proximity to be able to pop down into the buzzy streets now and then.
“Let’s do it,” Rae said. “Though we’d never see our security deposit again.”
“I’ll use my consulting skills to convince the landlord we’ve justraised the apartment value hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Ellen volunteered.
“And I’ll diligence sale prices of comparable penthouses to back up the valuation,” Rae added.
“Dream team.”
Rae turned over a price tag and flinched. Even now that she technically had enough in her bank account to buy something like this, her mind always compared it to what else the money could go toward—two months of student loan payments, a plane ticket to Thailand, ninety-three pints of ice cream.
“I just don’t understand how anyone can charge seven hundred dollars for blobs of color on a canvas,” Ellen said.
“Because some people are willing to pay seven hundred dollars for blobs of color on a canvas,” Rae replied. “Supply and demand.”
