Cursing Mina’s advice and then triply cursing herself for taking it, Rae returned to her desk and relegated her phone to the drawer where she kept the Stall Street Journal.
The COTWSM chat lit up on her computer.
TB:You look green, EE. Flu??
GQ:If so, plz sneeze on me. Trying to get sick so I can stay home …
Just worried about getting staffed on that new deal,Rae replied, dribbling quinoa into the cracks of her keyboard as she scarfed down lunch.
She peeked at her phone, and there it was.
Thank you, Rae. Not doing much, I’m not big on birthdays. How have you been?
Rae read it four times before she began her analysis. The phrase she kept circling around wasnot big on birthdays. Did his introverted personality not like the attention, or was this some deeper commentary indicating that he didn’t enjoy celebrating life, that perhaps he didn’t even want to be on earth at all?
And then she felt it, the grip of secondhand hurt.
Dustin wasn’t off at a Caribbean sex-fest. He was sitting at his desk at work, just a few miles away, alone on a crowded trading floor, staring at a computer and in need of a giant hug.
Another text forced its way out.
Cake on the roof tonight?she asked.
The bubbles appeared right away to show he was typing. She braced herself for rejection.
Yes please.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” Dustin said, standing beside Rae on the Lorimer Loft rooftop that night. In the backdrop, the shimmering skyline was vying for their attention, but neither of them was looking its way.
He was thinner than she’d seen him last, three months ago now. His cheekbones jutted out of his face like they wanted to escape. Rae had known right away that the pain, the loneliness she’d imagined earlier hadn’t been imagined at all.
It was one of the first autumn-esque evenings, humidity-free with just the foreshadowing of a chill.
“Yes, well …” Rae said, voice trailing off, as if she didn’t quite want her own ears to hear that she was here.
They stood there, looking at each other.
“You don’t have any gray hair yet,” Rae commented lamely.
“It’s dark out,” Dustin said. “Wait till you see me in daylight.”
Rae tried very hard not to picture waking up beside him in the morning. She was with Stu now, and happily so. She’d already booked a flight back to Indy to see him next month. But that didn’t mean she and Dustin couldn’t be friends. This was a sign of maturity, the ability to have friends of the other gender. There would be no line-crossing tonight.
“Does this mean you forgive me?” Dustin asked. The lines around his eyes sunk deeper, making him look older than thirty and spelling out the answer to why she’d come here tonight.
“It means I remembered there was nothing to forgive,” Rae said as she began lighting all thirty-one candles atop the angel food cake she’d brought.
Using the flu excuse, she’d left work early to shop for decorations and bake a cake from scratch. She’d been caught red-streamer-handed in the penthouse stairwell by an exasperated Ellen, who’d accused her of “being addicted to the art of disappointment.” Rae had assured her that celebrating a birthday was a very platonic thing to do and had skirted down the stairs, clutching the cake with both hands as she’d headed off to catch the L train from Eighth Avenue.
“There’s a lot to forgive,” Dustin countered, and Rae could feel him about to launch into an apology.
“Blow out your candles,” Rae said. “Before the wind steals your wishes.”
Dustin kept his eyes open, on hers, as his breath extinguished the feeble flames.
Rae set the cake down on the ledge as Dustin looked around the rooftop, seeming to take in the decorations for the first time.
Colored Christmas lights were strung over the railing, plugged into an outlet on the torso-high wall. Streamers looped between light strands, and balloons bobbed in the Brooklyn breeze.
