He bit his bottom lip and said, “Thank you.”
I said, “Can I see them?”
He bit his lip again and said, “All right,” then whispered to me, “Now you sit down, Katie.”
I whispered back, “I’m already seated,” and tapped the base of my chair.
He shook his head and said, “Closer.”
I scooted one seat over, and he—so slowly, stop it, this wasn’t real—began to roll his sleeves up past his elbows, running his fingers over his forearms. He was explaining every piece to me, where he’d gotten it, when he got it, what the artist was like, how long it took, whether he added on to it, whether it was part of a story or just for fun, and then he was taking my hand, which was trembling, and running it along the tendons and muscles and ink so tentatively, and I remembered everything. The storm, the press of his hips, the brush of his lips, the way he took soft, slow bites of my rain-slicked skin, and then, all of a sudden, I realized people were cheering. They were hooting. They were hollering. We were—I shit you not—on the Jumbotron. We were on the kiss cam.
I pulled my hand back at once.
Tyler swallowed, then dropped his arms to his side.
We turned away from each other, then began to cross our arms, to flail our hands broadly, to mouthno, no, no. After about ten infiniteseconds, the camera operator gave up on us—the crowd booed, they were not pleased, peoplelovelove—and then it was over, it was done. My cheeks were burning, and Tyler looked at me and said, “That’s gotta be another one of your tropes, right?” and I laughed, catching my breath, assuring him that yes, it was, and then, goddamnit, we were back on the Jumbotron because it was a big joke now, because everyone at the ballpark was in on it. We continued our flailing, our mouthing of defenses, our you’ve-got-this-all-wrong body language, and then, out of nowhere, Danny was pushing Tyler aside. He had a beer in one hand and a new Mets cap in the other—that was for me, it was pale pink, he was literally crowning me, I was Mrs. Met now, he thought I didn’t own a Mets cap, my god—and he kissed me hard. The crowd went wild.
When it was over, Danny leaned back into his chair and said to Tyler, who was suddenly very busy studying the promotional calendar magnet he was handed upon entry, “Well, one of us had to do it eventually, right?”
Tyler’s mouth twitched a little, and then he laughed, wiped his hands on his jeans, and started explaining Bobby Bonilla Day to Naomi, who, apparently, could not listen to a story about the deferred payment schedule that had come to define the dumbfuckery of the Bernie Madoff–era Mets without sitting in someone else’s lap.
Without touching someone else’s face.
Local Boy in the Way
Henry declined to join Willa for her morning errands. She was on Main Street, getting prices for a few fixtures she liked and looking into how much it might cost to update the Inn’s back lawn and gardens. Willa had wanted a maze—so classic, so frivolous. Henry had rolled his eyes because Willa was always doing this: dreaming big, then only getting halfway there. And so, disinterested in her whim of the day, Henry got back to his cabinetry while Willa, lips glossed and doe eyes bright, walked straight into the office of a man ready to take her wants and needs very seriously.
16
Tyler
On Monday, it was back to work. Katie was wearing an emerald green tennis dress, platform sneakers, hair clips that looked like butterflies, and—I swear to god—body glitter. She was sipping an iced coffee and tearing off little pieces of croissant bit by bit while staring into her laptop screen, typing away.
I was reviewing everything we’d written so far, updating our outline, and making a running list of internal and external conflicts on pastel-colored sticky notes shaped like hearts and stars. I’d just arranged them on the table next to us when she closed her computer and said, “Chapter done.”
“Fast,” I said.
She shrugged, then walked behind me, studying my work. The hair on the back of my neck did not stick up, that would’ve been ridiculous. She ran her fingers over a pale blue heart—internal conflict;Willa’s Armor—and nodded.
“You’re getting good at this.”
I snickered, then reached for her laptop to read through her latest while she disappeared into the back of the café, one leg after the other, hands full of fake problems we gave to fake people.
I stormed into the storage closet as Katie smoothed a sticky note onto a case of biodegradable straws.
“What the hell did I just read, Katie!”
She spun around. “Huh?”
“Willa? Your last chapter? What is she even doing!?”
“I don’t know. Her character went on an adventure!”
“Anadventure? She let that landscape architect fondle her! That is not in the outline! She’s supposed to bat her eyes, get ten percent off some privet, and come right back to the Inn. How did she end up in his greenhouse without her dress on?”
“They had a vibe, okay? She was into it!”
“It doesn’t matter if she was into it!” A thin layer of sweat had gathered on my neck, and my cheeks were burning, and I did not care. “She’s supposed to be pining for Henry! Not having her nipples stimulated by a fortysomething single dad!”
