Arthur, chuckling, reached for his cane and slowly rose to his feet. Smoke lingered around him in lazy puffs trapped by the humid summer sky. I was still sitting there, unlit cigarette twisted between my fingers, as he began to walk away. When he turned back to me, his smile was gone.
“Leave that girl alone, all right?”
I gulped. The supercut of my afternoon, playing back on repeat. Those same three frames, burned into my brain. Katie, frozen. Katie, frowning. Katie, flying out the café’s door. I closed my eyes, clenched my fists, and tried to make the film stop.
“I need the job,” I said. “I need the money. And this agent, she could change my life. She’s not like my old one—Selma’s legitimately famous. She could finally sell my book. And Katie, she doesn’t understand. She thinks I’m a terrible person. She thinks—”
“I know it’s your dream, but you’ve got to find another way. It’s not worth it.”
“But I...”
Arthur took a long, last puff and shuffled into the New York night. A fluorescent Walgreens, his floodlight. I put my head back in my hands.
“Any other way, Tyler. Any other way, and any other girl.”
3
Katie
I spent the next morning where I spent most of my mornings: at the cycling studio a few blocks from my apartment. My neighborhood offered virtually every workout imaginable, and I’d tried them all twice. Still, when it came down to it, nothing left me as nameless, brainless, or separated from myself as pedaling on a bicycle to nowhere for two out-of-my-budget, electropop-blaring rides in a row.
After class, I showered, slathered myself in bronzing moisturizer, put glitter on my eyelids and shimmer on my lips, then twisted my hair into two topknots secured by heart-shaped clips. I grabbed my stuff from my locker, slipped out with my head down to avoid my usual half hour of small talk, and made my way to the café, calves still quaking and heart still shaking.
Lola was outside, inspecting a crate of oat milk.
“He’s back,” she said.
“What?”
“The boy. Tyler. He’s been here all morning.”
Something wet and bitter pushed up my throat. I closed my eyes and swallowed, forcing whatever it was back down. I hadn’t eaten since I’d scarfed a stale muffin for lunch yesterday, and between last night’s wine and zero minutes of sleep, my two hours of maniacal exercise, and the whole surprise, Tyler-is-back-in-your-life scenario, everything was spinning, sour, and scraping at me, inside and out.
I opened my eyes. Through the picture window—Georgina’s, itannounced in hand-painted cursive, emerald and white—was Tyler McNally, all crooked lips and furrowed brow and weathered cap. He was just sitting there, tapping his fingers on the table in the café’s farthest, coziest corner.
“I can’t.”
“Katie,” Lola said. “If you don’t want to work with him, that’s totally valid. I understand, I really do. And I am one hundred percent on your side. But you still need to go in there and handle this like a professional adult. Either go talk to him or find a way to explain it to Selma. You’re, like, catatonic.”
“Fine,” I said, pulling open the door. I took a deep breath, pushed down my shoulders, and stepped inside. “I’ll deal with it.”
Tyler stood up as soon as I entered.
“Katie...”
“I don’t want to see you, ever.”
Now it was Tyler’s turn to close his eyes. “Katie, listen,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you. I spent all night looking for another job. I’ve been looking for months, I swear. It’s just I’m a teacher now. I teach English, and I don’t get a paycheck until September, and this pays twice as much as anything else out there. It’s impossible to find anything seasonal, and I have all these manuscripts I can’t sell, and I lost my agent last year, and—”
“I cannot begin to explain how little I care about you getting dropped by your agent.”
He gulped, then took a step toward me. I took two back.
“What happened after the funeral,” he said. “You have to believe me, I never meant—”
“I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on. I just... I don’t want to do this. I can’t have you here. This is my world. This is my life.”
Tyler’s mouth was twitching. His eyes were soft, and his palms were turned. For a moment, I almost fell right back into those arms, into those hands, but it was just a flash. It was just the old me, imagining a version of him that was never there at all.
