‘Hey,’ he gave me his trademark slow smile as I approached. Without an ounce of concern for public opinion, he scooped me up into a long, lazy kiss. It was delicious.
‘So what you been up to?’ he asked, swinging my hand as we rode the escalators up to the galleries. ‘Anything I should know about?’
‘I had my meeting at The Look,’ I said, glossing over my Tyler incidents. I filed them safely under things he did not need to know about right now, which meant I wasn’t lying, just not oversharing. ‘I’ve got another meeting on Friday and then hopefully it’ll go online. The editor said she really liked my stuff.’
‘Really? That’s amazing. I’m sure it’s going to be really great.’
‘Yeah, hopefully,’ I said, squeezing back. ‘What about you, have you reached any life-changing decisions?’
He shook his head, pulling me around to the next escalator. ‘Nope. Band rehearsal tomorrow though and we have a gig on Friday. There might not be many more, you want to come?’
‘I’d love to,’ I said, terrified at the idea of being a groupie and thrilled at the idea of, well, being a groupie. ‘Where is it?’
‘Music Hall of Williamsburg,’ Another escalator. ‘You should bring your roommate, it’ll be fun.’
‘Sounds good,’ I replied. Another escalator. ‘I don’t think she’s doing anything.’ I had no idea what she was doing, but as far as I was concerned, she was now coming to Alex’s gig. ‘Are we actually going to get off the escalators or is this some sort of new performance art I should know about?’ I asked as we finally stepped onto solid ground.
‘There’s something I really want to show you.’ Alex walked around the corner, to a painting hanging just inside the corridor, more or less on its own. ‘This is my favourite picture in the entire world,’ he said, standing a respectful distance back from the painting.
It was small, showing the back of a girl staring at a wooden farmhouse in the near distance. Even from behind, I felt as though I could see she was crying, unable to escape her situation. Unable to tear herself away, even though she wanted to. Needed to. There was nowhere else for her to go.
‘Christina’s World, Andrew Wyeth,’ I read out quietly. The fifth floor was almost empty and the silence was eerie. I clutched at Alex’s hand, still gazing at the painting. I wanted look away but I couldn’t. Before I knew what was happening, tears were streaming down my cheeks.
‘It’s…’ I started, not knowing where to go. I dropped Alex’s hand and took a half-step closer. ‘It’s just…’
‘I know,’ he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. ‘When I feel trapped or confused or I just forget myself I come here and remind myself. I’m sorry, I thought you would like it. The woman in the painting is paralysed and crawling back to the house but I don’t know. Always seems to me like she’s wanting to get away from the house rather than back to it.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t know what she wants,’ I said, staring through the girl into the farmhouse. ‘Running to, running from, same difference.’
We stood looking at the picture together for what felt like for ever. Eventually, and only when I’d committed every inch of it to memory, we walked away in silence and wandered around the rest of the gallery.
It took me a while to loosen up, but Alex was the perfect art buddy. He knew so much about the place I was sure he must actually live in the basement and the museum happily swallowed up our afternoon without even a whisper of a ticking clock. We saw everything there was to see, Monet, Pollock, Picasso, Gaugin, Van Gogh. It was like the whole New York experience encapsulated in one space. By the time I realized how long we’d been aimlessly ambling, I was dying of thirst.
‘Want to get a drink?’ I asked, pulling Alex out of his reverie in front of a collection of design classics.
‘Shit, what time is it?’ he asked, himself rather than me. ‘We have to go or we’re going to miss it!’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, allowing myself to be dragged mercilessly down Sixth Avenue, trying not to run into meandering tourists or the weaving and dodging commuters. ‘Seriously, I really need a drink, just, can we just stop for a second?’
‘Let’s get in a cab,’ he said, not even listening to me. ‘It’ll probably be quicker in a cab.’ He flagged a taxi down and threw me in as it pulled to a stop.
But the traffic was moving almost as slowly as the people on the street and as we inched along, Alex was getting more and more frustrated.
West 50th, 49th, 48th…
‘Alex,’ I said, not too politely. ‘Will you tell me where we’re bloody going?’ ‘Bloody? How cute is that?’ he said, smiling for the first time since we left the museum. ‘Sorry, I wanted to surprise you, but we have to get there before sunset.’
‘It’s only seven-thirty,’ I said, looking at my watch. And it was still broad daylight outside. ‘Why are we rushing?’
‘Because we have to queue,’ he said, sticking his head out of the window to check the traffic.
45th, 44th, 43rd…
‘Queue for what?’ I was trying not to be incredibly irritating but I had a mouth like Ghandi’s flip-flop. ‘Please can we just stop and get a drink?’ ‘It’s a surprise,’ he said, squeezing my leg and still looking out of the window as though he could will the traffic to move more quickly. ‘Trust me, I’ll get you a dozen drinks once we’re there.’
37th, 36th, 35th, 34th…
‘Thanks, man,’ Alex tossed some cash at the driver. ‘Just let us out here.’ He pulled me out onto the street and checked his watch. ‘Perfect. Now, you wanted a drink?’
I nodded. This wasn’t quite the princess treatment I’d been getting used to from Tyler. Alex pointed at a cart on the corner, selling pretzels and, thank God, freezing cold cans of Pepsi. I wrestled a dollar out of my jeans pocket, too busy trying to get my sugary caffeine fix to realize where we were.
‘You want to go inside now?’ Alex asked, a bemused look on his face while he watched me neck the entire can in less than a minute. I had to admit, it was more to prove a point than anything else, drinking fizzy stuff that quickly just makes me feel sick. I didn’t care how cute he looked, standing grinning at me with his arms folded, while I guzzled my Pepsi.
‘Inside where?’ I asked, draining the can and giving a dramatic, satisfied sigh.
Alex shook his head and pointed upwards. ‘Honestly, you try and do something romantic…’
I craned my neck up and stared into the skyline. We were at the foot of the tallest building I’d ever seen.
It was the Empire State Building.
I grabbed onto Alex’s arm to stop myself falling over. ‘We’re going up there?’ I asked, breaking into a huge grin.
‘We are,’ he nodded. ‘If you still want to. I know you said you wanted to, but I didn’t know if you’d managed it yet.’
‘No,’ I shook my head and steadied myself for another look up into the cloudless sky, ‘I still haven’t been. And it’s all I’ve wanted to do.’
‘You said.’ He smiled and let me stand staring, even though we were clearly in everyone’s way. I didn’t care, it was amazing. I’d only been in New York for a week and a half and I’d already become oblivious to anything that wasn’t directly in front of me. The city was the opposite of an iceberg. What you saw on the surface, what was right in your face every day, that was only a third of it, the rest was up in the sky.
‘And we have to be up there for sunset,’ Alex said, finally pulling me away from the street corner and towards the entrance.
We queued slowly, moving up and down the lines with hundreds of tourists. It was weird, I really didn’t consider myself to be one. Not while I could feel Alex squeezing my hand every time I went silent to stare out of the windows. And queuing is hardly a chore when you have a super hot man kissing your neck and telling you how gorgeous you are for half an hour. By the time we got up to the top, I was pretty much desperate for some air and had forgotten what I was there for entirely. Alex pulled me straight
through the racks and racks of wonderfully crappy souvenirs in the gift shop and out to the south side of the observation deck.
I stopped in the doorway for a second, readying myself to take it all in. And it was genuinely, heart-stoppingly beautiful.
Once I had my breath back and had been pushed and pummelled by half a dozen high-school kids, I spotted Alex. He had squeezed himself into a prime position to watch the sunset spread itself across the skyline, and without words, he pulled me in and moved behind me to rest his chin on my shoulder. I shivered and snuggled backwards into him. I wasn’t dressed for the altitude, but before I could so much as break into a goosebump, Alex was slipping off his beat-up leather jacket and slipping it on my shoulders, wrapping his arms around me. The city sighed beneath us, preparing itself for the shift from day to night. Lights began to ripple off then on from the southern tip of the island upwards, as people made their journeys from work to home. I worked my fingers into the metal bars and felt my entire body give. It made the views from Mary’s office, from my room at The Union, look like something from a View-Master toy. It made this whole New York adventure real.
‘Isn’t it great?’ I asked Alex. ‘How can anything be so confusing and shitty when this is so beautiful?’
‘Pretty much everything up here is beautiful,’ Alex whispered, nuzzling my hair. ‘It looks unreal when it snows or when there’s a storm. Just like a painting. Pretty cold though.’
‘I was going to say, I can imagine,’ I said, eyes fixed on the Statue of Liberty, which was blinking at us in the distance. ‘But I really can’t.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to come and see it next time it snows,’ he replied.
I nodded happily, still searching the horizon for confirmation that everything was going to be OK. And then I realized what he’d said. ‘But, I won’t be here when it snows,’ I said, tensing up. ‘I’ll have to go home when my visa waiver thingy expires.’
‘You never know where you’re going to be,’ Alex said, brushing my hair aside and kissing my neck to melt away the tension. ‘Six months ago, did you know you would be here, now?’
‘I didn’t know I’d be here six week ago,’ I said, leaning into him again. ‘I don’t know where I’ll be six weeks from now.’
‘Does it matter right now?’ he asked, his warm lips tracing a path down to my collarbone. ‘Here with me, home in London, surfing in Honolulu?’
This time, my whole body tensed and I shook my hair back into the path of his kisses.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he said, gently turning me around to face him. I looked past him, avoiding his eyes, but nodded. ‘Why did you cry when you saw the painting?’
‘It’s an emotional painting.’ I offered, not even believing it myself.
‘It is, it’s a heartbreaking painting, but I’ve never seen anyone have that reaction to it before and I’m there all the time,’ he said. I flickered my eyes across his face. He looked genuinely concerned. ‘You can talk to me about stuff, you know? I don’t want to think you can’t because of all those dumb rules your friend was telling you.’
‘It’s not about that.’ I shook my head, refusing to cry. This was supposed to be fun, this was what I’d dreamed of. ‘It’s other stuff, home stuff. The fact that I don’t have a home, stuff.’
‘Want to elaborate?’ he asked, placing what was supposed to be a comforting hand on my shoulder. I shrugged him off and turned back to the city. Here it comes, I thought, here’s the big messy break-up story. ‘I’m a pretty good listener for a guy.’
‘OK, I’m just going to tell you all of it and then, when you’ve finished laughing, you can be on your way,’ I said, leaning my head on my hands and taking a deep breath.
Alex leaned against the railings by my side. Staring straight ahead, not pausing for breath, I told him all of it. It didn’t sound funny to me this time, it didn’t sound brave, it just sounded sad. I was sure this should get easier, I thought to myself, not harder. When I had finished speaking, I finally found the strength to look at him. He wasn’t laughing, he wasn’t even smiling, he was just looking at me.
‘So you think you’re the only person who has a big scary break-up story?’ he asked, eyebrows raised. ‘It’s OK to have a past you know, even if it’s a recent past. Seriously, so many people put so much faith in those dumbass rules. I hate that you thought you couldn’t tell me that.’
I looked back at him, trying to work out what to say next. ‘No, it wasn’t that, I, well, I think I could have told you. If I’d wanted to. But I don’t want to be that person any more. I don’t think I liked her very much and I didn’t want to be that person with you. Now, when I’m here,’ with you, I didn’t say, but I wanted to, ‘when I’m here, I like the person I am.’
‘I like her too,’ Alex said, stroking my cheek and wiping away stray tears I hadn’t even felt escape. ‘And I do know how you feel. You’re not the only one that has had shitty things happen to them and then reacted, you know.’
‘I left the bloody country,’ I said, furiously rubbing the tears away myself. Why wouldn’t they stop? ‘The more I think about it, the more pathetic it was. I can’t believe I would do that.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t if it happened today,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t have if it had happened a day earlier. Who knows? And while we’re sharing, I have your “I’m pathetic” break-up story beat hands down.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said, trying a weak smile. ‘What’s more tragic than running away?’
‘I really don’t think you want to know,’ Alex smiled.
‘Out with it, Reid.’
‘OK, since we’re sharing, but you’d better know this breaks every one of your friend’s rules.’
‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ I said hurriedly. I had a feeling I really didn’t want to hear his story after all.
‘You caught your boyfriend cheating, right?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘I caught my girlfriend cheating too. With my best friend. In my bed.’
‘That’s horrible,’ I said. He looked so sad. ‘No one can blame you for taking that badly, surely?’
‘Apparently it had been going on for months,’ he continued, taking his turn to stare out over the rooftops. ‘On and off, they said. Needless to say, I didn’t take it well.’
‘Well, what happened?’ I wondered what he could possibly have done that made him feel so bad. ‘Did you hit him?’
‘Yes but that he had coming,’ he said simply. ‘The dumb thing is, what they did to me wasn’t half as bad as what I did to myself.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘And I just want to preface this with this is what I was doing, this isn’t what I’m doing now.’
I nodded cautiously. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,’ I said again, really wishing he would listen, praying he wasn’t going to tell me something that would reveal him to be anything other than super perfect.
‘They didn’t stay together once I found out, she kept telling me it was a mistake, that she wanted to come back, that we could work it out, but I couldn’t accept it. I was, whatever, heartbroken I guess, but I had this wounded male pride thing going on too, you know? So, instead of meeting her to talk like I said I would, I went out with the guys, I picked up this girl and for a couple of hours, I didn’t have to think about what they had done to me.’
‘That’s not that bad,’ I said, trying not to be jealous. This wasn’t about me. I wondered what she looked like? ‘Just a rebound thing, right?’
‘You’re going to have to let me finish, it gets a little shittier.’ He tried a smile but it didn’t really work. ‘After that first night, it just got easier and easier to go out, pick up a girl each night and just forget about everything. I kind of convinced myself I was making up for lost time, but at a pretty speedy rate.’
‘Oh?’ I couldn’t really think of specific words to put together into a sentence. And he didn’t want to come upstairs with me? This is not about you! a little voice rem
inded me. ‘But to make her jealous?’
‘Yeah, except somewhere along the line, I stopped being devastated and just turned into a total dick. And I know it’s a cliché, but it didn’t make me happy.’ He paused to bite at an already gnawed-down fingernail. ‘In the morning, I hadn’t changed anything. I was still the guy who had been cheated on, only now I was just as much of a shit.’
‘But why keep…well, why do it if it didn’t make you happy?’ I asked. My imagination was being stretched to its limit today.
‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ he said. ‘And then I kind of figured I’d finally come up against someone who made me want to stop. I met you.’
‘Oh.’ I let go of his hand. This was all so confusing. ‘But when I asked you upstairs, you said no?’ It was also getting more and more difficult not to take this all to heart.
‘I know,’ he said, snatching my hand back. ‘It’s just, when we started talking it was different. Usually, when a girl knows you’re in a band they start acting differently and it stops being honest, it’s just about hooking up with the guy in the band, which I get sounds totally pretentious but it’s true. But you, you knew and it didn’t phase you at all. I was just me, I didn’t have to be the guy in the band.’
‘I didn’t say I would go out with you because you’re in a band,’ I lied a little bit. It didn’t feel like the time to get into my groupie fantasies.
‘And that’s the reason I didn’t come upstairs with you,’ Alex said urgently. ‘If I had it would have been just the same, another night, another girl. I had a really great time with you. For the first time in a year, I wanted to see someone again. I’m kind of having to learn how to date again, to be with someone for more than just, you know, sex.’
I didn’t know what to think. Part of me was saying he had been hurt the same way I had, he’d just handled it differently. But another, really loud part of me was telling me he was trouble, did I really think it was a good idea to keep seeing someone who had slept his way around most of downtown Manhattan? I didn’t know what to trust.