The study lounge was no good. The lights were out, but I could still see the shadows of a couple on the couch inside, their slow coupling reflected in the windows. Disgruntled, exhausted and my head aching, I took the elevator to the ground floor and sought the social lounge. It was locked.
I muttered a string of obscenities under my breath—creative ones; my younger brother, Davis, was a marine. I didn’t notice the figure sitting behind the front desk in the lobby, and he wasn’t yet familiar enough that I should’ve immediately recognized his voice...but I did. The scent of it gave him away. Cotton candy and sawdust. Naveen sounds to me like a carnival smells. I hadn’t noticed upon first meeting him, because of the rest of the noise around us, but in the quiet of 2:00 a.m. it was as if I’d stepped right onto the midway.
“What happened to your head?” He twirled a little on an office chair, his feet propped on the battered desk.
“I hit it.”
He made a face. “No shit.”
I touched the wound with gentle fingers, wincing at the tenderness. It had stopped bleeding but still oozed a little. “My roommate came home with a friend I wasn’t expecting.”
“Ah.” Naveen nodded as if this made sense. He dropped his feet off the desk with a thump and opened a drawer. “Come around the side, through that door. Come in here.”
I hesitated. He looked at me. Gone were the charming smile, assessing stare. He looked me over, all right, but this time it didn’t make me feel creepy or annoyed.
He held up a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of adhesive bandages. “Come on. Let me take care of that for you.”
I went through the door and settled into the opposite chair with my afghan wrapped around me. I wasn’t cold, exactly, but felt on the verge of shivering. I wasn’t homesick, but the sudden longing for my own bed, my own room, swept over me.
“Chin up. This isn’t pretty.” Naveen soaked a cotton ball in peroxide and dabbed at my wound.
Stoic, I didn’t wince, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. “Gee. Thanks.”
“I didn’t say you’re not pretty,” he said in a low voice after a second. “You sure are prickly, Elisabeth Manning.”
I was surprised that he knew my name, only for a second before remembering he’d seen it on the form I filled out. I gritted my teeth as he poked and swiped at the cut on my forehead. When he smoothed the bandage over it, his fingers lingered along my scalp line and traced my cheeks and jaw before he withdrew.
We stared at each other without speaking for some long moments before Naveen broke the silence with a laugh and pushed back in his chair to prop his feet up again. Hands behind his head, charming smile pasted firmly back on his face, he winked at me. I frowned.
“Oh, come on. Throw a guy a bone.”
“Are you a dog?” I asked him smartly, refusing to smile.
Naveen blinked, his smile fading. “Are you a bitch?”
That was how we became friends.
Chapter Six
“What’s wrong with you?” Naveen’s voice has lost its cotton-candy sweetness. Now he sounds like licorice. He gestures at the pile of receipts and papers spread out on the desk in front of me, but doesn’t touch any of them.
I’ve been sitting here all morning, passing papers back and forth between my hands. Filing only a few. Finishing nothing, unable to concentrate on anything but the memory of what happened with Will. It’s been three days, and I haven’t yet felt guilty.
Until now, and that’s about ignoring my work and not because of my infidelity. I shrug, carefully not meeting Naveen’s gaze. “Nothing. What’s wrong with you?”
Naveen scowls. He paces in front of the desk, one hand on his hip, the other pressed to his forehead. It’s a common enough pose for him, because he likes to make drama. But today, something seems off. He’s agitated and anxious, not just dramatic. His dark brows knitted, black eyes narrowed, he won’t quite meet my gaze. When he turns suddenly and pushes the piles of paper to the side so he can lean across the desk to grip my upper arms, I’m more startled by the shuffle of the papers falling than how close his face is to mine.
“I’m in trouble, Betts. Bad trouble.”
He’s gripping a little too hard, but releases me when I look at where his fingers pinch. This close, I can see how his carefully groomed eyebrows need some attention. Red threads the usually bright whites of his eyes. There’s a tremor in his voice that for an instant looks like the quicksilver flash of a fish in a dark pond. Surprising, and gone before you really can be sure it was there at all.
“Are you sick? Is it money?”
Naveen always skates on the edge of financial disaster. Backed not only by his wife’s trust fund, but her steady employment as a doctor, he’s been free to pursue just about whatever he likes without much fear of facing the consequences. Not just in business, either, and I was stupid for a few seconds too long before I looked into his face and understood.
“The girl from the gallery show?”
He shakes his head and moves away, to sit on the edge of the desk with his back toward me. His shoulders hunch as he heaves a heavy sigh so deep it alarms me. This is not the Naveen I’d met in college, the one who’d had a habit of lounging half-naked in my doorway with his pants hanging low on his hips and a wicked smile that made me feel I was on an elevator that had just dropped ten floors. I’ve known this man for more than twenty years and have seen him cry only once, the night his father died.
I go around the desk to sit beside him, my fingers gentle but firm on his shoulder, not forcing him to turn toward me but letting him know he can. “Someone else.”
He’s not crying, but his smile is too fierce. “Her name is Francesca. She’s Italian. She buys a lot of art.”
I say nothing, waiting for him to go on. She can’t be pregnant. Naveen had a vasectomy a few years ago, came into the office moaning about ice packs and his swollen balls, expecting me to fetch him coffee and sympathy.
Naveen looks me in the eyes. “I love her, Betts. Oh, God. I don’t want to, but I do.”
I’m so set back by this that I actually scoot an inch or so away from him across the polished desk. The word love has always tasted like the scent of fresh ink and soft paper to me. Like a newly written poem. But hearing it now, in this context, I taste the moldering smell of musty books left unread for years.
“Her husband is older. He travels a lot, so he’s gone. He has a few mistresses....” Naveen’s voice trails off with a tremor that’s not so much like a quicksilver fish this time. More like the slow rise of an enormous shadow beneath the surface of a quiet lake. “I’m crazy about her.”
“You’re crazy, all right,” I tell him flatly. I’m no longer touching him, though I can’t remember taking away my hand. “What is wrong with you, Naveen?”
“She makes me...feel,” he says, as though that should explain it all.
Maybe it does.
It’s my turn to pace, to run my hands through my hair. Naveen’s slept with dozens of women that I know about, and I’d guess there are at least as many I haven’t heard of. He’s never been faithful to anyone for as long as I’ve known him. I’ve never asked him if Puja knows about his affairs, nor if she knows about us. The us that never happened, that is.
Jealousy smells like the water in the bottom of a flower vase after the flowers have died. It doesn’t taste much better. I recoil not just at the odor and the flavor, but with the knowledge that I am jealous of this woman I don’t even know.
This is what makes me sit again to take his hand. Our fingers link and squeeze before I let him go, though his hand still rests on my thigh. “So...what’s the problem? She doesn’t love you back?”
“She does.”
I watch the tips of his fingers trace small circles on the fabric of my skirt. Naveen’s nails are a little too
long, and I can feel the scratch of them against my skin even through the fabric. I put my hand on his to stop the restless movement. We’re close enough to kiss, though I’m not expecting him to try, and I’d pull away if he did. His head dips, eyes closed so his lashes make a shadow on his skin.
“I’ve been with a lot of women....” he begins, and I laugh. Naveen opens his eyes and manages a smile. “It’s true.”
“I know it’s true, you jerk,” I say, but fondly.
“But Francesca is different. I can’t stop thinking about her. Everything about her makes me crazy. The way she talks, the way she smells. Her laugh. She’s smart and funny and...fuck me, Betts. I love her.”
His sincerity is evident in every syllable. I want to pull away, but I don’t. “So what are you going to do? Leave Puja and the kids?”
I can’t imagine it. Naveen has too much tied up in his family. Pride and money and, despite his philandering, I’m willing to bet a lot of love.
“Francesca ended it.” His misery is as bold as his sincerity. “She said she wants to stay with her husband. She said we could be friends—” Laughter barks out of him. He gives his head an incredulous shake. “Friends? Like we’re in the tenth grade?”
“If you love her, you should already have been friends.” I sound sanctimonious.
Naveen gives me a look. “I’m not sure I know how to be just friends with a woman I want to fuck, Betts.”
His words are a slap that rocks my head back, just a little. I’m off the desk again, several steps away, before I realize I’ve moved. My arms cross over my stomach for a second until I realize I’m looking defensive, and I refuse to give him that.
Naveen and I have been just friends for a long, long time.
“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“So what are you doing?” I ask.
He has the grace to look a little sheepish. “I’m being an asshole to her.”
Flashback. A memory of my hand, rapping on his dorm room door. I’ve brought a pizza and some movies to watch in his VCR, and my heart’s pounding, pounding, because it’s been a week since we last talked and that conversation hadn’t ended well. The food and films are an excuse; I’ve really come to fuck.
The door opens, and he’s there of course, chest and feet bare. And behind him, the girl. I don’t know her name, but does it matter?
“Hey,” Naveen says, as though he was expecting me. He probably was. “I’m sort of busy now. Can you come back later?”
But I didn’t, and it took months for us to talk again. I know very well just what kind of asshole Naveen can be. “Of course you are.”
He frowns, but doesn’t look angry. Only resigned. He shrugs. “I love her. She rejected me. It’s what I do, Betts.”
“I know what you do.” My voice is clipped and sharp and diamond-edged. “Maybe you shouldn’t fuck around with married women then. Maybe you shouldn’t fuck around at all, you think?”
He looks at first surprised, then wary. For all the years I’ve shared his secrets, I’ve never once judged him for any. I can’t even look him in the eyes now, though, because for once I have my own secret.
“Will,” Naveen says, looking past me, and I think that he knows.
But it’s actually Will, standing awkwardly in the doorway, not looking at either of us. One shoulder presses the door frame, one hand cups the back of his neck as he studies the floor. When he does look up, his gaze skims my face before settling on Naveen’s.
“Hey,” he says.
Naveen pulls away from me. Straightens. His warning look annoys me—as if I’d say anything more, now that we have an audience? My pride might be stung, but it’s an old wound. I stand and straighten, too, putting distance between me and Naveen that’s meant to look casual but probably doesn’t.
When I look at Will, the world stops for the time it takes him to blink and move forward to shake Naveen’s hand. They clap each other on the back. Will catches my gaze over Naveen’s shoulder, but I can’t read it. Then they’re out of my office and into the hall outside, talking about some photographs Will’s going to be showing next month.
And I’m alone.
Somehow, I find the concentration to finish paying bills and filing invoices, following up on emails and phone calls and chasing down bank statements to prove to artists that, yes, someone really did cash our checks and if it wasn’t them, they’d better take it up with whoever had learned to forge their signatures. An hour passes, then another. There’s other work to be done, but it’s on the desktop in my Philadelphia office, and while I usually bring my laptop and flash drives with everything I need, this morning I was so distracted I forgot. So now I sit and stare out the window at the city and pretend I’m not straining my ears for any sound of Will’s voice.
I fucked him.
There is no way around this, no way to make it pretty or anything other than what it is. I went to his apartment, and I let him put his hands and mouth on me, his prick inside me, and it was not by accident or coercion or because I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing. I fucked Will Roberts because I wanted him.
That’s when the shudder hits me, a tremor in my fingers, a twisting in my guts that bends me in half. My heart pounds so hard I press my fingers to it as if I can keep it from beating right out of my chest. I shake and shake and shake. My breath whistles in my throat until I press my lips together and force myself not to breathe for the count of one, two, three.
Calmer, steadier, I open my eyes.
Will stands in the doorway as if it’s a line he’s not allowed to cross. “Hey. Coffee?”
I should tell him I can’t go. I shouldn’t want to go. But I’m already standing, ready to follow him anywhere he takes me.
Chapter Seven
Because I still haven’t learned the neighborhood, we walk around the block until we find a place. Any other street in New York would have a dozen coffee/bagel/pastry shops, but not this one. We settle for a small diner that shows off what looks like decent pastries and questionable sandwiches in the case by the hostess stand. The coffee, as it turns out, is terrible. Will orders a slice of German chocolate cake. I ask for a muffin.
“Sugar?” Will asks, fingers hovering over the small ceramic container in which the sweetener packets have been shoved haphazardly, a rainbow of pastels.
“Two. Please,” I add quickly. So polite. So distant. Three days ago I had him naked and inside me, and now I can barely let my fingers touch his when he hands me the packets. I taste the coffee with a grimace and ask apologetically, “Can I have another, please?”
We warm our hands on the mugs and stare at anything except each other. The waitress brings the cake, but tells me they’re out of muffins. My disappointment is out of proportion to my need for a shitty diner muffin, and I can’t stop the frown. She offers cake, but I don’t want cake. Or pie. Really, I think as I watch her rattling off the list of desserts, all I want is for her to shut up and go away. I order lemon meringue and expect to hate it when it comes.
“So,” Will says after a second, when she’s finally gone and we have no excuse to keep ignoring each other. “How are you?”
“Fine. You?” I sip bad coffee and burn my tongue.
At first, he says nothing. Then he gives me a slow smile, sweeter than the extra sugar I added to my coffee. His smile is the kiss of ocean spray and the keening cry of gulls.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be at the gallery today.” A pause as perhaps he considers what to say next. “But I was hoping you would be. That’s why I stopped by.”
Tension eases inside me, and I find my own smile. “I’m glad you did.”
Again, he says nothing.
“Will...” I begin, stuttering on the flavor of his name. I can’t decide exactly what it is, but it feels gritty. Like sugar. No, like
sand. “About what happened...”
An emotion I can’t decipher flashes across his face, and everything about him goes very still. His fingers turn the coffee mug. Turn and turn and turn. He leans forward, shoulders hunching, and rests his elbows on the table.
“Yeah. About that.”
Before he can say more, my phone trills. I didn’t program that ring tone, Jacqueline did, to set her apart from her sister and, I suppose, from everyone else. I’d ignore the call, but the look on his face says he’s expecting me to take it. And the truth is, I’m glad for an excuse to stall this conversation, because I’m not at all sure where it’s going.
“Hi, honey.”
Jac walked at nine months and talked at eleven, and she hasn’t slowed down or stayed quiet since. She is my in-charge child, bold and opinionated, capable of compassion but not so great with tact. She resembles me more than her sister does, but she’s absolutely her father’s girl.
“I wanted to wish you Happy Birthday today, because I’m going to be camping on the weekend. No cell service.” She launches into the conversation without much preamble, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “Happy Birthday, Mama! Sorry I won’t be home for it.”
“It’s fine. When you get to be my age, birthdays aren’t such a big deal.” Ross is the one who believes that, not me. I’d make my birthday a month-long holiday if I could, but it’s kind of hard to celebrate it alone. “Thanks, though. Who’s going camping?”
“Just me and Jeff. State park. Roughing it.” Jac’s laugh is almost identical to the trilling tone she programmed into my phone, all burbling bubbles, the warble of a bird. “Tents and everything.”
“Sounds fun. Be careful,” I add, because I have to and she expects it, not because I fear my daughter will be reckless. She always knows where she’s going and how long it will take to get there.
I envy her that.
“Gotta go. Happy Birthday!”
“Thanks.”
“Make Daddy take you to dinner or something.”
“I will,” I tell her, though at that very moment I’m not sure I’ll be hungry for a long, long time. “Bye.”