by Pratt, Lulu
“Thanks. You gotta stop being so nice to me, I can’t handle this much praise.”
He laid a friendly hand on my shoulder and replied, “You’ll just have to get used to it.”
His grip remained there for just a fraction of a second to long. I glanced down at his elegant fingers, then back to his eyes. Was I seeing what I wanted to see, or did he look as tormented as I felt?
But a second later, he dropped his hand, and any trace of serious conflict I’d spotted seemed to skitter away. Oh well, I thought. I probably imagined it, anyways.
“Say hi to Rebecca for me,” I said in a low voice, as if punishing him would somehow make me feel better.
The warmth I’d felt flowing from Xavier instantly dried up. “Sure,” he said tersely, polite as ever. “Of course.”
Was I my own worst enemy, just digging an ever deeper grave for myself?
Without waiting for me to reply, Xavier went on, “I’ll catch you later.” I opened my mouth, and he added, “I’ll see myself out.”
Xavier nodded and exited the room before I could get my bearings.
Maybe someday we could spend five minutes around one another without everything be all weird and fraught and totally sexy.
Or maybe not.
I groaned with frustration, not interested in dwelling on this anymore for the day.
Pulling out my phone, I put on a classical music playlist, some French mixed in with a little unexpected German. Music always helped me clear my mind.
I sighed and leaned back over the painting, returning to my work.
By five, I was more than ready to go home. The music hadn’t worked as effectively as usual, and try though I might, my mind kept wandering back to Xavier like a misbehaving child loosening themselves from their parent’s grip. It was strange to be an adult woman, but to feel as though, when Xavier was in my thoughts, I had no control over them. The feeling of being powerless to my emotions was one I’d long since forgotten. It was almost like a second puberty, which was more unwelcome than I can possibly describe.
But it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be solved by a good bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
I clocked out, grabbed my things and hit the streets, ducking into the subway less than two miles from work to catch the train to my apartment in Brooklyn. During the ride, I read my book and tried to ignore the man across from me who seemed to be rubbing his pants just a bit more than necessary. Oh, New York. Never a dull moment.
As the sun was setting over the city, I emerged from the train station and into the heart of Williamsburg. Yeah, yeah, I know the neighborhood is gentrified as hell. The wall of every coffee shop has “street art” that turns out to just be an advertisement for some online dating app, and most every person on the street is wearing some kind of “quirky” accessory. But my apartment was a great price — like I said, I was renting from a friend — so I was in no position to judge. Maybe if Comino helped me get a start in the field, I could look at moving somewhere with a little soul to it.
In the meantime, though, this beggar couldn’t be a chooser.
I walked the rest of the way to my apartment, basking in the smells of New York. Namely, hot trash and Chinese food. That reminded me, what should I have for dinner?
My mind was on food, wine and all things reality TV as I unlocked my front door, grabbed my mail and moseyed back to my unit. Maybe I’ll bake a quiche, I mused. Or just a nice, light salad.
But I felt much hungrier than that. Normally, I was a light-meal-in-the-evening kind of gal. Tonight, though, I was positively ravenous. Huh. Weird. Guess I’d just have to make some hearty pasta with meatballs, something real filling.
Walking in my door, I dropped my mail, keys and purse on the entry table, my thoughts occupied with consideration of whether or not I’d have to go out and buy some wine. I’d assumed I had some in the kitchen, but it’d been a few weeks since I’d cracked one open. It’d probably gone bad, right? Does wine go bad? I’d never had any leftovers to find out.
Just as I was consumed with these little debates that seem to define eighty percent of any given day, my purse toppled from the table to the floor, its contents spilling everywhere — including a discreet white box.
Fuck.
I’d conveniently forgotten all about the pregnancy test.
Looks like the wine would have to wait.
With a deep breath since there was no chardonnay to steady my nerves, I bent down to the floor and scooped the box up in my fingers.
“You tricky little devil,” I murmured, shaking my head.
There was no avoiding it now, much as I might have wanted to. One way or another I’d have to take the test. The sooner I knew, the sooner I could move on.
“All you have to do is pee,” I reassured myself, grasping for straws. “And you’re hydrated, anyways.”
I walked to my bathroom. Each step felt like I was lifting a hundred-pound brick with the pink-painted toenails of my feet. Time slowed around me and my vision seemed to slip in and out of focus. The museum prints that were framed on my walls blurred from Grecian statues into something far more animated and Dali-esque, things that didn’t quite make sense in proportion or intention.
At last, despite my dizzying loss of sensation, I made it to the bathroom.
Shutting the door behind me, I read the instructions on the box over and over again. It was fairly straightforward. None of that vial measuring and careful titration from our mothers’ generation. I’d pee, then I’d wait. Simple enough, right?
I had to force myself to sit on the cold, unwelcoming toilet bowl and spread my legs. Not so long ago, it was Xavier’s soft hands pushing my thighs open. Now, it was the stark hands of reality, forcing me to face my fate.
With one hand balanced beneath me, I sighed and let the water flow from me, dribbling onto the stick.
Once I was finished, I left the stick on the counter under a nest of toilet paper and washed my hands before setting an alarm on my phone. I tried to tear my eyes away from the stick, but every six seconds or so my gaze would wander back, searching for some kind of material answer in its pixelated screen.
“Go clean your dishes,” I instructed myself. Accomplishing something productive would surely feel better than this endless will-it-won’t-it game I was playing with the pregnancy test.
My body moved obediently, striding to my kitchen and mechanically beginning the dishes from breakfast. Scrubbing a plate, moving things around in the dish rack. Hell, I even took the time to clean out the sink, scraping any traces of color off its silvery walls.
Just as I was microwaving my sponge to get the bacteria out — an old wives’ tale I rarely abided, but was indulging in for the sake of killing time — the alarm on my phone dinged.
The sponge was still going around in the microwave, but it would have to wait.
I marched back to the bathroom, saying a silent prayer as I walked. Please, Universe… I couldn’t finish the rest of it, because I had no idea what to ask for.
The stick hung off the edge of the bathroom counter, beckoning me forward. Once I looked, there’d be no going back.
I clenched my fists and stepped forward just an inch or so. It seemed as though getting any closer to the device would somehow cause a disruption in its process. I was getting superstitious in my old age.
And there, in the middle of the one-inch tall screen, was a tiny but clear positive sign.
Oh crap.
I was pregnant.
Okay, so.
What now?
I’m carrying Xavier’s baby, I realized with a start. It wasn’t just my child, but ours.
The second the thought crossed my mind, I made a decision. I would keep the baby. It was that simple. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I actually wanted a kid. Yeah, I was young, but so what? Maybe if I’d been more careful, it wasn’t what I would’ve chosen, but now that I’d been given an option… well, things were different.
I’d prepared myself for a long, drawn
-out battle between the usual choices following an unexpected pregnancy. But with that decision out of the way, I turned to the surprisingly far more difficult task at hand:
What the hell was I going to tell Xavier?
The baby was, without a doubt, his. I hadn’t slept with anyone else in a whole year. How do you tell your first love, who is practically engaged to someone else, that you’re knocked up with his kid?! Where was the instructional YouTube video for this scenario? Did I send him some kind of baby-themed edible bouquet? Maybe one of those chocolate-covered diapers women lick at baby showers?
I took the pregnancy test in my fingers, rolling it over as I weighed my options.
“What do I say?” I whispered to the test, as though it were also a Magic 8-Ball.
The stick just continued to show its little cross, giving no other hints about what to do next.
“Fine,” I groaned, frustrated. I tossed the stick in the trash. “He’ll just have to wait.”
Until I could figure out what to say to Xavier, the best thing to do was keep it professional — and platonic. Maybe in a day or two, with some more sleep and protein, I’d have an answer. In the meantime… he’d just have to wait. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
CHAPTER 19
Xavier
THE CREAM wrapping paper fluttered in the blustery winds of the New York City subway.
I looked around, clutching the item closer to my chest. If only the riders around me knew that I was carrying an art piece worth more than a million dollars in my hand. Instead, what they saw was a carefully wrapped square that probably looked no more important than fresh salmon from a local deli. That was one of the great things about the city. High and low coexisted seamlessly, the rich and the poor coinciding in shared spaces.
What I held was a small, simple present for Chloe. Okay, granted, small in the size, not monetary, sense. A painting by Botticelli, no bigger than a postcard. It was recovered from one of his series that was thought to be lost, a collection of miniature paintings he’d sketched out in minutes of what were thought to be local prostitutes. Some thought he’d done the works as presents to the girls represented, but the number of remaining paintings from the series was so small, it was hard to draw any conclusive facts about them.
All I knew was that this painting spoke to me, and hopefully to Chloe as well. It was my little way of thanking her for all her hard on restoring my family’s pieces. Or at least, that was my excuse for giving her — a woman who wasn’t my girlfriend, sister or mother — a million-dollar painting.
My heart was pounding with anticipation as I stepped inside the Comino Gallery. I stopped the first security guard I saw wandering the halls, his walkie-talkie crackling with static.
“Hey, do you know where Chloe Bellahooks is?” I asked the man as he put his hands on his hips, sniffing me out. “She’s the temporary restoration expert.”
“Chloe,” he hesitated, apparently not a big talker. “She’s in the café.”
“Great, thanks.”
He moved back to his post, and I followed the long halls to the café, a tiny nook where road-weary patrons sat, overwhelmed from walking or from merely experiencing so much art in one fell swoop.
In the corner, with a book on the table next to a cup of what I guessed from experience to be tomato soup, was Chloe, hair falling into her face.
“If you’re not careful,” I said, approaching her table and startling her out of her reverie, “your hair will dip into your soup.”
Chloe’s eyes went wide as her head snapped up, but she said nothing as she wrapped the hair back using a hair elastic from her wrist.
“You’re quiet today,” I observed, taking the seat opposite her.
I couldn’t help but notice that, besides being rather silent, Chloe was also entirely radiant. Her cheeks seemed pinker than a fresh summer rose, her skin positively glowing with an unseasonably deep tan. Had her hair always been so vibrantly blonde? I drank in the way she folded up into her chair, like a lion leaning against a shady tree in the wilds of Africa.
Chloe slammed her book shut, breaking me out of my careful cataloging of her stunning parts.
“Not quite,” she corrected, with just a bit more joviality than seemed appropriate for the response. “I was concentrating on my book.”
Whereas a moment ago, she’d been taciturn in the extreme, she was now friendly and open. What had changed? In the half-second interim between these two expressions, had she made some kind of conscious choice? The whole thing seemed odd, but I didn’t want to press.
“I’ve brought you a present,” I said, deciding to move past whatever was going on with Chloe.
“You didn’t have to do that, Xavier.”
“I know. I wanted to.”
“Why?” Her face once again seemed to grow heavy with tension. I felt like I’d missed some important exchange, as though I was in Memento but had forgotten to tattoo myself.
Still, she wasn’t being rude. Just… distant.
“Because I knew you’d like it. Does there have to be a better reason?”
Chloe bit her lip. “I guess not.”
“Think of it as a little piece of Italy.”
I lifted the carefully wrapped package from my side, and laid it on the table in front of her, eyeing the soup at her right hand.
“Lemme move this first,” I said, reaching for the cup of tomato soup. I’d been right. I suppose I really did know Chloe as well as I thought.
“Huh?” She moved to grasp her coffee. “Why—”
“Just… trust me. You’ll be mad at yourself if you open this around food.”
I took her cafeteria tray in my hands and stood up, depositing it on a nearby empty table before returning to Chloe’s corner vantage point.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, weirdo, whatever you say.”
Holding back a laugh, I watched as she began to peel back the pieces of tissue paper. Chloe, ever the trained preservationist, would kick herself when she understood why I’d been so careful.
“Does this count as early Christmas?” she asked as she unwrapped the layers and layers of paper. “Because I haven’t gotten you anything to celebrate the, uh, occasion.”
“Okay, enough talk, stop dawdling. Just open it.”
Chloe snorted and focused on the parcel. “Damn, you really wrapped this puppy up. Which servant did you have do this for you?”
“Very funny.”
“Oh come on, Xavier, I’ve seen you try to wrap things before. You’re not exactly precious about—”
She broke off mid-sentence as she pulled back the final layer of paper.
Before us, now exposed to the cafeteria air, was one of Botticelli’s “lost” paintings. The girl in the painting was bare-chested, her pink nipples swimming in the foreground of the otherwise dark painting, illuminated by some unseen candle light. Her hair was trapped in a messy bun by a colorful scarf, and she lay on what appeared to be a tattered chaise lounge. If I was being honest, something about her reminded me of Chloe. Maybe it was the subject’s air of ease and freedom. The girl looked like she’d seen the whole world, and lived to tell the tale.
Chloe didn’t move her eyes from the painting as she whispered, “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” I said, unable to tame my smile at her obvious excitement. “It’s from Botticelli’s prostitute series.”
“No…”
“Yup.”
She finally looked up at me, stricken. “Xavier, I can’t accept this. This painting has to be worth more than a million dollars.”
“Let’s not talk about prices. It’s a gift.”
“For what? Nothing I’ve done could be worthy of this.”
I lowered my voice. “Just by being you, you deserve that painting and more.”
“No—”
“I was speaking with a collector recently, and he showed it to me. I knew immediately you had to have it.”
“So this wasn’t even an inheritance?
You went out and bought it?” Chloe shook her head. “It’s too much, Xavier. Please, take it back.”
“You’re the only one who can love this piece the right way,” I argued. “And it deserves to be loved after all these years of anonymity.”
Chloe hesitated, considering, her body positioned away from the table as if she were afraid to be too close to the piece. I could see in her eyes that she wanted it. All she had to do was reach out and take it.
And I was no longer sure what “it” was.
Finally, she replied, “Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t put it on a dirty cafeteria table.”
“Does that mean you’ll take it?”
She sighed, doing her best to look exasperated and not thrilled. “Yeah, I’ll take it.” Chloe began to carefully rewrap the painting, layer after layer, with the precision of a master. “But Xavier?”
“Hm?” I was too busy enjoying her acceptance of the gift to care about the note of doubt in her voice.
“You really can’t do this again. It’s not… appropriate.” She raised a meaningful eyebrow. “Between friends.”
“Friends give each other gifts.”
Chloe murmured, “Not like this, they don’t.”
God, why couldn’t we just enjoy the moment? I’d given her something nice, something I knew she’d love. Why did it have to be tarnished by all that was between us?
I heard a scraping of chair feet over the floor, and I knew that Chloe had subtly but definitively scooted her chair back so that our knees were no longer an inch away from one another. She had used her body like a pawn on a chess board. But it wasn’t a game I wanted to play.
“Okay,” I said at last. “This will be your one-time-only, limited-edition thank you for overseeing the handling of my family’s collection. And as part of the one-time-only, limited-edition thank you — can I take you out for a drink? We can celebrate the acquisition, and decide where in your place to hang the painting.”
I crossed one foot over my knee and smirked in that way I knew made her a little weak. My cock twitched at the thought.
“I’m busy,” Chloe deflected. “But thanks for the offer. And for the painting. I’ll cherish it.”
