“Hey, it got nice out,” Shayna said, lifting her face to the sun.
Mindy squeezed her hand. “It sure did. You’re outside.”
Shayna smiled and shook her head. “I never thought you would come all the way down and visit me.”
“Hey, just because it took me a few months, doesn’t mean I was ignoring you. Besides, this is only a couple blocks further than the subway. It’s not like you work in the middle of nowhere.”
“I guess that’s true. But you’re not really a cupcake kind of person.”
Mindy put her arm around Shayna’s shoulders and pulled her close. “I didn’t come for the cupcakes. I came for you. And anyway, I had to go to Dick Blick and spend my gift card on some markers.”
“Ha!” Shayna’s shoulders shook with her laughter. “That explains it. You weren’t here for me at all.”
Mindy stopped Shayna on the corner, took both her lovely cheeks in her hands, and kissed her hard. Shayna made a quiet sound against her lips, and then was kissing her back, their bodies pressed together, unaware of anything that might be happening around them.
Then they started walking again, as though nothing had happened, except that Shayna had that silly grin back on her face. “Okay, you came for me.”
“You bet I did. Never think that you’re less important than cupcakes or art supplies again.”
Shayna looked up at her. “I’m more important to you than your art?”
“Of course you are,” Mindy said with a grin. “Did you doubt it?”
“Well, it’s your job. You have to spend a lot of time on it.”
“And I choose to spend a lot of time on you,” Mindy said. She remembered how much work she had to do and felt guilty again, but that wasn’t important right now. “I could have gone straight home and to work, but I wanted to come see you.”
“All right. Fine. Thank you for coming.” Shayna’s footsteps slowed.
Mindy looked around, becoming aware of their surroundings for the first time since they’d left the cupcake shop. They were walking away from the park, through tall, imposing buildings, in the wrong direction for the subway. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Oh.” Shayna stopped just before a gilded awning where a man in a shiny-buttoned uniformed stood before glass doors. “I didn’t really think about it. But we’re at my apartment building.”
Chapter 16
Mindy’s jaw dropped as she stared at the building, at the doorman, at the awning, and at the building again, her gaze going up… and up. This building was as tall as three of her apartment buildings stacked together, and it was beautiful. “You live here?”
“Yeah.” Shayna wasn’t looking at her. “Would you rather head back to your place? We can do that. I don’t have anywhere to be this afternoon.”
Mindy shook her head. “Hell, no! I want to see your apartment. We’ve been dating long enough without me seeing your place, don’t you think?”
Shayna looked up at her and smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Mindy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as she followed Shayna to the door. The doorman barely gave either of them a glance as he pulled the door open for them. Mindy glanced over her shoulder at him as they walked into the entryway; he stepped neatly back into his spot beside the door.
The lobby was all white marble and gilding. It was beautiful, if a little bit overwhelming. Mindy looked around, trying to focus on small details of design, but it all just shone back at her relentlessly.
Shayna pressed a button on a wall, and the elevator chimed as the doors opened. “Come on,” she said, grabbing Mindy by the arm and pulling her in. Mindy stumbled after her.
The inside of the elevator was also gilded—well, it was brass, probably. The walls were almost shiny enough for a clear reflection, but they were old and blurred. Mindy found that comforting, though she averted her eyes from her misty reflection. “What floor are you on?” she asked uncertainly. “We could have walked.”
Shayna shook her head. “I only walk up to the fourteenth floor if I really feel like I need the exercise. And I don’t.”
“I guess not.” They lapsed back into silence as they waited for the slow elevator to make its way to the fourteenth floor. Thankfully, no one else got on the elevator while it was moving.
As soon as they doors opened, Shayna grabbed Mindy’s arm again and pulled her down the hallway. Everything here was elegant, too, but in a faded way; the green carpet was worn down at the center and in front of each door, and the ceiling felt as though it was dropping dust onto Mindy’s shoulders.
Finally, Shayna stopped at a door, fumbled a key out of her purse, and unlocked it. Mindy relaxed as she stepped into Shayna’s apartment, feeling that at least here, where her girlfriend lived, she would feel like she belonged.
It was better than the rest of the apartment building—and it did look like Shayna’s taste in decorating—but somehow not really like a home, either. Maybe it was the white furniture and pale gray walls; they were extremely tasteful, very much like something you would see in a design magazine, but not exactly comfortable. The hardwood floor was shiny but worn, and a potted plant sat in one window, but its leaves were drooping and turning brown.
The TV on one wall was large and looked recent, though, and it was surrounded by a veritable library of books, organized by neither color nor size—so at least Shayna hadn’t taken every single one of her design cues from home style magazines. “Wow, this is a beautiful apartment,” Mindy said, looking around.
“Thanks,” Shayna said, shrugging off her pink coat and hanging it on a coat rack. “Let me take your coat.”
“I feel like I should take my shoes off.” Mindy handed over her coat.
Shayna smiled, kicking off her own low heels. “If you don’t mind?”
Mindy laughed and bent down to pull off her boots, leaving them and her bags by the coat rack. “Hey, less time cleaning, I get that. Especially since you don’t have carpet you can just vacuum.”
“Yeah.” Shayna looked down and rubbed her stocking-covered toe along the grain of the hardwood.
Mindy went to the window, politely ignoring the dying plant and hoping for a view, but she was disappointed. The distance between this building and the one next door was short, so the only interesting views were of the opposite neighbor’s blinds and, down the alley, a glimpse of a tree in Rittenhouse Square.
So she turned and looked at Shayna instead. “This is an amazing location. Great commute, too. Better than mine.”
That made Shayna grin at last. “You work from home.”
“Yes, well, my home isn’t as pretty, is it?”
Shayna sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “Your home looks like you.”
“Oh, burn,” Mindy said, but her heart wasn’t in it, and Shayna didn’t respond. Mindy crossed the room again to put her hands on Shayna’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s a nice place. You got lucky. I mean, I love my apartment, but it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. How do you afford a place so close to Rittenhouse?”
That was the wrong question. Shayna tore herself out of Mindy’s grasp and walked through a doorway to the right. She would probably have been stomping if she hadn’t been in stocking feet. “I never should have brought you here.”
Mindy followed her to discover that they were in a tiny kitchen, the appliances gleaming stainless steel, but the walls covered in worn tile and the floor cracked in places. There was almost no space on the counter, but Shayna found a spot to put down her box containing the cupcake.
Mindy stood in the doorway, trying not to stare around at the kitchen. If Shayna didn’t like her place, Mindy wouldn’t make a big deal of it, but her words had still hurt. “Shayna maidele, I love you.”
Shayna turned and lifted her chin to look Mindy in the eyes. “I love you, too.” She crossed her arms over her stomach, her back to the oven door.
“So why wouldn’t you want to bring me to your apartment? It’s
part of you.”
Shayna shook her head. “It isn’t me at all.”
“It’s where you live. You cook in this kitchen, right? You read your books on your nice vintage couch?”
“Only for lack of anywhere else to read them. And you know I barely cook.”
Mindy shrugged. “You could always bring a book to my apartment. Wouldn’t that be nice? You sitting on my couch reading a book and me at my desk working?”
“Yeah. That sounds really nice, actually.” Shayna curled in on herself a little more.
“Shayna, you’re lying or you’re not telling me something.” Mindy realized that she was blocking the only escape route and stepped to the left, out of the doorway. Not that there was a lot of room to move, but Shayna was the one who’d walked into the kitchen. What was in the other direction? Her bedroom and bathroom, most likely, but this conversation was so strange that Mindy wasn’t about to go prying around.
And since when did she think looking at stuff in her own girlfriend’s apartment was prying? She’d certainly never been bothered by Shayna looking at all her stuff.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Shayna said. She edged a little toward the door.
“Don’t you trust me?”
Shayna’s eyes locked on hers again. “Of course I trust you. Completely. More than anyone else in the world.”
“Then why not tell me? I promise I won’t judge you or make fun of you. I mean, come on, you know me better than that.”
That got a smile out of her. “I know you well enough to think you will make fun of me.”
“But only if I don’t mean it.”
Shayna nodded reluctantly. “Okay.” But instead of explaining what she wasn’t saying, she turned and padded back out of the kitchen. Mindy followed her at a distance of a few feet, hoping they would go into the bedroom, but Shayna just sat down on the couch, crossing her ankles neatly.
Mindy stood at the end, by the arm. Shayna reached down into the cushions and pulled out a ragged blue blanket, then patted the cushion next to her. Mindy sat down, almost knocking a book off the back of the couch.
Shayna draped the blanket across their laps with a sigh. It was knitted patchwork, all in the same light blue yarn, but each square had a different symbol on it: a Star of David, a hanukkiah, a tree, a heart. It was obviously old and well used; the edging was fraying in some spots, and the middles of some of the symbols were worn thin.
“Your baby blanket?” Mindy asked.
Shayna nodded, staring down at it and rubbing the middle of the heart, which was so thin Mindy could see Shayna’s jeans through it. “My zayde made it for me.”
Mindy tried not to laugh. “Your zayde knits?”
“He said he learned from an old woman on the ship to America, and he would knit for the whole family. I was his first granddaughter, and he was getting pretty arthritic, but he made this blanket for me anyway. I think he made some for my cousins, too, but I’m not close to them, and I don’t know how similar their blankets are.” She gathered up the corners between her fists. “It’s one of the only things here that’s mine.”
Startled, Mindy looked around. She’d almost forgotten about the original topic. “The apartment isn’t yours?”
Shayna shook her head but said nothing.
“The couch? The books are yours. Most of them, anyway.”
“Half of them.”
Mindy reached up for the book that had bumped her head. She held it out to Shayna. “This one’s yours.” It was a fat fantasy book, not one of the Harry Potter books but a title Mindy didn’t recognize.
Shayna smiled as she took it. “Yeah, it is mine.”
Mindy looked up at the shelf for the books her parents had given Shayna. There they were, on the lowest shelf, next to the rest of the Harry Potter books, which seemed to amount to more than the seven Mindy remembered reading. “So who does the rest of this belong to?”
“My parents.”
Mindy turned to look at Shayna again, raising her eyebrows. “The parents you hardly talk to and won’t let me meet?”
“Don’t be mad.”
Mindy swallowed hard. “I’m not mad. I could never be mad at you.”
Shayna put the book down on the arm of the couch and continued fiddling with the blanket. “They pay for almost everything. That way they don’t have to actually listen to my answer when they ask how I’m doing, because they know everything is paid for. It’s the way things have always been for them—since the divorce, anyway. I think when I was a kid they used to actually talk to me and spend time with me, but that was a long time ago.” She shrugged. “And it was before Zayde died and Bubbe went into the home, so maybe it’s just them I’m remembering.”
Mindy put her hand over Shayna’s and gently squeezed. “I’m really not mad. I think I get it.”
“Do you?” Shayna looked up, shaking her head. “You’re on your own. You have your own apartment and you control your own life. You don’t owe anyone anything.”
“I owe money to my parents and Tamar,” Mindy said. Her stomach twisted with guilt again. She really should be working, but with Shayna so upset, how could she consider leaving now?
“That’s not the same.”
“No, you’re right, it’s not, but it could be. You don’t have to rely on them.”
Shayna looked at the blanket again, picking at it with her free hand. “I’m too selfish to separate myself from them. I can’t give up this apartment because I could never afford my own place working part-time at Buttercup Cakery. They can’t hire me full-time for the front and they won’t teach me to work in the kitchen. But I don’t want to look for another job because the one I have now is fun, and it seems like a lot of work to go find a new one. And if I quit, what would I do in the meantime? I’d just be relying on my parents more.”
Mindy took Shayna’s other hand, forcing them both still. “I have the perfect solution.” She couldn’t help grinning. This was so easy, she was just astonished Shayna had never brought it up before.
Shayna met her eyes, one corner of her mouth going up. “Yeah?”
“Move in with me.”
Shayna’s upturned lip dropped and she leaned back, away from Mindy. “Mindy…”
“What? It’s the perfect solution. I’m already supporting myself, like I said, so you wouldn’t need to pitch in on the rent until you could afford to. You would just have to pay for your own food and transportation and everything you pay for now. It might be a long commute, but you could take some time to find another job if you want. And you would be with me all the time! No more taking extra time out of our days to see each other—we’d just be there.” Mindy couldn’t help grinning, so excited by her vision of Shayna in her kitchen, Shayna on her couch, Shayna on her bed.
But Shayna was shaking her head. “It’s not a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea!”
“We’ve never even spent a whole night together—”
“And whose fault is that? I’ve invited you enough times. Come on, it seems so obvious.” Mindy squeezed Shayna’s hands.
Shayna pulled her hands away. “You can’t just drop one person into another person’s life like that.”
“You’re already in my life, sweetheart. That’s not going to change.” Mindy reached for Shayna again, but Shayna got up and stood at the end of the couch.
“Moving in together this early is just asking for trouble.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mindy stood. “We’ve been together for two and a half months—I think we know each other pretty well by now.”
“Two and a half months is nothing! We haven’t spent enough time together to see—we don’t know how our daily routines fit together, if they do.”
“We’re not going to find out any other way.”
Shayna shook her head again. “Moving in together is just going to guarantee that we have a really bad breakup.”
Mindy frowned. “Do you want to break up?”
“No, that’s
my whole point! If we rush into things, we’re just going to hate each other.”
“That’s not what you just said. Do you think we can never move in with each other?” Mindy took a step forward.
Shayna stepped back, around to the back of the couch, gripping the upholstery with her fingers. “No, that’s not what I mean. I want to move in with you someday, but…”
Mindy waited, her stomach churning, for Shayna to finish her thought. When she didn’t, Mindy crossed her arms. “But what? What milestone are you waiting for? Do you want to get married?”
Shayna closed her eyes. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“That stupid joke about getting married.”
“It’s not a joke!” Mindy was starting to get mad now. “You really think waiting for some arbitrary deadline is going to mean that when we move in together, things will go more smoothly?”
“No, of course not! I mean that we need time to get to know each other better. If we take our time, don’t rush things, then either we’ll get to know each other’s ways and be comfortable living together, or we’ll break up. And if we haven’t moved in together when we break up, it’ll be a lot easier because our stuff won’t be all together.”
“If you want to dump me, just say so!”
“I don’t want to break up!” Tears were standing in Shayna’s eyes. “I love you!”
“I love you, too, so what’s the problem with moving in together?”
“I don’t know if love is enough.”
Mindy shook her head. “If love isn’t enough, what else could be? Do you have to be so cynical about everything?”
“Do you have to be so optimistic about everything?” Shayna shot back. “When has thinking things are going to turn out for the best ever made anything good actually happen?”
“All the time!” Mindy gritted her teeth. “I wouldn’t have had the courage to talk to you at the all-star tryouts if I’d been thinking of how badly things might go all the time. I would never have gotten on my feet as a freelancer if I’d looked at the statistics on how many freelance graphic designers find success.”
Head Over Wheels Page 14
