Michael, my brother, gave me my first cigarette there, smoked under the boardwalk, nothing but the taste of freedom between us and our fingertips.
We stopped going after we lost him. I’m not sure why, except that everything that felt familial, that seemed to tie us together, was intolerable. Like our joy or unity was a betrayal of him, his life.
“Dannie?”
I close my eyes and open them again. When I look up, I see him standing above me in a bike helmet, half on his seat. Aaron. You’ve got to be kidding me.
Chapter Nine
“Hi. Wow.” I scramble to my feet, shoving my sandwich back into the bag. “What are you doing down here?”
He’s wearing a blue T-shirt and khaki pants, a brown leather messenger bag slung over his chest.
“It’s my weekend bike route.” He gestures to his bag, shakes his head. “No, Bella actually sent me on an errand this morning.”
“Oh yeah?”
Aaron unclips his helmet. The line of his hair is wet and matted down with sweat. “You seem to be feeling better.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I am.”
He smiles. “Good. You want to come?”
“Where?”
He scoots himself closer. “I’m looking at an apartment.”
Of course he is. I didn’t need a Google search. I just needed Aaron to show up, right now, and lead me there.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Plymouth Street?”
“Close,” he says. “Bridge.”
This is insane. This is not happening. “Yes,” I say. “I’ll come.”
“Great.”
He loops his helmet over his handlebars and we start walking.
“You’re a runner?” he asks me.
“I used to be,” I say. I can feel the sting in my left knee and hip as we walk, a product of not enough stretching, and no squats before taking off.
“I know. I don’t get on my bike as much as I’d like anymore, either.”
“Why isn’t Bella here?” I ask.
“She had to go into the gallery,” he says. “She asked me to check it out. You’ll get it when you see it, I think. Hang on.” We’re at a crosswalk and he holds his hand back as two bikers speed by. “Try not to die on my watch, huh?”
I blink back at him in the sunlight. I should have worn sunglasses.
“Okay, now we can go.”
We cross the street and then we’re making our way up Plymouth until we get right to where it meets Bridge, running perpendicular. Just where I came from. And then I see it. I missed it on my walk just now, blinded by my search for a sandwich. It’s the redbrick event space with the barn door. I recognize it now. But not just from that night. I was at a wedding here three years ago. David’s friends Brianne and Andrea from Wharton Business School. It’s the old Galapagos Art Space, and it’s what I saw out the window that night, four and a half years ago. And behind me, across the street, at 37 Bridge, is the building Aaron is about to lead me into.
“Watch your step,” he says, as we cross the street and make our way to the door. Sure enough, I’m right. It’s a brick-and-concrete building, less industrial than some surrounding it.
There’s no lobby, just a buzzer and a padlock, and Aaron takes a ring of keys from his messenger bag and begins trying them. The first two don’t work, and then on the third the lock swings open, the chain coming undone in his hands. The steel door swings open to reveal the side of a freight elevator. Aaron uses a second key to call it down for us—this time on the first try.
“They’re expecting you?” I ask.
Aaron nods. “A buddy of mine is a broker and gave me the keys. Said we could check it out today.”
We. Bella.
The elevator lumbers down. Aaron holds the door open and I step inside, then he wheels his bike in after us. He hits the button for the fourth floor and we’re making our way upward, the mechanics of the freight heaving and sputtering as we go.
“This building doesn’t seem up to code,” I say, crossing my arms. Aaron smiles.
“I like that you and Bella are best friends. It’s fun.”
“What?” I cough twice into my closed first. “What do you mean?”
“You’re so different.”
But I don’t have time to respond because the doors are opening, delivering us straight into the apartment from four and a half years ago. I know immediately, without having to take a step inside, that it’s the one. Of course it is. Where else did I think this morning would deposit me?
But the apartment isn’t at all what it was—or will be. It’s a construction site. Old wood beams sit piled in a corner. Plumbing and wires hang unfinished from outlets. There’s a wall where I do not remember one being. No appliances. No running water. The space is raw—open, honest—not a stitch of makeup on.
“Job for an architect,” I say. “I get it now.”
But Aaron hasn’t heard me. He’s busy leaning his bike up against a wall—where I remember the kitchen being—and stepping back to survey the place. I watch him cross the apartment, walk over to the windows. He turns around, taking in the long view.
“Bella wants to live here?” I ask. Her apartment is perfect, an actual dream. She bought it before it even came to market, fully renovated. She has three bedrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a galley kitchen. I can’t understand her wanting to move. She decorated that place for two full years. She still claims to not be done.
But Bella has always been one for a project. She loves potential, possibility, an unknown terrain such as this one. The only trouble is she rarely, if ever, sees anything through. I’ve seen her spend obscene amounts of money on projects and renovations that never ultimately come together. There was the Paris apartment, the LA loft, the jewelry line, the Thai silk scarf company, the shared artists space in Greenpoint. The list is long.
“She does,” Aaron says. “Or at least see if she can.” He’s speaking quietly. His attention isn’t on his words but instead on his surroundings. I can see him sketching, drawing, molding this place to life in his head.
They’ve only been together two months. Eight weeks. Granted, that’s two weeks longer than Bella’s longest relationship, but still—David didn’t even know my middle name at the end of two months. The fact that Aaron is here—looking at a place for Bella to live? That he’s tapping the walls and stomping the floorboards—it gives me pause. Whatever level they’re at, this quickly, isn’t good.
“Seems like a big project,” I say.
“Not too big,” he says. “There are good bones here. And Bella tells me she likes a project.”
“I know that,” I say.
At this, he looks at me. He turns his entire attention toward me—my lone figure, standing in this swampy, sweaty space, clad in black running pants and an old camp T-shirt, while the potential of the future hangs around us like storm clouds.
“I know you do,” he says. It’s softer than I imagined whatever he’d say would be. “I’m sorry if I misspoke.” He takes a step closer to me. I inhale. “The truth is I saw you go into the deli. I circled around and followed you back to the water.” He rubs a hand over his forehead. “I wasn’t sure if I should say hi, but I really—I really do want you to like me. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot and I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to change that.”
I back away. “No,” I say. “It’s not—”
“No, no, it’s okay.” He gives me another lopsided smile, but this one looks hesitant, almost embarrassed. “Look, I don’t need to be loved by everyone. But it would be nice if my girlfriend’s best friend could stand to be in the same room as me, you know?”
This room. This apartment. This unfulfilled space.
I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
He brightens at this. “We can take things slow. No meals for a while. Maybe just start with some sparkling water? Work our way up to a coffee?”
I try for a smile. To anyone else, that would have been funny. “S
ounds good,” I say. It feels physically impossible to say something interesting.
“Great.” He holds my gaze for a beat. “Bella’s gonna flip when I tell her I ran into you. What are the odds?”
“In a city of nine million? Less than zero.”
He goes over to where wires hang unaccompanied off walls. “What do you think of putting the—”
“Kitchen?” I offer.
He smiles. “Exactly. And you could do the bedroom back there.” He points toward the windows. “I bet we could get a sick walk-in closet.”
We walk through the apartment for another five minutes. Aaron takes some photos as he goes. When we head back down the elevator, my cell phone is ringing. It’s Bella.
“Greg texted me. How crazy is that? What were you even doing down there? You never run in Brooklyn. What did you think of the place?” She stops, and I can hear her breathing—shallow and expectant through the phone.
“It’s nice, I guess,” I say. “But your place is perfect. Why would you want to move?”
“You hate it?”
I think about lying to her. About telling her I don’t like it. That the windows have the wrong view, that it smells like trash, that it’s too far. I’ve never lied to Bella, and I do not want to, but she also can’t buy this place. She can’t move here. It’s for her protection as well as my own.
“It just seems like a lot of work,” I tell her. “And kind of far.”
She exhales. I can feel her annoyance. “From what?” she says. “No one lives in Manhattan anymore. It’s so stuffy, I can’t believe I do. You need to be a little more open-minded.”
“Well,” I say. “I don’t really have to be anything. I’m not going to be the one living there.”
Chapter Ten
“David, we need to get married.”
It’s the following Friday, and David and I are on the couch trying to decide what to order for dinner. It’s past 10 p.m. We had a reservation for two hours ago, but one of us had to work later and then the other decided to do the same. We got home ten minutes ago and collapsed jointly onto the sofa.
“Now?” David asks. He takes off his glasses and looks around. He never uses the bottom of his T-shirt because he thinks it smudges the lenses more. He makes a move to get up and go in search of a cleaner when I grab his hand.
“No. I’m serious.”
“Me, too.”
David sits back down. “Dannie, I’ve asked you before to set a date. We’ve talked about it. You never think it’s the right time.”
“That’s not fair,” I say. “We’ve both felt that way.”
David sighs. “Do you really want to talk about this?”
I nod.
“Life has been busy, yes. But it’s not true to say postponing things has come from us equally. I’ve been okay with waiting, because it’s what you want.”
David has been patient. We’ve never spoken about it, not in so many words, but I know he’s wondered, Why hasn’t it happened? Why do we never talk about it, not in specifics? Life got busy, and it was easy for me to pretend he didn’t think about it a lot, and maybe he didn’t. David has always been fine with my being in the driver’s seat when it comes to our relationship. He knows it’s where I feel comfortable, and he’s happy to let me have it. It’s one of the reasons we work so well.
“You’re right,” I say. I take both of his hands in mine now. The glasses dangle awkwardly from his pointer finger—an unfortunate third wheel. “But I’m saying it’s time now. Let’s do it.”
David squints at me. He understands now that I’m serious. “You’ve been acting really weird lately,” he says.
“I’m proposing here.”
“We’re already engaged.”
“David,” I say. “Come on.”
At this, he stops. “Proposing?” he says. “I took you to the Rainbow Room. This is pretty lame.”
“You’re right.”
Still holding his hands, I slide down off the couch until I’m on one knee. His eyes widen in amusement.
“David Rosen. From the first minute I saw you—at Ten Bells in that blue blazer with your headphones in—I knew you were the one.”
I have a flash of him: young professional, hair cut too short, smiling awkwardly at me.
“I wasn’t wearing headphones.”
“Yes you were. You told me it was too loud in there.”
“It is too loud in there,” David says.
“I know,” I say, shaking his hands. His glasses fall. I pick them up and put them on the sofa next to him. “It is too loud in there. I love that we both know that, and that we agree that movies should be twenty minutes shorter. I love that we both hate slow-walkers and that you think watching reruns is a waste of time value. I love that you use the term time value!”
“To be fair, that’s—”
“David,” I say. I drop his hands and place both my palms on either side of his face. “Marry me. Let’s do it. For real this time. I love you.”
He looks at me. His naked green eyes look into mine. I feel my breath suspend. One, two—
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” He laughs, and reaches for me. My lips meet his, and then we’re in a tangle of limbs making our way to the floor. David sits up and bangs into the coffee table. “Shit. Ow.” It’s wood with a glass top and tends to come off its hinges unless you move the whole thing in one piece.
We stop what we’re doing to attend to the table.
“Watch the corners,” I say. We pick it up and set it back down, nudging the top into formation on the base. Once it’s done, we stare at each other from either end of the table, breathing hard.
“Dannie,” he says. “Why now?”
I don’t tell him what I can’t, of course. What Dr. Christine accused me of withholding. That the reason I’ve been avoiding our forever is the same reason it needs to happen now—without delay. That in forging one path, I am, in fact, ensuring another never comes to fruition.
Instead, I say this:
“It’s time, David. We fit together. I love you. What more do you need? I’m ready, and I’m sorry it took me so long.”
And that’s true, too. As true as anything is.
“Just that,” he says. His face looks happier than I’ve seen it in years.
He takes my hand and, despite the three feet now between the couch and the coffee table, he leads me deliberately, slowly, into the bedroom. He nudges me back gently until I’m just perched on the bed.
“I love you, too,” he says. “In case it wasn’t obvious.”
“It is,” I say. “I know.”
He undresses me with an intention that hasn’t been there in a long time. Usually when we have sex, we don’t do a lot of mood-setting. We’re not particularly imaginative, and we’re always pressed for time. The sex David and I have is good—great, even. It always has been. We work well together. We communicated early and often and we know what works. David is thoughtful and generous and, although I’m not sure I’d call us ambitious, there is a certain competitive edge to our lovemaking that never lets it feel stale or boring.
But tonight is different.
With his right hand, he reaches forward and begins to unbutton my shirt. His knuckles are cool, and I shiver against him. My shirt is an old, white button-down J.Crew. Boring. Predictable. He’ll be met with a nude bra underneath. Same old. But what’s happening here tonight feels anything but.
He keeps unbuttoning. He takes his time, threading the silk knobs through their eye slits until the whole thing comes undone at the waist. I shimmy my shoulders until it’s off and falls to the floor.
David puts one hand on my stomach, and with the other he threads a thumb into the seam of my skirt. He holds me in place as he unzips it. This is less of a slow burn. It comes off in one swoop, falling into a puddle at my feet. I stand up and step out of it. My bra and underwear don’t match. They’re both Natori, although the bra is nude cotton and the unde
rwear is black silk. I dispense with both and then push him down onto the bed. I lean forward over him, my breast grazing the side of his face. He reaches out and bites it.
“Ow!” I say.
“Ow?” He puts both hands on my back and runs them down slowly. “That hurt?”
“Yes. Since when are you a biter?”
“Since never,” he says. “Sorry.”
He reaches out and kisses me. It’s a slow and deep kiss, meant to recenter us. It works.
David is working on his shirt—his hands on the buttons. I put mine over his and stop him.
“What?” he asks. He’s out of breath, his chest straining.
I don’t say anything. When he tries to stand, I put my hands on his shoulders and nudge him back down.
“Dannie?” he whispers.
I answer by guiding his hand to my stomach and then down, down until I feel that concave spot that makes me inhale. I hold his hand there. He looks at me—first confusion, then recognition dawning as I press his hand back and then forward, back and then forward. I take my hand away from his and grab on to his shoulders. He’s breathing along with me—and I close my eyes against the rhythm, his hand, the incoming collapse that is mine, and mine alone.
* * *
Afterward, we lie in bed together. We’re both on our phones, looking up venues.
“Should we tell people?” David asks.
I pause, but what I say is: “Of course. We’re getting married.”
He looks at me. “Right. When do you want to do it?”
“Soon,” I say. “We’ve waited so long already. Next month?”
David laughs. It’s a sincere laugh, guttural—the kind I love from him. “You’re funny,” he says.
In Five Years Page 6
