I’m about to tease her for what sounds like a pick-up line, but she rubs her elbow in a way that makes me think she might be nervous. I let her off easy. “Best coffee in the neighborhood,” I say. “I’d know. I’ve tried it all.”
“It’s great,” she agrees. “Convenient too.”
Convenient. Like me, she must live or work around here. Because it’s mid-morning, I doubt her job is a typical nine-to-five. I soak up details like a sponge. “What’d you decide about the show last week?”
“Someone told me it was crap,” she says with a shrug. “An eloquent assessment I happen to agree with.”
I smile, but the mention of the show takes me back to that night. To the way we left things, her walking away under someone else’s arm. Every bone in my body says to leave it alone—because, yes, heartache goes bone deep. The truth hurts. My brain might’ve been on vacation when I started an affair with Sadie, but it came back the day she left. It’s here now, and it knows better. “That man,” I say, “was he your boyfriend?”
Watching me, she absentmindedly picks at the sleeve of her coffee cup. “You think that’s your business?”
“Yeah I do.” I’m bluffing. It’s not my business, but I have to know. I can’t put myself in the same situation twice. If she says yes, I’ll walk away right now and won’t look back.
“Not was,” she says. “Is.”
“Is?”
“He is my boyfriend.”
Fuck fuck fuck. I don’t even blink. This is a hard limit for me. I’ll never get involved with someone like that, someone unavailable, again. I’d thought this was it, though. I really fucking did. I haven’t felt anything in a year, not until I opened that journal. It awoke things in me I feared were dead, and I think this girl—Halston—might understand me.
Her forehead wrinkles. “Are you okay?”
“I, uh, yeah.” My legs don’t move. I’m not walking out the door. I need to, and I will, but first there’s the matter of her journal. “It wasn’t the answer I expected.”
She blushes. Her milky-white skin blooms like a rose. She understands why I bought her coffee and brought her to this tiny windowsill that’s currently digging into my ass cheek. There wasn’t supposed to be someone else.
“Who is he?” I don’t know why I’m asking.
She glances at the nude lipstick stain she’s left on her lid. “Are you going to take my coffee back because I have a boyfriend?”
“After you’ve put your mouth on it?”
She half-gapes. “I . . . I’m going to be late to work.”
“I have a confession to make,” I say.
“I don’t think I should hear it.” She puts her purse over her shoulder and goes to stand.
“I found your journal.”
She freezes, then slowly lowers back onto the windowsill. “M-my . . .”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“It wasn’t . . . what I expected.”
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” I ask. “I found it here, on the floor. Well, not here,” I point toward the window, “there, under that table.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“I’ve been reading it. Shitty of me, I know, but I opened it to see if I could find someone to return it to, and your words just fucking gripped me. You write like—”
“It’s not mine,” she says. “I think you’re confused.”
I hear her, but the words don’t compute. Since the night of the opening, I’ve grown more and more certain the journal belongs to her. There are some things that don’t add up or coincide with how I pictured her, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m just as captivated by this complex version of my journal girl.
I memorized some things, so I recite a line for her, one of the many that spoke to me during my past few nights of reading. “‘Hot like ice, you melt me down into clean, razor-sharp need.’”
“What?”
“You’re telling me you didn’t write that?”
She’s white as a sheet.
“Because I’ve been wanting to tell you—I know that feeling. Holding an ice cube against your skin until it burns, but it also kind of numbs . . . which can be nice.” I sound like a dumbass. “Sorry. Unlike you, I’m not so great with the words—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says under her breath. “People can hear you, you know.”
“So?” I continue to push. “If you can be melted, does that mean you’re the ice?”
She stands quickly, nearly upending her coffee. “This isn’t me. That. That isn’t me. It’s not my journal or whatever it is you found. I need to go.”
And I need to let her. She’s spoken for. She’s not the girl I thought I’d find, but she wrote those words, I feel it in my gut. She’s hurting somewhere, somehow, damaged. Any sane person would walk away. I’ve done damaged. It didn’t work out well. But for fuck’s sake, I’ve never been so baffled by someone I feel might understand me.
She rummages through her bag and pulls out a fiver. “This is for the coffee.”
“I told you, it’s on me.”
Her hand trembles. “Take it.”
I shake my head. “Halston—”
She sets the bill on the windowsill and hurries for the exit. She’s gone with even less fanfare than she appeared, my hand grazing the weighty leather binding of her concealed thoughts and desires.
I fight the urge to go after her the only way I can, by remembering the look on Sadie’s face when she told me she’d chosen him, not me. But the sting isn’t as fresh as it was a week ago.
I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
5
I’ve tracked Halston down twice now.
I can’t do it a third time.
Fate may have brought her to me, but at some point, I have to admit it might’ve actually been fate’s asshole cousin coincidence. My instincts have been off before—more severely than I’d like to admit. If it weren’t for the boyfriend, I’d do it. I’d go after her like the persistent fuck I am when I want something badly enough.
Why does there have to be a boyfriend? How is that I’m torn up thinking about another man’s girl, again?
I’m on the sunny, open second level of an Upper East Side apartment shooting senior class photos for a group of girls when I get the call that changes everything. It’s been over twenty-four hours since I saw Halston in person, but I was with her all night long. As I read more, I felt her with me. I pictured her writing in her journal, fantasizing as her pen moved across the page, then acting out those desires with me.
Pry me apart
Make it slow
Forget my heart
Make it fast
Pry me apart
My thoughts, my thighs
Whatever it takes
Your truths, your lies
Lows and highs
There is no feeling
Like having you inside
When the sky falls through the ceiling—
“Mr. Cohen?”
I start. Fuck. I forgot where I was. One of the moms is holding out a coffee. It’s not from Lait Noir, but I accept it. That’s when I look around and realize I’m sporting a hard-on in a roomful of teenage girls and their moms. I’ll be lucky if they don’t arrest me. “How do you think it’s going?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m sure the photos are wonderful,” she says. “You seem to know just how to get the girls to liven up . . .”
I stop listening. I could give two shits what they think, it’s not exactly my best work, but conversation will distract from my disheveled state. The students chew on ice in a corner. When one of them asked for snacks, they were denied. Anything other than vegetables might make them bloated, and carrots or celery would leave food in their teeth. This is the sort of thing my ex, Kendra, would do—hire a private photographer when the school provides a perfectly good one.
I return my attention to the mother as she speaks. She’s not my type with pearls coiled around her neck, and sty
led, crispy hair. She’s also several years my senior, but I catch myself noticing the line of her collarbone, the delicate bracelet on her wrist, the resemblance of her hair color to coffee. I don’t want to take measured photos of snotty girls in uniforms. I want to make people feel the way Halston just made me feel without us even being in the same room.
Caught.
Flustered.
Hot.
Guilty.
I haven’t been able to do that since Sadie. I’ve photographed other women for my portfolio, but they might as well be inanimate objects. Sadie continues to fuck me over a year later, stealing not only my future and my family from me, but my art too, the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do with my life. Now that Halston’s reminded me how it feels to be feverish and consumed by someone, I want to turn my lens on her.
My back pocket vibrates, and I get out my phone. It’s an unknown number, which could be new business. “Excuse me,” I interrupt the mom, handing her back the coffee. “I have to take this.”
Crossing the room for some privacy, I answer the call. “Finn Cohen.”
There’s silence on the other end. Fucking telemarketers. It always takes them a few seconds to pick up.
“Hi.”
I freeze. One word, and I know it’s Halston. All the things I want to say come bubbling to the surface. I’m not sure please don’t hang up is the right choice, so I go with the obvious response. “Hi.”
“I’m sorry, I still had your card. I shouldn’t have run out on you yesterday. It was a nice thing you did, but I freaked out.” She releases a long breath. “This is Halston, by the way. From Lait Noir? Or from the art gallery, I guess.”
Even though I believed the journal was hers all along, I’m relieved. I don’t know if I can take getting fucked over by fate again. I don’t want to convince myself she’s the one. I want to feel it in my gut, and my gut is telling me not to blow this. “I know who you are.”
“Right. I’m sorry I ran out, except . . . I’m not sure I’m the one who should apologize. You kind of stalked me, showing up at the gallery that way.”
“Yeah . . . about that.” I glance around to make sure none of the moms are nearby. Between untimely boners and tracking women, I could rack up some serious charges if I’m not careful. I step into the hallway. “The journal seemed valuable. I wanted you to have it back, that’s all.”
“It is. Valuable. I’ve tried to stop, but I can’t. I’ve even tried to get rid of them. When I lost it last week, it was . . . I couldn’t believe it. I felt so helpless, naked.”
I don’t know which of the questions running through my head I should start with.
What is she trying to stop? Why get rid of it? Them? There are others?
If the journal is so important to her, why deny ownership?
Did she say naked?
“Anyway,” she says. “Thank you for going through the trouble, and I can pay you for that, but I’d like it back.”
“I don’t want your money.” I scratch the scruff on my jaw. Maybe I should’ve taken care to shave this morning. “Where are you?”
“Work. Off Fourteenth. I can meet you after.”
“I’ll send you my address. I live by the coffee shop.”
“Should we meet there instead?”
“Nah. I have better coffee at my place.” I doubt that’s what she’s worried about, but I don’t want to be in yet another crowded place with her. In public, we’re strangers meeting briefly for a benign purpose. I need more of the intimacy I got from her words, even if it can’t come close to what I really want. “I have to get back to work,” I say, afraid she’ll protest, “but I’ll text when I’m done.” I hang up.
When I get back to my job, the moms don’t seem so bad. I have something to look forward to for the first time in a while—since Sadie. And even then, looking forward to Sadie came with a certain sickness in my gut. I never knew when I’d see her. If her husband would appear at my door instead. If the next words out of her mouth would intoxicate or crush. The affair had been exhilarating. Exciting. Stimulating. Everything my marriage wasn’t. At the time, I would never have described it as exhausting, but looking back, it almost seems to be the most appropriate of words.
Maybe, just maybe, it was all meant to lead me to Halston. If my instinct is right this time, if she’s the one I’ve been looking for, then the heartbreak, the struggle, the loss—it would be worth it.
6
Not much sends my heart racing like a knock at my door. It’s a conditioned response to last November, when the person at the door could’ve been my mistress, her husband, or my wife.
Kendra packed up our house in Connecticut while I got our new apartment here in Gramercy Park ready for her and Marissa. Twice, she came into the city to surprise me, but it only took one fuck-up from me for her to jump to conclusions. She’d accused me of infidelity enough times over our marriage, but the difference was, when she found Sadie’s coat in the apartment, that time she was right.
When Halston knocks, I’m instantly tense, even knowing who’s on the other side of the door . . . or maybe that knowledge makes it worse. She’s early, but I’m ready for her.
She stands on my doorstep, holding her purse in front of her, white-knuckling it with both hands. “I’ve always loved this neighborhood,” she says.
“Don’t you live here?”
“No.” She gives me a look. “How would you know where I live?”
“Something you said.” She’d mentioned Lait Noir was convenient, but really, I’m just looking for more information. I step aside. “Come in.”
She cranes her neck, looking around. There isn’t anything to see in the enclosed entryway. “Is that coffee I smell?” she asks.
“I just put on a pot.”
She won’t come in for me, but apparently she will for coffee. Fine. “Can I take your coat?”
She shrugs out of it. Like an old habit, I check her outfit, trying to find a piece of the puzzle I’m creating in my mind. A picture of who she really is. Her top is white but the material is thick enough to hide her bra. With her hair down, her tattoo is hidden. She’s wearing black pants and those leather boots again that come up to her knees.
“I told a friend, a man, I’d be here.”
I blink from her legs to her face. I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that she needed to tell someone where she is. And to let me know about it. “Do I scare you?”
“No,” she says quickly. “This just isn’t something I’d normally do. Go to a stranger’s apartment by myself.”
I turn and lead her into the living room. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?”
She hesitates so long that I glance back at her. “Any number of things,” she says softly.
I’ve seen through her eyes. Maybe if I hadn’t peeked inside her mind, I might not understand. I do, though. She lives in vivid fantasies of love, sex, pain, need. Of course, a stranger would slip right into any role she wants—a hero to save her, a villain to be terrorized by. They both make for good fiction. “Don’t worry. You’re safe with me.”
She looks at the only things in the room—the big screen TV, a neutral-colored couch and love seat, an antique wooden coffee table. Books stacked on the window ledge above a vintage record player. My sneakers by the kitchen doorframe. My camera bag on the coffee table. That’s all of it.
She touches her neck. It’s possible I’ve made it too warm in here. “How long have you lived here?” she asks.
“Why not your boyfriend?”
She whips her gaze back to me. “What?”
“You said you told a male friend you were here. Why not your boyfriend?”
She swallows. I’d like to feel her skin on mine, the delicate ripple of her throat against my palm. She crosses her arms lightly, as if she needs something to do with her hands.
She looks so uncomfortable, I let her off the hook. “I’ll get the coffee,” I say, going into the kitchen. “I moved in last Novembe
r.”
“You don’t have much furniture.”
I pour coffee from the pot into a mug, comforted by the black hole it creates. “I’m in the process of replacing it.”
“Bed bugs?”
“What?”
“Is that why you had to get rid of your furniture?”
“Oh.” Gross, but I’m not sure if the truth is worse. When I’d rented this apartment, I’d already begun moving things in from our house in Connecticut when Kendra found out about the affair. She’d made me move it all back. Not that I’d been upset to say goodbye to the butt-ugly, green-velvet couch she’d bought without my input, or the kittens-with-babies photographs she’d insisted on hanging in my mature daughter’s room.
I guess I should be grateful I got to pick out my own shit for once, but I’ve never had an eye for interior decorating. I only buy what I need.
I can’t begin to think of how to explain all that to Halston without freaking her out. “Sure . . .” I say. “Bed bugs.”
I return to the living room with two steaming mugs. She takes one before I even offer it, lifting it to her lips.
“It’s hot,” I say. “You’ll burn—”
She sips and winces, but hums with appreciation. Her eyes are closed, yet I can’t take mine off her. I watch her like she’s the goddamn Mona Lisa come to life. I want her to hum into my mouth, to melt like that with my tongue between her legs. The way she writes, the way she moves—she’s got to be sensuality personified in bed.
My craving for her makes it hard to talk, and even more difficult to control myself. “You shouldn’t do that, by the way.”
She opens her eyes. “Do what?”
“Go to a stranger’s place alone. Drink from a cup without knowing what’s in it.”
Her lips part for an audible breath. “But you said—”
“You’re safe with me. Just don’t make it a habit.”
She holds the coffee to her chest, right above her breasts, as if I might try to take it back. “It’s good. Where’s it from?”
Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set Page 77
