by Piper Lennox
By contrast, sitting out here in the early sunshine with Ewan, surrounded by dogs romping and people chatting, feels like a pretty good silver lining.
“You were here yesterday, weren’t you?”
“For a little while, yeah.”
“I saw you. I was over by that corner, watching you sketch. But I was...I don’t know, too nervous to say hi, I guess.”
“Nervous? Why?”
“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy. Or creepy. Probably both.”
“I’ve lived in New York a while, now. The bar is set higher than you might think.”
Laughing with the corner of his lip caught in his teeth, Ewan scoots closer to me on the bench. I like the way he drapes his arm over the back, getting closer to me without feeling like he’s got to make contact.
“You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. And you look...so interesting. In a good way. I was dying to come and talk to you, but you left before I worked up the courage to do it.”
My blush radiates off me. “Oh...thank you.”
Getting hit on isn’t something I’m used to. It happens, but guys tend to go for Georgia more. Assuming it’s not the whole “twin thing” that lures them in to begin with, which we can now sniff out from a mile away, they like her classically-pretty look more, I guess. That, and her personality just commands attention.
Briefly, I wonder if we’d be having this conversation if Georgia were here. I decide it’s not a thought I want to entertain.
Ewan is cute: blue eyes, dark hair, and that accent I still can’t place. He obviously likes dogs, and has just enough shyness to ensure he’s not at all arrogant.
But not so shy he’s paralyzed from making the first move…like now, when he puts his hand over mine on the bench to lean closer to my sketchbook.
“You’re really talented,” he says, admiring the quick motion drawings I did while I was here yesterday. Most were of Bowie, who dominated the ramp nearby, but I’d found my attention drawn to a black poodle and French bulldog, too.
I thank Ewan and, without thinking, ask if I can sketch him.
He draws back, surprised, but doesn’t remove his hand from mine until I reach for my pencil case. “If you want to.”
“I do.” A lot. The soft angles of his face are pleasing. The pointed eyeteeth he flashes when he smiles are visually interesting.
And, deep down, I like the idea of capturing him and this moment somehow, in a way a picture just couldn’t do.
“Do I have to hold still?”
“No, you can move. Just let me get the basic lines down, first.” I scratch out the shapes of his body and face, then practice some gestures. “I like doing this,” I tell him, angling the page his way, “before I really get started, so I remember the essence. That’s what I really like to draw. Not a direct copy of real-life, like a photograph, but something that makes the person look how I see them.”
“How do you see me?”
I glance up and bite my smile. “Easygoing. Charming, but not entirely aware of it. Where are you from, by the way?”
“New Zealand, originally. I was raised in London for a while, then Ireland and Morocco before we came here. My dad traveled for work a lot.”
That explains the accent, I think. I decide to pay extra attention to his mouth in my sketch, so I’ll remember the way he talks next time I see the drawing.
“Do you sketch a lot of people?”
“Not full portraits, usually. People move so fast around here. And you’d be surprised how offended some can get, when they notice you’re drawing them.” I flip to the sketch I did a few days ago, of the boy’s shoes on the subway. “I mostly just draw the parts I find most interesting.”
Ewan shifts on the bench, pulling his ankle over his knee. “Guess that means you find all of me interesting, then.”
My face gets warm again. I study his eyeteeth and pretend it’s just for the sketch. “I guess so.”
“Hello?”
The apartment is empty when I return with Bowie. I set my bag and Wes’s coffee on the counter, unclip the dog, and refill his water dish on the floor of the kitchen. He sloppily empties it in about five minutes.
After another refill, I call out again; no answer, but I hear the shower running.
While I search for a dry cleaner’s receipt, hoping I can finish today’s “chores” as fast as possible, I glance at my sketchbook and tell myself not to look. Again.
I look.
The portrait of Ewan is some of my best work. I pretend this is why I keep flipping to it and smiling—not the fact his face puts a giddy, fluttery feeling in my gut, or that he wrote his phone number in the top right.
We had so much fun talking, I didn’t even notice the time until Wes texted me a question mark. I was over fifteen minutes late bringing the dog back. And fetching coffee.
“Don’t go,” Ewan pleaded, sighing with a smile when I got up, anyway.
“I have to. I’m sorry. My...boss,” I said, feeling my teeth grate together, “is a huge jerk.”
“Understood. But before you go....”
That’s when he’d written his number on the drawing, flipping my pencil into my bag like he’d practiced it a hundred times.
“Just promise me this won’t be the last time I see you.”
My heart felt weightless, that schoolgirl crush feeling, when I told him, “I promise.”
For the first time, I was almost glad that stupid email ended up in the wrong hands.
Now, while I trace the digits of his number and wonder if it’s too soon to text him, my gaze trips to the end of the counter.
Wes left his phone.
My heart no longer feels weightless. It’s a lead bar rattling around my ribcage, the closer my hand gets.
He’s got it protected with a pin. I try the last four of his phone number: wrong.
The building’s street address: wrong.
I set it down. I can’t do this.
Wes is a jerk, and what he’s doing to me is pretty horrible. But even he deserves privacy.
Does he?
It’s not like I’d be snooping—just deleting the email he should never have gotten to begin with.
I’m not invading his privacy. Just reclaiming mine.
I pick up the phone again.
My thumbs hover over the keypad while I pace and listen, through the thunder of my own pulse, for the shower. It’s still running. I’ve got time.
Think.
His birthday?
Much as I wish I didn’t know the date offhand, I do. As I type the digits, I realize it’s soon. This weekend, in fact. I wonder if he’ll do anything special.
I wonder why the fact he probably won’t makes me kind of sad for him.
The asterisks fill the screen. I hit Enter.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Nine
Clara jumps like I just whipped her with my towel. My phone hits the counter and slides.
“Jesus, you scared me.”
“Bet I did.” I jerk my head at the phone. “Trying to hack my shit?”
“No, I just....” Her hand presses to her heart. I think it’s just because she’s still startled, until I see the shame in her face.
“Knew that halo of yours was fake.” I snatch the phone off the counter and glance at it. Surprisingly, she got it unlocked.
Okay, so maybe Van was right about my birthday being a stupid password. Too easy for people to guess.
But I find myself wondering if Clara had to look up that fact...or if she already knew it.
“Halo?” she asks after a beat. Her voice is still shaken.
“Yeah.” I motion up and down her body with the phone. “All innocent and sweet. The quiet one. But you’re a thief.”
“I’m not—” Her voice rises to the ceiling, but she checks herself. “I’m not a thief. I just wanted to....”
“Delete the email?” When she nods, I cluck my tongue and purposely let my towel go a little slack. She
can’t see anything, but I like how flustered it gets her. Screw being nice. “Not what we agreed to, princess.”
I expect some screaming or arguing, some kind of fit, but she just nods.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” This is the biggest damn loop she could throw me for.
Yeah, I don’t want her snooping through my things, on principle—but her reason is solid. I’d do the same thing, and I definitely wouldn’t apologize for it.
She really is a better person than I am.
But, let’s be honest—it’s not like I needed proof of that.
“We agreed to two months, so...so I’m gonna do two months.” Her hands fall to her sides with a resolute sigh.
Huh. Graceful, even in defeat.
“Where’s the dry cleaning info? You know, the ticket thing to go pick it up?” Glancing at her watch—some ridiculous pastel pink abomination, most likely a gift from a sponsor (God, I hope she didn’t actually spend money on that)—she adds, “I need to leave right after that, though.”
“Uh,” I laugh, “I don’t think so. Seems like you need to be punished for this little stunt before I let you go anywhere.”
The shame of getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar flips to anger. “Punished? Let me?”
“Here’s the dry cleaning stub.” I lift the coffee pot and slide the paper her way. “It’s a couple blocks east. I paid when I dropped the stuff off, so don’t let them double-charge you.”
Clara’s eyes dance from the towel, which I purposely shift again, to my face. She’s fuming. “Then?”
“Then,” I smile, ambling backward to the hall, “you’re going to clean my air vents.”
“Air vents,” she repeats flatly, like the fuse of her anger just burned down into the shell. Explosion in three...two....
“Yep. With a toothbrush.”
...one.
“Hold. The fuck. On.” She tails me. Gently, I shut the door in her face; she slaps it with her palm until it slams open.
I drop my towel.
Immediately, she spins away—then her brain registers what she actually saw. I was wearing boxers the entire time.
“I’m not cleaning your air vents, Durham,” she seethes. “You said dry cleaning was it for today.”
I hold up my phone. “Things change.”
Her chest shudders, she’s breathing so fast and hard. Try as I might, I can’t stop thinking about her back arching on that chaise in the cabana, her tits shaking with every breath she couldn’t catch.
Quickly, I jump into my jeans and zip them up.
“Why?”
“The vents are filthy. They haven’t been cleaned since I moved in.”
“No.” Her voice cracks.
It takes the smile right off my face.
“Why,” she says again, blinking back the water on her lashes, “are you doing this to me?”
Her fists clench by her sides, and I see her knees unlock, weight shifting from one leg to the other like she’d stomp her foot if it were still acceptable in our twenties.
“You have my deepest, darkest secrets, Durham. All of them. Imagine how that feels. Okay? For just one fucking second...think about how terrifying this is. Knowing every last thing you’d never want the rest of the world to find out, is sitting with your enemy.”
My eyes fall to my open T-shirt drawer. I’ve looked at it at least ten times since yesterday. She arranged it so well, I almost hate taking anything out.
“Enemy?” I grab a Saosin shirt and pull it on, punching my way through the sleeves. “How can I be your enemy when we aren’t even in the same arena?”
“Anyone can be your enemy.” Hesitating, as though my finger’s poised over a button that could launch all her secrets worldwide in two seconds, she steps closer.
“Someone you can’t trust,” she says. “Someone who despises you, who...who you know just wants to see you miserable. Imagine how it feels, knowing they now have the perfect means to do just that.”
Slowly, I shut the drawer and make myself look her in the eye.
“I don’t want to see you miserable, Hurley.”
“You obviously do, or I wouldn’t even be here.” She wipes the tears away with her palms. Her eyeliner today is deep blue, now ringing her eyes like a trail of ballpoint ink. “Answer my question. How would you feel in my situation? Huh? Knowing all your secrets could get exposed, just like that?”
My laugh is involuntary. And it doesn’t sound like a laugh, so much as a mule getting kicked by a bigger mule.
“Been there, done that.” There were entire months I didn’t go to the grocery store myself, just so I didn’t have to see those tabloids with my photos and name smeared across them. Days I contemplated throwing my television off a bridge, if it would finally get the entertainment networks out of my ear.
Clara sniffs, nodding like she can hear my thoughts.
More likely: she just knows my story already, because everyone who knows my name knows the rest.
At least, they think they do.
“Exactly,” she whispers. “So what you’re doing to me?” She shakes her head, eyes never leaving mine. “It’s a hundred times worse than if someone else were doing it.”
My face feels warm, but I know she can’t tell. It’s a gift—a stone face and unflinching posture. No one can ever know what I’m feeling unless I bother showing it. If there’s a name for it, it’s got to be the exact opposite of whatever she’s got, because her entire heart is perpetually on her sleeve.
Part of me wishes we could trade some to each other. Maybe it would do us good.
“Just business. Don’t take things so personally.” I nod to the dry cleaner’s stub clenched in her fist. “You should go. Then come back, clean the vents...and that’s it for the day. You’ll be free as a bird.”
Clara swallows again. “Until tomorrow.”
“Chin up: you’ll get a nice break when I go to the Hamptons—”
“Lucky me.”
“—during which I hope you can cut this martyrdom shit out. You’re not in a prison cell. Prisoners don’t get to go home at night.”
I kind of hate that you go home at night.
“That’s it?” She steps too close again. I back away and screw with my watch band. “Dry cleaning, vents, and then I’m done. You promise?”
“Promise. Done.” I glance at her. “Until tomorrow.”
The breath she exhales crackles up every last bone in my back.
“Fine,” she says. The hushed swish of her shoes trails out of my bedroom.
I don’t move until I hear her purse jingling, and my front door shutting behind her.
Ten
I can’t believe I cried in front of him.
Sadly, it’s not the first time. There was the lobby of the resort, the morning after the costume party. Georgia was hungover, sitting with her head on her knees in one of the wicker armchairs by the water feature, so I told her to rest while I turned in our keycards.
The line at the check-in desk was absurdly long. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones in need of a late checkout. The stench of alcohol was in everyone’s pores and on their tongues as they chatted.
It made me lightheaded, but not nauseous.
Not until I turned at the sound of another vlogger calling my name from the elevators to say goodbye…and bumped into Wes and his sister.
Of course, I only literally bumped into him.
“Shit. Uh...sorry.” I bent down to help him gather everything back into the suitcase he’d had halfway unzipped, balancing it against his leg as he searched for something and bickered with his sister about where she’d put it.
“See?” she told him, kneeling to grab a wire that skittered across the floor. “You packed the charger, not me. Told you.”
Wes wasn’t listening to her.
He was staring at me.
And I was staring at the mask in my hands, buried under the T-shirts and baggies of toiletries un
til I’d knocked it all loose.
“It was you?” My whisper tasted like turned milk. I wanted to bolt and get sick in the nearest potted plant, but my entire body felt frozen. Right down to the chill in my veins when he took the mask back.
“Told you you wouldn’t want to know,” he said.
Tears hit my eyes faster than the bile hit my throat. I stalked to the front of the line, slapped our keycards down, and ignored everyone yelling at me for cutting ahead while the confused clerk rushed through the checkout process.
I got sick as soon as we were outside, waiting for our cab in the shaded drop-off loop. Georgia rubbed my back and asked if I was all right; she hadn’t seen me drink much, the night before.
She hadn’t seen me much at all.
As we got in the cab, I saw him step outside and heft his bag under one arm, then his sister’s luggage underneath the other. She was showing him pictures on her phone and talking a mile a minute, but he wasn’t paying her one ounce of attention.
He was watching me. His eyes followed our cab all the way to the road.
There was also the day we met, though I take comfort knowing he doesn’t remember that.
“Durham?”
I snap to the present. The guy behind the counter holds up a garment bag and points to the tag around the hanger. W. Durham.
“Yeah, that’s it. Oh...uh, here.” I slide him the ticket, which he doesn’t bother checking.
At the corner, before I turn onto the street of his apartment, I shift the bag off my shoulder and make sure it’s not dragging. It would be nice if I didn’t care whether or not this thing picked up half of New York on its cuffs, but I do. Blackmailed or not, I take pride in my work.
As soon as I smooth the plastic, though, I recognize the fabric inside.
It’s his suit.
Don’t. I’m not crying in front of him again, or because of him. Not twice in one day.
Not ever again, if I can help it.
