“It sounds like someone who won’t mess with me,” I replied as I took a sip of my tea. I set it back on my desk and turned to my closet to find something to wear. I had already run product through my hair, content to let it air dry into soft waves down my back. It was just breakfast, after all.
Jane’s short black bob, which she had dyed with a bright red streak two nights ago, was currently standing up on one side. She snuggled further into my pillows. “Why is your bed so much more comfortable than mine? It’s the same shitty university-issued mattress. Also, I can’t believe you make your bed on a Sunday.”
I shrugged at her via the mirror in which I trying to decide between two different sweaters, holding each one up against my robe-covered body.
“I make my bed every morning,” I said. “It gives me a sense of accomplishment with which to start my day.”
“Freak,” Jane muttered. Her puffy eyes betrayed a long night; I hadn’t heard her come in last night at all, so I assumed it wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning.
“Which one of these do you like better?” I asked, turning around to compare the black slouchy turtleneck with a green cardigan.
“I like them both,” she said, “for sitting by the fire with a cup of cocoa and a needle-working project. You’re twenty-six, Skylar. Please tell me you own something that I couldn’t find in my grandmother’s closet.”
I blanched and hugged the sweaters to my frame. “Jeez, tell me how you really feel.”
“I don’t care if this guy somehow screwed up his circadian rhythms so that he thinks night is day and day is night. A date’s a date, Skylar, and those sweaters will make you look like a shut-in cat lady. A really young, cute cat lady, but still a cat lady.” She looked pointedly at my glasses, which I was currently wearing instead of contacts. “Are you going to wear those too?”
“You wear glasses every day!” I cried, throwing the black sweater at her.
She pulled it off her face and tossed it unceremoniously onto the end of the bed. “Yes, but I own about five different vintage frames, and they are part of my persona. I am the Asian Rivers Cuomo. The half-Korean pseudo-hipster. Every guy who asks me out probably does it because I wear them, as they are a critical part of my appeal. Yours are about as thick as a soda bottle, and you only wear them when your allergies are acting up. I know how much like to show off those emerald beauties.”
I stuck my tongue out and threw the other sweater at her, which she deflected neatly onto the black one at the end of the bed. She had good reflexes for someone who still had bedhead.
“Do you even want to go on this date at all, Sky?” she asked seriously, sitting up from pillows to look at me straight on.
I shrugged. “You pushed me at him. He’s nice. And cute. And not planning any manipulative grand overtures that require him to snoop through my desk and charter planes.” I pressed my lips together, suddenly determined to put my best foot forward. “Yes,” I said, this time with more emphasis. “Yes, I definitely want to go on this date.”
Jane studied me for a few seconds before heaving a big, fake sigh and standing up with her coffee. “God, you make me do everything for you,” she groaned. “Go put your contacts in, actually dry your hair, and I’ll find you something to wear.”
~
An hour later, I found myself sitting at a table at Graze, the newest hotspot in Cambridge. Upon walking in, Jared and I were quickly escorted to a seat at a massive farmhouse table along with several other patrons, and were given flour sack napkins and a menu of the week’s specials. The place was bright and raucous on the otherwise cloud gray day.
“You look really nice today, Skylar,” Jared said with a smile as he sat down across from me after we’d given the hostess our coats.
I nodded in thanks. Jane did right by me and had paired a long-sleeved, cream lace blouse over a pair of dark skinny jeans and black ankle boots. My hair was pulled back into a side chignon, a style that worked in tandem with the gold hoops dangling from my ears to highlight my eyes. The glasses were gone, and I’d touched up my face with a brush of mascara and some lip gloss.
“Daytime chic,” she pronounced after informing me that my ass didn’t quit in these jeans. After seeing Jared’s expression when I took off my parka, I decided she was right, although I wasn’t sure if I cared that he thought so too.
“This place is nice,” I said, looking around at the bright white interior, rustic tables, and the hanging plants that dangled from the ceiling. “It’s like spring in here. I feel like I’m in a greenhouse.”
Jared nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I’ve been wanting to try this place for a while. My folks said it was killer. It’s got a month’s wait for reservations, but they said we could probably get in for brunch. So, bingo, here we are!” He leaned over and set his hand briefly on top of mine. “I’m really glad I got to share it with you, Skylar.”
I fought the urge to take my hand back, and just smiled in response. Bingo? I could already hear Jane making Beaver Cleaver jokes in my head. Don’t be a bitch, Crosby, I told myself. Without waiting for a reply, Jared pulled his hand back and picked up his menu, and I did the same.
After much internal debate, I ordered the poached eggs over the spinach risotto, and Jared ordered a deconstructed crab cake with hollandaise sauce along with two Bloody Marys. The food was served in pretentiously small but tasty portions, and the date passed easily as we shared anecdotes and talked about school. Jared, I found out, had actually grown up in Manchester, and his family also had a house on Cape Cod. They were classic old New England denizens; his parents still lived in the eighteenth century house he had grown up in, and he had three direct descendants who were on the Mayflower. His father was serving his sixth term in Congress (which I’d already known) and his mother stayed at home. He had grown up with an older brother, a younger sister, and a dog named Quincy Adams.
“If you want an internship in D.C. this summer, I could probably set you up with an interview,” he said after a bite of his crab.
“That’s really nice of you, but I’m not really interested in politics,” I said. There was also the fact that his father was a libertarian, and I came from a family of staunch New York Democrats. “Thanks anyway.”
“So, what about you? What’s your family like? You’re from Brooklyn, right?”
Maybe it was the yuppie entitlement of the restaurant, or maybe it was the golden retriever named after a U.S. president, but suddenly I felt shy about revealing my family history. This guy was a nuclear family WASP to the nth degree, and I was an Irish-Jewish garbage collector’s daughter whose mother had abandoned her when she was a baby. I had never been ashamed of my background before, but I felt like a piece of foggy quartz being compared to a diamond.
“Ah, okay,” I said as I speared a bite of rice and egg. “I grew up in Flatbush—that’s a neighborhood in Brooklyn, close to Prospect Park. My dad works for the city and my mom’s an artist.”
I didn’t include the fact that I hardly knew her, and of course Jared latched onto her profession, which was, to types like him, charmingly bohemian.
“That’s so cool,” he said. “What kind of art?”
“Ah, installation, mostly.”
“Oh, like Jeff Koons?”
I gave a slow nod. “Yeah, sort of. I’d say her stuff is closer to Man Ray and Nancy Spero.”
“Oh.”
He blinked, and I could tell he had no idea who I was talking about. It didn’t really bother me. It was only from following my mom’s work online that I even knew who Nancy Spero was.
“I went to an exhibit on Andy Warhol once,” he offered weakly. “His stuff was pretty out there. Do you like it?”
I shrugged. “It’s my mom’s thing, not mine. I’m not really into art that much beyond the major stuff like Da Vinci and Michelangelo.”
Jared nodded in agreement and obvious relief. “Yeah, me too. Can’t argue with the Mona Lisa, can you?”
“No,” I said, holding back a
grimace. I actually hated the Mona Lisa, but I didn’t think he’d want to know that. “Have you seen it?”
“Oh yeah!” he said enthusiastically. He seemed grateful that I’d given him another familiar topic to discuss. “When I was traveling in Europe after college. Backpacking with some friends.”
He then launched into a story about the hostel where he stayed in Paris, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to answer any more questions about my family.
~
Jared walked me back across campus to my building, holding my hand loosely in the cloudy sunlight as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I only wished that I felt like it was a natural thing to be doing.
“I know I’m not saving the world or anything,” he was saying as he talked about the job he was planning to take at his grandfather’s firm next year. “But I don’t know if that’s the point any more. If we spend all our time trying to give away our hard earned dollar, it makes people who don’t have much lose the ability to work hard, don’t you think? In a way, I’m helping them more by helping myself, don’t you think?”
I murmured my assent, although I couldn’t disagree more. Jared was nice, but his ignorance of his own entitlement was become more irritating by the second. After two hours of listening to him talk, I was more than ready to escape to the quiet confines of my apartment. I was tired of dodging questions about myself, and I wanted to get out of these tights jeans and into something more comfortable. And talk to someone who didn’t make me feel like I had to censor myself.
“Skylar?”
I blinked when Jared interrupted my thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“I said, I had a really nice time,” he said.
“Oh!” I said. “Yeah, me too. Thanks for brunch. You didn’t have to pay, you know.”
“I didn’t mind,” he said. He reached up and pushed back a stray lock of brown hair that had fallen from his neat coif. His hand drifted down and he took my other hand in his and tugged me closer. I watched in abject fascination as he closed his eyes and leaned in, his lips in a half smile with the knowledge that he was going to kiss me and that I would like it. He was so expectant that I didn’t have the heart to avoid it. It wasn’t until his lips were actually pressed on mine in a chaste, closed-mouth kiss that I finally closed my eyes too.
It wasn’t the worst kiss in the world. But like so many times before, there was something missing. Or someone, my subconscious niggled. Someone blond. And tall. And with incredible blue eyes and soft, passionate lips. Someone who was definitely not kissing me now.
I counted the seconds until it was over. It took four.
After he pulled back, he smiled. “So, when can I see you again?”
“Well, I have classes and clinic all week,” I said, feeling shifty and noncommittal. Jared was a perfectly nice, handsome guy. This didn’t have to be that complicated. “I’m not sure.”
“Friday night work for you?” he pressed, gripping my hand just a bit tighter while he lingered.
I glanced down at his grip. I just wanted to get out of the cold. “Sure,” I said. “That should work.”
“I’ll call you,” he said, and leaned in for another peck on the cheek. “See you later, Skylar.”
“Okay,” I said, and turned to unlock the door to my building as he walked down the street towards campus.
~
Once back at home, I changed into an infinitely more comfortable outfit of stretchy black pants and a gray flannel shirt and settled on the couch to finish reading for the weekend. After working steadily through the afternoon, I found myself with a rare evening free after finishing with all of the week’s reading early. Jane was out with a study group at the library until late, and I found myself ambling about the apartment, uncharacteristically bored and without anything left to distract me from the one thing—or person, really—I had been trying not to think about. No matter what distraction I tried over the last few days—getting ahead in my classes, working additional hours at the clinic, swimming extra laps at the pool—I had not been able to get Kieran’s description of Brandon out of my head.
I hardly knew him. That was the reality. Maybe his grand and at times inappropriate gestures made sense in light of Kieran’s revelations. A poor kid from the South side who’d been neglected and abused by his drug-addicted parents. You didn’t need to be a psychologist to guess there would be some attachment issues there. No wonder he had tried so hard. People like that usually had a hard time accepting that others could like them just for who they were. Sometimes it turned the person into a manipulative, untrusting shit, but a lot of times it just came out with insecure actions that didn’t really fit the social circumstance. So which one was Brandon’s?
The thought of all of our interactions together felt completely disorienting. We were doing everything backwards. I had spent the night at his house before I’d barely known his first name. He’s treated me like an employee after I’d already quit working for him. We’d…well, he had done things to me most people reserved for at least after they’d actually gone on a date together. None of it made any fucking sense. The more I thought about all of it, the more the world around me seemed to swim.
It was only nine-thirty. I contemplated going for a walk around Harvard Square, but a cold, heavy rain was falling outside, washing away the last of the snow from the weeks before and drenching Boston in deep currents that flooded the streets. I sighed. It had been a hard winter so far, and was showing no signs of letting up any time soon.
I shuffled to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea before sliding on my slippers and gray sweater over a t-shirt and yoga pants. I had taken out my contacts and snagged my glasses off my nightstand before pulling some sheet music from the drawer underneath it. The building had a piano in a practice room in the basement, where I liked to play sometimes when I had a spare moment or two. I hadn’t practiced in months, and knew I’d feel a bit clumsy on the keys. But if music couldn’t distract me from what was going through my mind, nothing could.
~
My dad, of course, was my first teacher on the piano, but I started taking real lessons from one of our neighbors when I was about five. Somewhat ironically, it was my obvious talent that made my musical education the only thing about my upbringing my mother had interest in consistently, whether she was actively a part of my life or not. As soon as it was determined that I had some promise as a pianist, her money secured the best instructors in New York, and Bubbe had dutifully schlepped me in and out of Manhattan twice a week until I was old enough to take the train myself. My ear for precision was applied toward classical training, and it was enough to earn me invitations to multiple conservatories when I graduated high school.
Unlike my dad, however, music for me was a purely personal endeavor. I had no innate desire to perform, no willingness to make my life as a starving (or trust-funded, as my mom offered to bankroll me) artist. I wanted to earn my own money, and I wanted to make my own way in the world.
Aside from that, artist-types bothered me. Through my dad, I had met one too many shiftless musicians, and their narcissistic relationships with “my music” irked me to no end. It was their justification for leaving wives, children, jobs, and numerous other responsibilities behind. I thanked my lucky stars every day of my life that despite his complete and utter devotion to music, my dad, no matter his weaknesses, was the kind of man who was always there. There were a lot of other piano players who wouldn’t have stuck around.
Much like, of course, my mother. Janette Chambers was the definition of the flaky artist, although she had never had to forsake her comfort in favor of her art. Despite an Upper East Side inheritance that gave her every comfort in life, Janette still managed to toss off the confines of family in order to discover herself at art school. The fact that she, just like all of those other musical bums, deserted her family not once but multiple times in favor of her “art” just added fuel to my desire to be nothing like her.
However, since I did end up swallowing my pride enough to let her pay for college and save my dad a lot of debt, NYU proved to be a good compromise when I decided to study both music and business. In the end, I was grateful for the opportunity to learn from such amazing instructors. Though I only performed when I absolutely had to (or with my dad), the piano, with its mix of discipline and sublime beauty, would always offer solace no matter what I was doing.
The piano in the basement of my building wasn’t tuned, and probably hadn’t been dusted in years. But there was no one in the basement lounge at this time on a Sunday, and giving me the freedom to lose myself for a bit. I pulled out one of the pieces of music I had brought and set it on the stand. After running through a few brief scales to warm up my fingers, I took a breath and began.
I played for more than two solid hours. I played old pieces and mustered my way through a few new ones. I played until my fingers were sore from being so out of shape, and I played until the tendons in my hands ached from the strain of stretching over the keys. I played and played and played, until finally, I looked at my watch and realized it was close to midnight.
My head was clear for the first time in weeks. I had to make more time for this. I had to.
With a quiet, exhausted sigh of contentment, I pushed back from the piano and collected my music from the stand. It wasn’t until I turned around to make my way back through the lounge that I realized I had company, and probably had for a long time.
My jaw dropped as I beheld his lanky figure, long legs splayed in front of him as his head leaned against the wall and both arms stretched across the back of the sofa. A long, deep snore erupted from his lips. Brandon Sterling was sound asleep in my basement.
~
Chapter 17
He was adorable. He couldn’t help it. Brandon’s head was tipped backward and his mouth was wide open as he slept, dark blond hair curling around his ruddy features and the tiny lines around his eyes erased in his state of complete relaxation. He was dressed comfortably in a maroon Henley shirt that hugged his chest and biceps perfectly, and a pair of dark jeans slouched around scuffed brown boots. A scarf, hat, and goose-down parka had slipped to the floor by his feet. Were it not for the obviously expensive watch on his wrist, he might have actually fit in with the students.
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 17
