Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures)

by Talia Quinn

  “What you need is a nap.”

  “Yeah. I’ll go home and crash. Get out of your way.”

  “What do you think I’m planning to do today that’s so important you have to leave?” He picked up the dishes and took them to the sink.

  “Businessman stuff. Big fancy entrepreneur stuff. Or maybe you’ll call that hot chick from high school if she’s still in town.”

  “Should I? Do you want to meet her?”

  I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “We’re friends. You won’t sleep with me. You should get laid.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to simply get laid. Maybe I want more.”

  “You’re the marrying kind, aren’t you? Not fling material. Too bad. You don’t know better. It’s in your DNA.”

  He did something that surprised me then. He came over and kissed my forehead. “It’s in yours too, if you’d only stop fighting it.” He took me by the hand and tugged me to a standing position. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “Do you?” I raised my eyebrows suggestively.

  He shook his head at me. “I want to hire you.”

  “Didn’t we do that already?” I leaned against him. Tired. So. Very. Tired. But if he wanted me, I’d drink more coffee and make a go of it. I’d do that for him. And for me, admittedly. He was great in bed, after all. And oh boy, I was delirious with fatigue.

  “No, to remodel my apartment. To supervise the work. Draw up the plans. A side project. We can clear it with your boss, if you like.”

  “Seriously?” I pulled back to look at him.

  “I like your ideas. And maybe I like the idea of having you around more.” He tucked me firmly into his side and walked me to the bedroom. “First, though, you need to sleep. I’ll stay fully clothed, I promise.”

  “No sex?”

  “No sex.”

  “Bummer.” But I went with him.

  He made a surprisingly good bolster. He leaned back against the headboard, paging through his tablet computer while I curled up under that lovely comforter. Listening to his breathing, feeling the radiant warmth of his body, I fell asleep and slept soundly for the first time in ages. If this was friendship, I could live with that.

  ~*~

  When I woke up, I was alone in the big bed. Cold winter sunlight bathed the room in shades of bluish white. I should get up. Should thank Dylan and head home. Instead, I snuggled deeper under the comforter and fell into a light doze.

  The door opened, and Dylan came in with a tray of food. An extravagant tray, with pâté and strawberries and stinky cheese. I sat up. This was worth waking up for.

  He set the tray on the bed and sat next to me. “I thought you might be hungry.” He picked up a strawberry and bit into it. “Okay, I confess, I was hungry and thought it would be rude to eat alone.” He grinned at me and picked up another strawberry, proffering it.

  I took a bite, savoring the juicy tartness. “Mmm.” I sliced off a piece of pâté and slathered it on a cracker. “You’re spoiling me. How can I go back to my mundane apartment with my psych-grad-student call-girl roommate after this?”

  “I’m a bad influence.” His dimples popped. Such a delicious smile.

  Something had shifted between us yet again. I leaned across the tray and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, then pulled away, embarrassed. “Uh, was that okay? Friends kiss each other, don’t they?”

  His mouth twitched. “Not my friends. We play racquetball.”

  We ate and flirted until the tray was nothing but crumbs and balled-up napkins, then Dylan set it aside and flicked on the TV, leaning back against the headboard to watch. I should go. I should get up, put my shoes on, and leave.

  I snuggled against his warmth. He smelled like clean laundry and clean skin. My heart felt as full as my stomach. I felt warm and comfortable and like I belonged. Like I fit. I sighed and said the first thing that popped into my head, entirely uncensored. “I love you.”

  He stiffened.

  Panic flooded my body, sharp and painful. I sprang away from him. “I mean, I love this. This is awesome. You’ve been great, a real friend, and I appreciate it.”

  I bolted into the living room. The words, those words. Dylan had frozen, no response, and oh God, I couldn’t— Love was—I couldn’t go there. Couldn’t mean it. The churning in my stomach said but you did, you meant it. My head pounded, my chest hurt. I couldn’t think straight. I had to go. Right now.

  My stuff. Where was my stuff?

  I grabbed a pair of jeans out of my suitcase, zipped it shut, shoved my feet into my shoes, grabbed my coat…

  Dylan came out of the bedroom. “Do you mean it?”

  I shrugged my coat on. “Sure, I meant it. I love everything you’ve done for me.”

  “Samantha.”

  “I overslept. I have to get going. Get ready for work tomorrow. I’ve got a list of chores a mile long. Thanks for everything, you’re a good friend, see you around.”

  And I fled, my heart pounding like the bass line at a rave, a pure shot of fear racing through me.

  Love him? Had I said that? Did I mean it? Could I mean it?

  Chapter Fourteen

  I snagged a seat on the subway despite the Sunday crowd heading downtown. My unkempt hair and wild-eyed expression probably made people wary. Give the crazy lady a seat so she doesn’t fall apart and smash into us.

  I love you.

  The cadence in my head, those three words over and over, acted as a counterpoint to the grind and rush of the subway through the tunnel.

  My mother, crying for a year nonstop. Gramps, stone silent in the wake of her death.

  The voice in my head was Dylan’s. It’s who you are, deep down.

  The voice in my head was mine, over and over. I love you I love you I love you.

  I stumbled off the B, up the steps and back down, changing platforms. Changing trains. Changing my life story. Heading where?

  An E was waiting, thankfully. No seat this time. I hugged the pole tight. Images flashed through my brain like a slide show of photographs I couldn’t block out. And they were all of the same man.

  Dylan, the first time I saw him, toweling himself dry after a shower. That dark hungry gaze that I now knew was part pain, part yearning for something better. Something mutual and real.

  Dylan, after the first time we’d made love, because that was what it was even then. When I’d hung up on Persephone and focused entirely on him. His look of surprised revelation, of openness and delight.

  Dylan when he’d stopped at my desk, the moment he found out that Saffron was Samantha, his shock scaldingly potent. And yet he didn’t tear me to shreds in front of my boss, didn’t make me feel small and stupid. Instead, he showed me with his body how much I meant to him. Showed me with his passion. I just couldn’t see it. Not then.

  The burly guy next to me started singing. Random words, blurted aloud. Singing along to words only he could hear. “Oh baby,” and then silence. “I miss you like a gunshot wound, yeah, baby,” and then he quieted again, nodding to the beat emanating from his tiny white earbuds.

  Miss you like a gunshot wound.

  Yesterday at the funeral, Dylan was the one I’d called. The only one I’d wanted to hear from.

  I bowed my head so far down it almost hit my knees. Beside me, Singing Guy rapped, “Baby, you’re my heart on a string,” which didn’t even make sense, but it still resonated in my clenched gut.

  Across from me, a tiny kid stood on the long blue bench, peering out the window. Her braids tumbled past her hoodie. Her mother put her hand out to prevent her daughter from falling, though the woman never looked up from her book. She sensed the need and reacted.

  A visceral memory: my mother buckling me into a car seat. Handing me a candy bar, half-unwrapped. Taking care of me.

  By the next pole, a teenage boy with scruff that was trying too hard to be a goatee chatted up a pretty girl who swung her school backpack by one shoulder strap. She smiled shyly up at him, her heart in her eyes.<
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  My heart on a string. My heart as a pull toy. Dylan had my heart, dammit. But I’d walked away from him so many times now, he’d be an idiot to believe me. And I’d walked away this morning—no, I’d run away, I’d fled, I’d bolted like he was about to devour me, engulf me, demolish me, and—

  The train lurched to a halt, and the doors slid open. Greenpoint Avenue. My stop.

  I walked off the train and headed down the platform, pulling my heart—or rather, my rolling suitcase. When I emerged from the station, I found myself among the bodegas and dry cleaners and little Polish bakeries of central Greenpoint. Home had never looked so dreary.

  At some point, I must have started to cry, but I didn’t know it until I tasted the salt on my lips. I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand and kept going. Down the street, turn right, down the next block, cross the street, keep going. No longer numb. My heart on a string. My love floating in the East River, the gulf between us.

  Dylan had rebuffed my kiss. He’d stiffened when I said the words. He might be the marrying kind, but would he trust his heart to me? Could he trust me?

  And what then, if he did?

  My mother, looking at my father like he was the center of her universe. My mother the zombie after his death.

  That wasn’t me. Couldn’t be me.

  Panic clogged my throat. I gasped, stuttered in my stride. Walking down the street, breathing hard, pulling the damned suitcase behind me. The box of memories clutched to my chest. The box of proof. Love enveloped you. Love blessed you and comforted you and thrilled you and gave you a sense of belonging and rightness until love dropped dead of a heart attack and killed all that was strong in you.

  But the thought of never seeing Dylan again, of walking away from him for real this time, it felt worse. Like a hole in my gut. Like a bottomless pit. Love you like a gunshot wound.

  It was too late. I was doomed. I loved him.

  I was crying so hard I couldn’t see.

  By the time I got to the narrow apartment building, I was drooping, looking down at the sidewalk, clutching the cardboard box and dragging the suitcase. A wanderer, a waif, a wreck, dripping tears down my chin.

  Which is how it happened. I walked into a human wall where the front stoop should have been.

  Dylan stood there, in my doorway. My doorway. Here. In Greenpoint.

  Under an elegant wool coat, he still wore the sweatpants he’d had on when I left his apartment an hour ago.

  “You’re crying.” He took the box from me and set it down on the ground. “Why?”

  Because I love you. Because it hurts.

  He brushed the wetness from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Because of me?”

  I nodded. “If I let myself care about you…” I swallowed, tasting salt.

  His fingers stilled, touching my cheeks and chin. Framing my face. “Do you?”

  “So much. Too much.” I shook my head, a sharp shake, dislodging his fingers. “But if I let you in and you leave me, I don’t know how I’ll—”

  He put his finger over my mouth, gently shushing me. “First of all, I won’t leave.”

  I brushed his fingers aside. “You can’t promise that. You can’t know.”

  “I can. I do. I’ve known for seven months. You shook me out of my self-pity and helped me remember how to relish life. Being with you was a revelation.”

  I almost said that’s sex, but he stopped me.

  “It wasn’t the striptease or the sex, though they were both…well…” His eyes tilted up, his mouth twitched. The warmth in his expression thawed places inside me I didn’t know were so cold before. “But mostly it was you. The way you sauntered into my living room and took over, even though it was obvious you were nervous as hell. The way you revealed something of your own pain to me that night even though you didn’t have to. Because you knew I needed to feel less alone.”

  He smiled fully now, and it was beautiful the way it lit his face. “And then there’s the way you make me feel every time I see you walk into a room. Like the world is full of intriguing possibility. You make me feel like you and I are equally matched, in bed and out, sparring or comforting each other. Samantha Saffron Lilly of the three first names, I will never grow bored of you. I will never want to leave you. I’m sure of this.” He kissed me. On the nose.

  “I love you too. So much it hurts.” I leaned into him, my head against his chest, my cheek against the scratchy wool of his coat. “I didn’t know it could feel like this. Now I know what my parents—” I broke off. Pulled away. Sat on the stoop, ignoring the cold against my butt.

  Dylan sat too. “I’m not going to die, you know.”

  “You will, though. Someday you will.” The words struggled to get past the tightness in my throat.

  “And if I do, you’ll survive. Because you’re not your mother. You’re stronger than her.”

  I blinked back a rush of heat behind my eyes, more tears on their way. “What if I’m not?”

  “You are. Trust me. Anyone who built that sturdy a defense system? Is an amazingly strong woman.”

  The way he looked at me, so tender, so knowing—I did the only thing I could.

  I kissed him, tasting the salt from my tears and the chill on both our lips along with a promise of passion, tonight and every night. Without hesitating for a single moment, he kissed me back, wrapping his arms around me. I squeezed him tight. So close. My heart on a string. My heart pounding against his. My heart wide open.

  Above us, I heard a catcall. “It’s about time, you two! But come up! Kiss on the couch. It’s warmer.”

  I broke away from Dylan long enough to wave up at my roommate.

  Dylan murmured against my hair, “She’s right, you know.”

  “My bedroom is a mess. The apartment is grad-student casual. I can’t—”

  “Do you think I care?”

  I smiled. “I guess not.”

  And I let him inside.

  Epilogue

  “Is that the last of them?” I closed the front door as Dylan’s work buddy and his date clattered down the hall toward the elevator, and surveyed the messy aftermath. It had been a great party, but I was ready for something different. I walked up behind Dylan, who was busy cleaning up paper plates and plastic cups, and slipped my hands into his jeans. He startled, as if he’d forgotten he now lived with someone else—well, if lived with meant had just started and now meant right this minute. Then he relaxed and sighed against me. “I thought they’d never leave.”

  “Whose idea was this party, anyway?”

  He turned and gave me a look brimming with amusement and meaning. “As I recall, I thought we should celebrate moving back in by throwing a raucous party of two. Naked. Right here.” He kissed me and slid his hands up under my silky party shirt.

  I hummed my pleasure against his chest. “Why didn’t you veto me, then?”

  “Because you’ve done a brilliant job with the apartment. I wanted to show it off. Fernando told me tonight that he’s going to give you more challenging work now that he sees what you can do when you’re let off leash.” He grinned. “His words, not mine.”

  “Worth the long wait?” Dylan had to move out while the work was underway. He’d sublet a loft in Williamsburg. He claimed it gave him a chance to get familiarized with a new population of potential Juniper customers, and the fact that it was walking distance from my apartment was merely coincidental. He avoided my gaze as he said it, though, and his mouth twitched in a secret smile. I nailed him the next week by making him join our formerly all-female poker game. Jeanine won all his chips off him, Georgette psychoanalyzed him within an inch of his life, and Alanna teased him mercilessly while Annie peppered him with questions.

  He passed all of it with flying colors. Which was when I told him yes, I would move in with him when this place was complete. He grinned and said how did I know he’d ask?

  He pulled away from me now, folded his arms, and perused the space. “Hmm. Honestly? I think you left something out.�
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  “Now you tell me?” I looked around, but I didn’t have to. I knew every inch. The space was perfect. The new arch, the exposed wood of the crown molding, the tastefully remodeled kitchen that opened up to the dining room. I’d designed it all for Dylan. Everything I felt for him was in this living space.

  So what was he talking about?

  “It’s okay. I know how to fix it.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. He looked serious, but the edge of his mouth twitched, a giveaway. Something was up.

  He went down the hall to the linen closet and pulled something off the shelf, wrapped in brown paper. Curiouser and curiouser.

  When he came back, he presented the package to me. It clattered heavily, like metal and wood and glass. “Think of it as a housewarming present.” Dylan’s gaze was warm, so warm.

  I sat on the rug, ignoring the party debris around me, and tore open the package. Inside were three pictures. The one of me as Pirate Girl, one of my parents laughing together, and one of my grandparents squinting into the sun. They were all framed in old-fashioned cherrywood frames that suited them perfectly, but more—they’d all been restored. No creases, no stains. The ragged white line across my young pirate’s chest was gone. Healed perfectly.

  I looked up at him, my gaze blurry with tears. “You did this.”

  “Technically, our graphic design guy did it for me.” But he was beaming. “I thought this place should have something of yours. It’s yours now too, after all.”

  “And you vetoed my coffee table.”

  He winced, but it was for show. My old motley coffee table was a long-running joke between us. I’d told him at one point that I thought we should model the design of all the furniture in his—now our—apartment after it. He’d fired me on the spot but rehired me minutes later when I’d offered to model the furniture in the nude.

  I stood, holding the pictures like they might shatter if I wasn’t careful. “Where should they go?” I looked around, but the answer was obvious. “The mantel.”