by Anne Calhoun
Milla didn’t follow him. Her discretion was ideal, slotting her neatly in at the end of the line of all the other girls he’d invited up the creaky stairs and then sent off with a kiss and a smile. But this morning the way she’d used her phone to flirt with him without Kaitlin and Elsa knowing about it bothered him.
A secret relationship, hidden in plain sight. He’d sworn he’d never get involved in that kind of secret, because people could get hurt. But in this case, it was just him and Milla, no third parties on the outside looking in. It didn’t make it right, but it wasn’t wrong, either.
Determined to act as if nothing were wrong, he packed bread, cheese and some fruit into the box his father carried to work every day of his career, shrugged into his lightweight jacket and clattered back down the stairs. “‘Bye,” he called through the girls’ door. Downstairs, he opened the door to the street and found Milla standing by her bike.
Chapter Three
That was almost a disaster.
Milla scuffed into a pair of black ballet flats, then snagged her bike helmet, panniers and lock from the floor of the closet. “‘Bye,” she called.
“‘Bye,” Kaitlin and Elsa chorused back.
She lifted down her junk sale vintage cruiser, bumped her way down the steps to the sidewalk, snapped the pannier to the back rack and took a moment to try to figure out what bothered her about a morning that was no different from any other morning in their flat.
Spitalfields distracted her, though, waking up slowly, the rare, brilliant summer sunshine gilding the brick shop fronts. She’d ended up flat-sharing with Kaitlin and Elsa because Elsa knew her previous roommate, and to her surprise, the neighborhood suited her. She liked the people, the hard-worn brick and stone surfaces, the way the houses crowded together along narrow, oddly named streets, their shuttered windows and painted doors flush with the street, the graffiti right next to an upscale boutique, the way people like Charlie waved hello to someone on every street, ran errands for his mum, hired his cousin as his assistant. It was a place that could feel closed to outsiders, but to Milla it looked like hundreds of years of East End residents, the ironworkers and the silk weavers and the shipbuilders and the rope makers, shimmered just under modern surface of the place and could break through at any moment.
She hung on for a moment longer than necessary, checking her bike over before she set off, wheels, brakes, chain, handlebars, seat, panniers secured, then held up her phone to examine the effect through the camera, then snapped a picture. Vintage white cruiser with pink-and-orange flower decals, her Bern helmet dangling from the handlebars. Charming. Borderline twee, but these things couldn’t be helped.
Perfect cycling weather in London.
Tap, click, post, and then she heard what she’d been waiting to hear—work boots on the stairs, Charlie’s parting call to the girls he’d taken under his wing, the front door opening. Then the door opened, and he paused for just a second betwixt and between. In that split second, the penny dropped.
Lying was awkward, especially when her cheeks and chin were rosy not from the rocking new blush from Urban Decay but from Charlie’s beard. But Charlie—older, vastly more experienced and fiercely protective of his privacy—didn’t seem bothered by the current situation.
Maybe all that was different was that she’d finally noticed him watching her with those beautiful hooded eyes, so startlingly blue, like he wasn’t quite sure she existed. And now that she’d seen the way he looked at her, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
What she was thinking was What’s going on with us, Charlie? What came out of her mouth was, “I prefer ice cream after sex.”
Caught shifting the lunch box from hand to hand so he could close the door, he almost dropped it. Recovering his usually deft coordination, he closed the door behind him and took the stairs two at a time to the pavement. “Sorry?”
“Not cereal. I like something richer. Vanilla ice cream, the real kind, not the artificial-flavor crap, doused in hot fudge sauce and whipped cream. Everything’s more vibrant after sex, taste, smell, sounds. I’m not wasting that on Weetabix.”
For a moment his eyes flashed hot and dark, like he was imagining her in one of his shirts, sitting on the counter, her feet braced against his hip, her eyes blown wide and pleased and vulnerable, her mouth kissed into sweet, heated tenderness. Or maybe that was just her lost in a dream made vivid by details of the first time she’d looked at herself in a mirror after sleeping with Charlie.
“I thought you should know that,” she added when he didn’t say anything.
“Right. Yeah. Duly noted,” he said.
“I also thought I’d walk you to work,” she said, as long as she wasn’t saying what was on her mind. In the past, mysterious Charlie was no big deal. But something had changed last night.
The corners of his mouth flicked up, his rough stubble glinting gold and caramel in the sunlight. “All right,” he said.
They fell in together, Milla using one hand to walk the bike along the sidewalk and the other to take pictures, Charlie between her and the street. “I’m going to call the police and report you for breaking the Act for the Regulation of Personal Electronic Devices, section nineteen—abuse of a mobile,” he said as they crossed Commercial Street.
She laughed, but didn’t put her phone away. “You don’t like them. Public-school boys,” she added when he lifted an eyebrow.
“I know a few who are all right. Like most groups, there are good eggs and bad apples.”
And there were Charlie’s walls, sky-high, riveted, impenetrable. Anything but glass. “Oh. Right.”
They walked to the corner before he said anything else. Charlie’s hot shop was in a warehouse a few streets from his house. A brand-new development, all bright brick and glass and chrome, rose several streets away, loftily ignoring the less impressive buildings to either side. The East End was a neighborhood undergoing a forced identity crisis.
“I’m just saying...anyone who’s bought into an image badly enough to post a pic of himself in his school tie might not like you the way you are.”
“What’s wrong with the way I am?”
“Nothing,” he said, then looked as if he’d like a second shot at that single word, to give it a little less emphasis and a little more teasing. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you are. He just might want to make you into someone else.”
It was her turn to lift an eyebrow, because that seemed like a lot of freight to put on a single date that, based on her current track record, would go down in the record books as the latest in a string of epic disasters. “What are the odds of that happening?”
He smiled at her, a little sheepish, as though he knew how ridiculous he was being and couldn’t help himself. “It never works. But that doesn’t stop people from trying, or from getting hurt in the process.”
“True,” she said. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” he said.
She wheeled her bike through the side delivery entrance he unlocked, unfastened her helmet and draped it over the handlebars. “Be right back,” she said as she leaned the bike against the wall. Charlie threw a switch; the first array of lights came on with a thunk. She ducked back outside and took a couple of quick pictures of the three-story exterior faced by utterly nondescript overhead doors, painted black, the windows blacked out, the handles removed. A single sign attached to each door read Private No Trespassing. The foreboding exterior blended in with the rest of the street. No one would guess the delicate, light-filled bowls, ornaments and hanging windows waiting to be shipped from the storeroom came from such a dark space.
Back inside she slid her phone into her capri pants pocket. She peered around him through the open door of the back room, where Billy handled the web business. For all he rolled his eyes at the internet, Charlie’s creations sold all over the world. He’d established relationships with galleries in San Francisco, Tokyo, Prague, Sydney, Toronto and Cairo. Not for the first time, Milla wondered why he didn’t
have a gallery presence in London.
“Were you taking pictures of my shop?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Don’t post them.” Firm. Not asking. Squared up, like her dad, ready to do battle over her clothes or her hair. But Milla didn’t feel like going toe-to-toe with Charlie. A fight wouldn’t get her what she was only beginning to learn she wanted.
“I know it looks like I share every aspect of my life, but I can keep some things private,” she said. The last thing she wanted was for him to doubt that she respected his desire for online privacy.
He looked at her, wary and hungry all at the same time. Like he hadn’t had two morning muffins and ginormous bowl of granola for breakfast. Like he hadn’t had her last night. Like he couldn’t have her again right now.
The tension stretched between them, as hot and tensile and dangerous as molten glass. To break it, she wandered into the back room, where the latest batch of pretty things hung in orderly rows, waiting to be packaged and shipped. “You’ve been busy lately.”
“A bit, yeah,” he said. He stood in the workspace next to the enormous furnace, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Milla was suddenly very aware of how much room the warehouse encompassed, and how little of it she’d seen.
“Can I see?”
“It’s not ready.”
“Okay,” she said, not willing to push any more than that.
“How’s the poll looking?”
It was a little strange to stand next to the friend she’d slept with last night, remembering the heat sparking between them, and talk about next week’s blind date. At the same time it was easy to fall back into their usual routine, with the mobile phone and the online poll between them. Milla swiped over to her website, where the poll was pinned to the top.
Option 1: Banker of the week (seriously, London, center of the financial world, you have many, many bankers).
Option 2: Hipster barrister. (What do you call hipsters in London?)
Option 3: IT Guy (Yes, this is last week’s IT Guy. IDK, you guys, there’s something about him. Second time’s a charm?)
“IT Guy’s not faring well in the poll again,” Charlie pointed out.
“It’s early days,” Milla said.
“If you like him, why not go out with him? It’s not like your readers picked a winner last time.” Charlie asked.
Milla dangled her helmet from her fingers. “Why not let my fans choose?” she said. “Historically, is this any less likely to succeed than blind dates, being set up by a friend, star-crossed lovers or an arranged marriage?”
“I suppose it depends on what you want.”
“I like meeting new people,” she said. “I want to engage with my followers, build my brand.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Charlie said.
“Sure you do,” she said. “Your work means something to the people who buy your pieces. It’s a memory of a vacation, or something beautiful to use in their homes. That’s the reason why people follow me on social media or watch my videos. I want to share what I create—trips, experiences, my view of the world—with people. It’s such a beautiful place, this fucked-up, crazy world we live in, and people don’t see it.”
“People buy art because they like it. End of story. Not because they’re trying to connect with the artist.”
She disagreed, but she stuck to the original topic. “Polling readers is just a silly, fun thing,” she said. “No one takes it seriously.”
“The guys might.”
“I’d have to say that based on the actual dates, they don’t,” Milla said with a laugh. “They really, really don’t.”
“You’re not afraid you’ll break their hearts,” he said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever broken someone’s heart. I’m not dating seriously,” she said. “My profile is very clear about that. I don’t plan a trip searching for a particular experience, and I don’t go on a first date with marriage on my mind. I just want to meet people and have fun.”
He peered over her shoulder at the screen. Milla swiped to refresh. Another six votes for Mr. School Tie, four for the hipster barrister and none for IT Guy. “You’re going to end up going out with Mr. School Tie. Have fun.”
“Any particular reason why you don’t like public-school boys?”
“Yes,” he said, lightning fast, as if he was snapping off sharp edges in a finished piece. “But it’s in the past, and has nothing to do with you.”
There were the secrets again. Charlie was obviously vibrating inside, either because he didn’t want to talk about feelings and his past, or because he was straining at the leash to get to work, or both.
“Okay,” she said, rather nonsensically. “I’ll see you around.”
She went up on tiptoe and kissed his bristly cheek. Then she wheeled her bike and herself back out to the street.
Outside the hot shop, she fastened her helmet and kicked her pedal to the start position, then set off toward Commercial Street and her day job at the Darmayne Gallery. Once inside, she took up her position behind the reception desk, checked her email and got a handle on the day’s tasks. Nina Darmayne, the owner, had hired Milla in part for her social media expertise and presence, so generating PR and building creative relationships was a big part of her daily work. But before she got started, she picked up her phone to cycle through her personal social media. Charlie was right. IT Guy wasn’t getting any more love this time around, more’s the pity.
Then she set the phone down.
And looked at it.
Picked it up, swiped it awake.
She was about to do something she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do. Milla assumed anyone she met who ended a conversation with “friend me/follow me” was fair game for research. Charlie, however, did none of those things. Charlie leaned out of group pictures and asked her not to post shots of his studio. So she didn’t.
She put the phone down again.
Folded her hands in her lap. She knew the bare bones—previously married, bad divorce—she didn’t know the specifics. If he wanted her to know something, he’d tell her.
Or he wouldn’t. The itch to know more was new. They’d crossed a boundary last night, and she couldn’t forget that hungry, wary look, like he wanted something he thought he couldn’t have.
She picked up her phone and thumbed his name into a search engine. The first result to catch her eye was his name in announcement of scholarship winners to the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. “Wow,” she said under her breath. The Slade was only the most competitive art school in England. Press releases from various shows included Charlie’s name as the winner of several prizes in a variety of mediums. His work in the Urban Laboratory was particularly noteworthy. The words brilliant and rising star were tossed around.
Milla switched from the art world press releases to the tabloids. Somewhere along the line, Charlie had his name linked to one Chelsea Thurlow. A stylish, slender, leggy brunette with a degree from the Slade, an adoring posh husband and two lovely children, Chelsea sat on several charity boards and trusts and was the co-owner of the Thurlow Gallery.
Oh. Milla sat back and looked around the Darmayne Gallery. Nina Darmayne had a reputation in the art scene, but Milla had eavesdropped on enough conversations to know that after three generations of family ownership, the Thurlows were art-world royalty.
Charlie Tanner’s ex-wife was Chelsea Thurlow?
Eventually the archives of one of London’s infamous tabloids coughed up what she needed, a replica of a two-page spread gleefully detailing the rise and fall of Chelsea and Charlie. Couched in the typical “sources say” and “friends of the couple agree” language that could mean an actual source or could mean the reporter was talking out of his ass, the article said that after university Chelsea went through a rebellious stage, moving to the East End, befriending up-and-coming artists, arranging guerrilla installations, drinking, partying and marrying a very young-looking Charlie.
&
nbsp; Milla studied the picture. She’d never seen Charlie smile like that, a hell-raiser, I-don’t-give-a-damn look in his eyes, and was that a hint of smudged eyeliner? God, she’d pay good money, even dip into her Orient Express fund, to get Charlie alone in punk rock clothes and makeup. Chelsea, wearing even more eye makeup than Charlie, looked stoned, or maybe it was just rich girl, rage-against-the-machine attitude. Without a close-up of her pupils, Milla couldn’t tell.
So what happened?
Those ubiquitous “sources close to the couple” dragged Charlie’s image through the gutter. Chelsea regretted a decision that caused a complete break with her parents. He embarrassed her in public—his clothes, his accent, his table manners.
Milla scrolled through to the key highlight: Chelsea had started an affair with her current husband, Eddie. What began as friendly tweets quickly got flirtatious, then got mysterious and dark and emotional, and then got blatant. Some incredibly savvy reporter had screen-capped the tweets, saving them for all eternity.
Best lunch ever, with a pic of the Dorchester, a Park Lane hotel, and the hidden Table Lumière.
Lots of tweeted pictures, taken by an unnamed companion, of Chelsea looking wistfully into the distance, the profile shot, chin braced on hand. Lots of smiley faces tweeted to Eddie for no apparent reason.
According to the all-knowing sources and the helpful timeline, there was a period of reconciliation that matched up with a tweet of a red-eyed Chelsea: That was hard.
The tweet stream dried up, went back to chipper promotional tweets for the gallery. No pictures of Charlie. Despite the reconciliation, in Chelsea’s online life, he ceased to exist.
Then, a tweet for a charity ball hosted by Eddie. A quick search and Milla turned up a picture of Charlie and Chelsea at the ball, Charlie looking uncomfortably furious in an evening suit, Chelsea not bothering to smile. After that it was only a matter of weeks before the affair picked up again, followed by a series of tweets from Chelsea:
I have a right to be happy. I have a right to be free.
