AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He glances over his shoulder at us. “Uh.”
“Then what?” Rich asks. “You’re going to walk home?”
“It’s not that far.”
“It’s ten o’clock at night.”
You wouldn’t know it by the throngs of students and loosened-tie professionals and hip twenty-somethings littering the sidewalk. By the neon open signs, the steaming hotdog stands, the endless cars swerving by. “I’m twenty-five, not eighty, and it’s a Thursday. People our age haven’t even gotten started for the night. I’ll be fine. Let me out.”
“If you want to go out, I’ll go with you. Let’s just stop by your apartment first. Or mine, even. I think you’ve got a few pills there, and I really think you should—”
“You don’t work for him,” I tell the driver, ignoring Rich. “He’s my dad’s employee, and this is my dad’s company car, and if you don’t stop now, I’ll call George Fox himself and make him tell you to pull over.”
Rich knows my dad would call me unreasonable and hang up, but fortunately, the driver doesn’t. I get out.
Rich rolls down the window. “Halston,” he calls. “It’s freezing.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re being childish,” Rich says as the driver creeps alongside me. I stride down the sidewalk. “Get in the car.”
“No.”
“Come back with me now, or . . .”
“Or what?” I prompt.
“Or don’t come back at all.”
Even though there’s a definite waver in his voice, my stomach clenches. Is he breaking up with me? Do I care enough to get in the car? In this moment, my answer is no. I don’t want to think too hard if that’ll be the case tomorrow. “Fine,” I say. “I won’t.”
I turn on my heel and walk in the opposite direction.
“Come on,” Rich calls after me. “Seriously?”
I ignore him. This is unlike me, acting on impulse, arguing in front of a stranger, being petulant just to get at Rich.
Or, maybe it is me.
Only a couple blocks later, the adrenaline begins to wear off. In the East Village, the bars are packed, the sidewalks livening up with downtowners who remind me of my assistant. Don’t I belong here as much as anyone? I consider calling Benny to see if she’s around. I think she lives in the area. She’s invited me out a few times, but I’ve always turned her down. We don’t have that kind of relationship. But why couldn’t we?
I shiver. I’ve never been much of a partier. I didn’t smoke or drink because I liked it. They were just ways to comfort myself. Despite what Rich said, he wouldn’t turn me away if I showed up on his doorstep right now. If I did, we’d make up. We’d pretend none of this happened. He’d convince me not to take on my own treatment, and if he couldn’t, my dad would. Because Rich will tell him all about this. Maybe already has.
I walk toward my apartment, which is a good twenty or more minutes away. It’s not where I want to be, though. Rich and my dad have always been more of a team than I have with either of them. I accepted that. But Finn makes me feel important. Heard. Seen. We met less than two weeks ago, yet his interest in my journals, his questions, his attention, reminds me of how my mom was with me. When she looked at me, it was as if she couldn’t wait to see the person I would become.
Finn does that too, except he knew me before he ever laid eyes on me. It’s not supposed to happen that way, as if something greater brought us together.
I already have a missed call from Rich. I clear it. I didn’t get out my phone for him. Finn just posted the third photo, but I go right past it to my inbox.
I send Finn a direct message:
Are you home?
11
Four minutes have passed since I messaged Finn to see if he was home. He shouldn’t be sleeping at ten thirty on a Thursday night, but it’s not exactly early either. Now that I’ve decided I want to see him, it’s all I can think about. Just the thought of Rich annoys me.
I’m a couple blocks from his place when his response comes through.
Call me.
His phone number pops up.
I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. My bravery wavers. Finn is a man. He’s in his thirties. He won’t like being jerked around. If I go up to his apartment this late at night, and he has certain expectations—am I ready to take things to that level?
Breathe. I’m being ridiculous. Jumping to conclusions. I don’t even know if Finn will want to see me. Despite the temperature, I begin to sweat. I unwrap my scarf and ball it under my arm before dialing.
Finn picks up after the first ring. “Hey.” His voice is scratchy, even deeper than I remember.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Nah. Just been working all day since I saw you.”
“Oh.” A snowflake lands on my nose as a couple more drift onto my coat. He doesn’t say anything else. “Do you maybe want some company?” I ask.
“Where are you?”
“Close,” I say. “I walked from the East Village, and now I’m by the café.”
He sniffs. “Hmm.”
Clearly, I didn’t think this through. It occurs to me that he might not even be alone. “I mean, if you’re busy, it’s fine, or if you don’t want—”
“I want,” he says so low, I almost miss it. “You know I want.”
This afternoon, he basically admitted to fighting his attraction to me because of Rich. Finn doesn’t want to get hurt. But the way I left things with Rich is as close to breaking up as we’ve ever come “It’s over. We had an argument.” I play with the fringe of my scarf. “So can I come up?”
“I’ll come down.”
I hang up, part triumphant, part scared as shit. I don’t know how to be with someone like Finn. I’ve written about it, I’ve fantasized about it, but what if I can’t actually be it?
I need coffee, if only just to smell it, hold it. As fate has it, Lait Noir is only two blocks from Finn’s—but I turn the corner to find it closed. I continue toward Finn’s, where there’s a twenty-four-hour diner across the street. I can be in and out in a minute flat.
I’m about to step into the crosswalk when Finn exits his building a half block away. He comes toward me, passing under yellow streetlights. In sweatpants, sneakers, and a jacket, he’s not dressed for snow. He cups his hands over
his mouth to warm them and nods at me. “Who do we have here?” he asks as he approaches. “Halston—what’s your last name?”
“Fox.”
“Fox,” he repeats, stopping in front of me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What was the fight about?”
Sharing the details means getting into some heavy stuff with Finn. It’s more than enough to scare him off. I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”
“In other words, it isn’t my business.”
“No. I mean yes, it is. Well, it’s not, but I can make it your business if you want to know.”
He crosses his arms under his pits. “I do.”
“I’ll tell you more, but can we go to your place?” Maybe if I can get him upstairs, he’ll forget all about it. “It’s cold.”
He tugs my scarf from under my arm and shakes it out. “Tell me now.” He wraps it around my neck with extraordinary care, as if he’s dressing a queen for her coronation. He wants to know about the fight before he invites me up. It’s fair, but the thought of telling Finn the truth has my stomach doing flips, my nose tingling. Unlike Rich, who wanted in good with my dad, Finn has no reason to take on damaged goods.
I glance at the ground a few seconds while the words bubble up—and then fizzle out. “Can we at least go get a coffee?” I ask. “The diner—”
“I’ll make you some upstairs.” He slips a hand under my hair, freeing it from the scarf, and brushes some flakes away. “Just give me the rundown.”
He basically said we’re going upstairs no matter what. I might as well get it over with. “You might think less of me.”
“I told you I cheated on my wife with someone else’s wife.”
I scrape the sole of my boot against the icy sidewalk, carving out a circle in a fine layer of snow. “I just don’t want you to see me differently.”
“I want to see you differently,” he says without missing a beat. “As many sides as there are, I want to see them all. I’m sure a week into knowing someone, that’d scare some people. I don’t think you’re one of those people, though. Are you?”
