Page 51 of Making It Live!

"I don't believe you."

"Also noted."

Jillian signaled for the check.I reached for my wallet — my wallet, which now contained a debit card attached to an account with an actual balance — and put the drinks on my tab without flinching.Jillian watched me do it.

"Look at you," she breathed."Buying rounds downtown."

I signed the receipt.The number didn't sting.A month ago it would have kept me up all night.

Outside, a light rain had started to fall, and the cobblestones on Spring Street gleamed under the streetlights like they'd been polished.Jillian pulled her hood up and gave me a hug that was tighter and longer than usual.

"Find a new apartment," she said into my shoulder."Get a therapist.Do not sleep with your anchor."

"In that order?"

"In any order, as long as all three happen."She pulled back and held me at arm's length, studying my face."Call me tomorrow.I mean it."

She headed off toward the Canal Street station, and I watched her go — Jillian Morris, five foot two in bare feet, louder than anyone in any room, the only person in my life who'd known me before and after Nelson and loved me through both versions.

I stood on the wet corner and didn't move for a while.The rain tapped on the awning above me and my phone said 12:14 a.m.

I pulled it out.Dark screen.No notifications.

I put it back in my pocket and started walking toward the train, and my four hundred square feet of cinder blocks and secondhand furniture uptown.

"It won't happen again," I muttered.Then a tiny voice in the back of my head said: If it isn't going to happen again, why can I still feel Nelson's hands on my skin?

ChapterTwenty-One

Nelson

Brad noticed before he even plugged in the blow dryer.

"Honey."He stood in the doorway of my dressing room with his kit bag over one shoulder and a venti something in his free hand, surveying the vanity like a crime scene investigator.The surface was bare.No grooming supplies in their graduated row.No crystal water glass, no script binder propped against the mirror.Just a clean, empty surface with a long scratch running diagonally across it that hadn't been there yesterday.

"Where is everything?"

"I reorganized."

"You reorganized."Brad set his bag down and ran one finger along the scratch.His immaculately shaped eyebrows climbed toward his hairline."With what?A baseball bat?"

"There are replacement supplies in the top drawer.I had Harry buy them this morning."

Brad opened the drawer, peered inside, and made a sound that was half gasp, half prayer."You replaced your entire makeup kit.Nelson, what happened in here?"

Jimmy's legs wrapped around me, and the crystal glass shattered on the tile.His mouth moved down my chest and—

"Nothing happened.Let’s get started, we're behind schedule."

Brad studied me for one more moment — he had the instincts of a gossip columnist trapped in the body of a hair and makeup artist, which arguably made him more dangerous than either — then shrugged and draped the cape over my shoulders with a flourish.

"Fine.Keep your secrets."He began pulling products from the drawer, arranging them on the vanity."So.Speaking of drama.Kyle's mother called me again last night."

I closed my eyes as his fingers worked through my hair.This was the routine.Brad talked and I listened.The sound of someone else's chaos had always been oddly soothing — a reminder that other people's lives were messy too, that somewhere out in Jersey a woman named Deborah was making her adult son's boyfriend's life a living hell and it had absolutely nothing to do with me.

"She wants to host Thanksgiving," Brad continued, styling my hair with the practiced speed of a man who'd beautified cable news anchors for decades."Which, fine, except she also wants to invite Pastor Rick, who she knows has opinions about Kyle and me, and when I said maybe that's not the most welcoming environment, she said — and I quote — 'Well, Bradley, the Lord's table has room for everyone.'The Lord's table.Bitch, please.It's a folding table from Costco."

Under normal circumstances I'd have had a response.Something dry.Something that made Brad cackle and tell me I was his favorite client, which he told every client, but in my case I suspected he meant it.