Page 68 of Trust Fund Baby

I couldn’t hear him, but I watched as his lips formed my name. And yet he still didn’t move from his table to cross the room toward me.

Don’t do it, I told my feet.

We were only ten tables apart, maybe less, but it felt like an ocean. Every instinct in me wanted to swim across, to ask how he was doing, why he looked so sad, if he’d thought about me constantly just like I’d thought about him.

But instead, I made myself look away.

The leather strap of my camera dug into my shoulder as I pulled it around to the front. My fingers found the cool weight of the lens, grounding me. This was why I was here. My job. My future. The thing I’d fought to carve out for myself when the rest of my life felt like someone else’s blueprint.

I forced my attention to the golden light spilling from the wood-fired oven, the steam curling from a freshly baked pie as a server slid it onto a waiting table. I found the perfect angle near the bar—shooting past the glint of wineglasses toward the laughter in the back corner where Hallie was now deep in conversation with James’s family, a smile on her face.

But my chest stayed tight.

Every time I lifted my camera to my eye, my gaze snagged on him in my periphery. Sebastian’s gaze never once left me. His expression was unreadable. It was as though he was relishing each second he spent looking at me. But still neither of us moved to cross the room.

It was the most excruciating stalemate I’d ever been in.

As I kept clicking the shutter, I tried to ignore the frantic hammering in my chest. The warmth that crept up my face was just the kitchen’s heat, I told myself.

I packed up slowly once the shot list was complete. Hallie smiled at me from across the room, and I nodded—our signal that I had what we needed. I didn’t want to rush her, not when she looked the happiest she had in weeks.

Only then did I let myself glance back toward the corner table.

Sebastian’s plate was empty. The pitcher of water sat untouched. The chair across from him empty.

And his eyes—God, those eyes—were still locked on me.

I swallowed hard, adjusted my bag, and turned away before I could go back on the promise I’d made to myself to never let him back in.

I sat down with Hallie in a window seat, and as we photographed and devoured a sample of every single dish from the menu that James’s family had so generously prepared for us, I had to fight with every fiber of my being not to break down and cry.

25

Seb

James and I were standing on the front step outside of Roxie and Hallie’s apartment.

I had told James that this was his opportunity to mend things with Hallie. But I’d really been looking for an excuse to end up here all along. He’d just unblocked her and all her messages had come flooding through. I could tell he felt even worse than before as he read how many times she’d tried to contact him, to get her version of what had happened across. Now, he needed to see her face to face more than ever, to find out if she was telling him the truth.

It was late, the street was quiet, and every sound was sharp, from the hum of the streetlamp, the honk of a cab horn, to my heartbeat thudding in my ears as we approached their apartment. I stared at the building’s door, wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.

When I’d first seen her at Rossi Pizzeria, I’d thought I was imagining things. I recognized that familiar tilt of her head as she scanned the room, looking for the perfect angle for a photo. I had thought my mind had conjured her like I had before during one of my drunken stupors, but this time she didn’t vanish when I blinked. She’d been real. Standing there, smiling at Hallie, pretending I didn’t exist.

I’d taken the hint, of course. Only going so far as to watch her from across the room. It took everything in me not to get up and walk over to her, to ask her how she was doing. To tell her how sorry I was, but I stopped myself before I could do that. Telling her I was sorry had never gotten me far because my words had never really matched my actions. I’d always been too late, or too careless, or too stubborn to follow through.

So I’d stayed in my seat at Rossi’s, watching her out of the corner of my eye like some coward who didn’t deserve her attention. And when her eyes would eventually land on mine, a thrill ran down my spine. There was still some warmth in them. When I’d last seen her at the gallery, she’d been totally closed off to me. But in the pizzeria, she looked different. Like she was fighting the urge to walk over to me, sit in the chair opposite, and talk things through.

But then, after she’d taken her photos and eaten with Hallie, she was gone. Disappeared into the Brooklyn night without looking back. I could have taken that as the universe giving me one last chance to see her, to be in her presence. A sort of reward for my penance. But instead, it felt like an opening. A chance to see her and know my chances weren’t totally spent if I could just prove how much she meant to me.

So here I was, on her front step, pretending this was about James and Hallie when every nerve in my body knew that was a lie. This was about her. It had always been about her.

I thought about what I’d say if she opened the door. I wanted to tell her I’d thought about her every day since the gallery. That I hated the way things had ended. That I hated the way we’d always ended—like we’d run out of time before we’d even started. I wanted to tell her I’d stopped drinking, and it was the second hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, next to not being able to speak to her.

But I also knew that the moment her eyes were on me, all of that would catch in my throat, and I’d end up standing there like an idiot, wondering how she could look both exactly the same and completely different from the girl I used to know.

I flexed my fingers in my pockets, trying to summon all the nerve I possibly could. The door in front of me was just wood and glass, but it might as well have been ten feet of steel. One buzz, and I could be face to face with her again. One buzz, and I could ruin this all over again.

James pressed the button before I could dwell on another thought about how bad this idea was.