30. Bex
Chapter thirty
Bex
Tuesday afternoon, I hop off the subway near my corner of Brooklyn and let the noise of the block swallow me whole, car horns, the chatter of stoops, the waft of spicy food from the place next to the bodega.
Ordinarily I like jumping back into it. This time the reentry feels sharper, like the city can't quite fill the space Hollyvale left behind.
At the shop, Maya looks up from behind the counter, relieved.
"Finally, boss. You're back." I fall into the routine easily enough, restocking gloves, checking the appointment log, but when she asks how the wedding was, all I manage is "Fine.
Gorgeous location. Everyone ended up happy.
" She doesn't push, just says coffee's fresh, and lets me have the rest of the afternoon in blessed, methodical quiet.
By Wednesday I'm fully back in shop mode, four sessions in a single day, my hands busy enough that my mind is supposed to quiet down too.
It mostly doesn't. I keep drifting mid-session to Kit's wrist, the tiny camera linework, the way her breath hitched at the first prick of the needle.
I keep picturing the license folded into her notebook, the careful way she'd tucked it away like she could file the whole thing under something manageable.
By Wednesday evening, my back aches and Maya's clocking my quiet with a look I recognize. "You've been quieter than usual all day." I tell her I'm all right, and she lets me have that too, the way good friends do when they know pushing won't get them anywhere faster.
I lock up, check my phone in the relative dark of the break room.
Nothing from Kit. Then a text from Sofia I'd missed while working: She called me.
She didn't tell me everything, but she told me more than nothing.
Give her a little time. My heart twists reading it.
So Kit had talked to her sister, probably about us, in some vague shape.
I text back How much time? and get a shrug emoji for my trouble.
"Thanks for that clarity, Fi," I mutter to the empty shop, and head home.
I'm sprawled on my battered couch that night, eating leftover pasta out of a container that may or may not have been microwaved twice, when my phone rings with the obnoxious trill Nico picked for themselves months ago, specifically so I could never ignore them by accident.
I roll my eyes but answer anyway.
"Did you finally get bored, or what?" I joke, tucking the phone between my ear and shoulder so I can scoop up another forkful of pasta.
"Have you talked to her yet?" Nico says, skipping all pleasantries. No greeting, no how-are-you.
My stomach does a small, guilty flip. "Hello to you too," I say, chewing.
Nico sighs, an exasperated gust of air that crackles in the speaker. "Don't play. I've been waiting two weeks for an update. The suspense is messing with my chakras."
"Your chakras." I set my pasta aside on the worn coffee table, feeling my appetite vanish. "I told you I'd call you when something happened, and guess what, nothing's happened."
Inside my chest, a voice argues: Not entirely true. Plenty happened. You just didn't do anything about it.
Nico exhales. "Bex, something did happen. In New Orleans. You got married. That was the something."
I groan, sliding farther down the couch. "We did not plan that, you realize. It wasn't a scheme we cooked up. It was just." I halt, mind leaping back to that hammered-late hour, the neon on Bourbon Street, the quiet of the tiny chapel.
Nico's tone softens. "I know it wasn't planned. That's what made it so real. Have you talked to her since you both parted ways?"
I press the heel of my hand against my forehead. "Not exactly. I left a message, kind of. More like I left the marriage license on the table with a note that said she could reach me."
Nico lets out a low whistle. "So you left the biggest conversation of your life in a manila envelope for her to find? Good going."
"Don't push me," I mumble. But I don't have the heart to snap. Because I know Nico is right. I walked away before Kit could respond, because the idea of hearing the wrong answer terrified me.
"Tell me something," Nico says, calm but direct. "What do you actually want from Kit? Forget the logistics, the panic about your families, all of it. Just focus on her for a second."
I stare at the coffee table. There's a ring left by my pasta container, condensation from the repeated microwaving.
I try to rub it away with my thumb. "I want the person she is under all that planning.
You know how some people, you meet them, and everything looks perfectly in place, but then there's this moment you see them unguarded and they become completely alive? "
Nico lets me talk, gently pressing, "Go on."
I shut my eyes, thinking about Kit talking to that busker in the French Quarter, the night the bridal party ended up dancing in the street.
I remember the miniature jazz band playing a ragtag version of "When the Saints Go Marching In," and Kit's laugh, a small, unplanned thing that had overflowed despite her usual composure.
"I keep remembering that night on Bourbon Street," I say quietly.
"And the night at Bacchanal, sitting out in the courtyard with their live music.
She started sharing these little stories from her childhood, like how she used to rearrange her stuffed animals in alphabetical order.
She was so serious about it, but I could tell she was also laughing at herself.
And on the riverfront, when we stopped for beignets at midnight, and she let powdered sugar spill all over her shoes, she didn't even notice because she was looking at me instead. "
I sigh. "That version of her. That's what I want.
The piece of her that just exists, not the part that's always performing.
And I want her to let me in, let me be the one she trusts to see that.
It's been, God, it's been years since I've felt so grounded with someone.
Insane or not, the time I spent with her felt more real than entire relationships I've had before.
And yes, it was impulsive and crazy, but I'd choose it again. "
The words tumble out bolder than I'd expected. My throat feels tight. On the other end, Nico stays quiet for three heartbeats.
Then Nico says, "So why aren't you telling her all that?"
I laugh, but it comes out hollow. "Kit knows. I told her I wanted to make it real if she did too. That's basically the same thing."
"No it's not," Nico says flatly. "Bex, you left the license on a table and walked out of the room before she could even open her mouth. You said your piece, sure, but then you bolted. That's not the same as telling someone you want them in your life. Not really."
I slump deeper into the couch. "She could have come after me," I grumble, even though that's hardly fair. I was the one who ended the conversation.
"You got scared too," Nico says, something fierce in their tone.
"Right before you walked out. You said you'd put the ball in her court, but you actually made sure there was no back-and-forth.
Because if she answered, if she said something you didn't want to hear, that rejection lands right in your chest. But if you leave first, you never have to face it. "
My heart pounds. I stare at my half-empty pasta container. Why does it suddenly look so unappealing? I swallow. "Yeah. Fine. I realize that now."
"You gotta call her," Nico says. "Or text, or show up at her door. Something. Because if this stays in awkward radio silence, you'll both make decisions you can't come back from."
A silence settles between us. I hear faint noise on Nico's side of the line, maybe the hum of music from the shop.
Finally, I say, "I can't just blow up her phone."
Nico's voice softens. "No one's saying blow it up. Just reach out. Enough so she knows you meant what you said. Before she has time to talk herself out of all that possibility."
I let out a slow breath, feeling the weight of the conversation in my lungs. "I'll think about it," I say. I'm not sure when I'll do it, or how, but maybe the if is shifting into a question of when.
We drift into less loaded topics after that: tattoo shop updates, a couple of traveling guest artists who'd come through the neighborhood, random anecdotes about old acquaintances from our apprenticeship days. Eventually I realize we've been on the phone for almost two hours.
"Damn," I mutter. "We haven't talked this long since that time the boiler broke and we had to figure out how to siphon water without flooding the shop."
Nico laughs. "I remember that. You were cursing up a storm, trying to keep inking that guy's dragon sleeve."
I snort. "And you were brand-new, so you were wearing three pairs of gloves like that was going to save you from accidentally flooding the place."
We share an easy laugh, the kind that only comes from a shared history of making frantic mistakes together. Then Nico's laughter dies down. "Seriously, though, Bex. Don't wait too long. I know you want to give her space, but you also have to give her something to come back to."
I nod, even though Nico can't see it. "I know," I say, voice softer.
After we hang up, I let the quiet settle over my apartment. The leftover pasta container still sits on the coffee table. The TV screen is paused on a scene I'd barely registered.
I set down my phone and walk over to the small kitchen table, where my sketchbook is splayed open.
I flip back a few pages, past the loose studies I'd done that first week, until I find the one I keep returning to: the full-forearm camera piece, film reel geometry tangled with vines, the design I'd started that last night at the inn before I left Hollyvale.
I'd photographed it since, shown it to no one, added to it twice in idle moments without quite admitting that's what I was doing.
Ambient city noise filters through the windows: a car door slamming, an ambulance siren off in the distance.
I hover a fingertip over the black ink pen lying next to the sketchbook, then pick it up and start adding to the piece instead of starting something new.
A few more vine tendrils curling toward the shutter. A tighter frame around the lens.
It reminds me of what I feel with Kit: a half-finished design that could either become something whole or remain incomplete forever.
I press my lips together, thinking about how it had felt to hold her hand after that random jazz show in the Quarter.
The gentleness of it. The unspoken promise that maybe we both wanted more than a fling in a city that thrives on fleeting illusions.
Now, impossibly, we share a piece of paper that says we're married. I huff out a humorless laugh. It's so ridiculous I almost want to pinch myself.
I flip back further, past the loose fleur-de-lis studies and custom lettering concepts, until I land on an older, rougher doodle: a binder with color-coded tabs, sketched fast that second night in New Orleans after I noticed how Kit organized hers.
I'd labeled one tab Miscellaneous, just to amuse myself.
I still remember the exact moment she caught me looking at it, the flush that crept up her neck.
That tab. The one that struck me as so ironically honest. The piece of Kit that tries so hard to plan everything but still leaves that single section for whatever doesn't fit.
My mind drifts to the last exchange we shared in that quiet reception room. I remember the tautness in Kit's voice, a kind of trembling tension that said she was milliseconds away from letting something slip, the way a rope might snap under too much weight.
I never wanted to push too hard, for myself or for her. I understand the pressure of a disapproving family and the terror of wanting something that might fall apart.
But as Nico pointed out, I got scared too. Maybe it's time to own that.
I turn back to the camera piece and keep working the pen along the reel's edge, deepening a shadow here, softening a line there.
At some point, Delphi wakes and yawns behind me, jumping off the couch to rub around my ankles.
I pause to give the cat a scratch behind the ears.
"You think I should call her?" I murmur.
Delphi purrs. Indecisive.
I roll my eyes affectionately. "Yeah, me neither."
I let the pen rest, studying the piece as it stands now, fuller than it was an hour ago.
I don't know if it will end up as a real design or just remain a concept I keep adding to alone.
But it feels good to create, to let my hands articulate everything my heart is still fumbling with.
It occurs to me that I've never once, in three years of running this shop, worked on a piece I had no client for.
Every other page in this sketchbook exists because someone is going to wear it.
This one exists because I can't stop thinking about someone who might never let me get that close again, and somehow that's turned out to be reason enough.
I close the sketchbook, leaving the camera page marked with a strip of washi tape so I can find it again without flipping through everything else, and carry my phone to the window instead of leaving it on the table.
Not to call. Not yet. Just to have it close, in case the when Nico mentioned turns out to be sooner than I think.