Chapter 18 #2
Freddie’s eyebrows bobbed up. “I’m sorry?”
“A bomb exploded,” Bev replied matter-of-factly. Then she saw Freddie’s worried expression. “Oh, don’t worry. Kenneth’s fine. It blew up years after that show closed.”
“Well. That’s… good,” he said, looking to Anne again. She just stared back, eyes wide.
Bev nodded, then switched her attention to James. “So, are we having cake or what?”
The question seemed to jog everyone’s memory and conversation abruptly halted. Anne’s attention snapped to James, and he quickly jumped up to his feet.
“We’ll be right back!” he sang out, as the two of them scurried to a nearby table that had a bright pink cake dome in the center.
They huddled together for a moment, then James lifted the dome and turned around with the homemade cake in hand.
Anne quickly worked to light the candles dotted across the top while the table began to sing “Happy Birthday,” each at their own distinct pitch.
Within a few notes, the cake was ablaze.
James slowly placed the cake in front of Ellis and gave him a kiss just as the song concluded.
Ellis’s smile was broad as he looked from his husband to the rest of the table, to the slightly asymmetrical layers caked in buttercream in front of him.
Then he leaned forward and blew out the candles. The table erupted in cheers.
“How old are you, Ellis?” Bev asked as he cut into the cake.
Cricket snorted out a laugh. “Oh my God, Bev. You can’t ask that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s rude,” Cricket replied, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “What would you do if someone asked you that?”
“Try me.”
“Okay, how old are you?”
Beverly shrugged. “Seventy-two.”
Freddie was impressed. He wasn’t an expert on women’s ages, by any means, but in the short time he’d known Beverly, he had come to see her as more of a contemporary.
Not only in how she spoke—curse words and hilarious anecdotes—but how she carried herself.
Even now, as she relaxed back in her chair, she was wearing Converse and oversized gray pants with a huge blazer on top of a T-shirt.
“Well, you look fantastic,” Ellis said.
Beverly eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t sound so shocked.”
Ellis blanched. “Oh, I didn’t mean… It’s just…”
“You’re very cool,” James said, saving his husband.
“For a seventy-two-year-old,” Beverly murmured.
Across the table, Anne let out a rueful sigh even as she smiled. “Bev, you’re cooler at seventy-two than I was at twenty-two.”
“I don’t know about that.” The older woman threw Anne a wry grin. “You know what they say, a woman can be hotter at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.”
Anne laughed, even as her cheeks flushed even more.
The conversation moved on as pieces of cake were passed around the table. Ellis wanted to hear about all the changes Freddie was making to the apartment, while Anne listened to a conversation between Bev and Cricket about the current state of New York City’s penal system.
“Our civil rights are at stake! And you should feel the toilet paper in the holding cells. It’s awful,” Cricket lamented.
Bev nodded solemnly.
For the first time in years, Freddie forgot to look at the time, letting the music and the conversation and the wine swallow up the night.
By the time he finally pulled out his phone, it was one a.m. and the party was fading.
Glen was trying to wake up Cricket, who was asleep on a nearby chaise lounge, and James was yelling at a pedestrian down on the sidewalk about public urination.
“That’s my cue,” Bev said, standing up and taking a bottle of wine with her. “Anyone else coming?”
Anne nodded from where she sat beside Ellis on the other side of the table. Her eyes were closed, and she looked only moments away from sleep herself.
Ellis sighed, looking down the table at the remnants of dinner and cake.
“Do you need help cleaning up?” Freddie offered.
“No, it’s all right. I’ll make him deal with it,” he said, motioning behind him to where James was now flipping off someone below. Then Ellis nodded down to Anne. “Can you make sure she gets back to her place in one piece, though?”
“Sure,” Freddie replied, working to sound nonchalant.
Ellis and James started to clean up while Freddie, Anne, and the rest of the party took the elevator down together. They did their best to ignore that Cricket and Glen were practically making out in the corner by the time the elevator arrived on the fourth floor.
“Good night, Cricket,” Bev called as she, Freddie, and Anne stepped off. “Make sure he wears a condom.”
“Good night!” Cricket replied. Then she smashed her face against Glen’s again as the elevator doors closed.
Bev disappeared into her apartment across the hall, so by the time Freddie navigated Anne out of the elevator, they were alone in the hallway.
“Oh, I have keys,” Anne seemed to remember, digging a hand into the pocket of her coat.
It took longer than it should have, but she pulled them out and unlocked the dead bolt, throwing the door open dramatically.
“I need to go to bed,” she said, then she walked forward into the darkness.
Freddie hesitated on the threshold, but she didn’t move to close the door behind her. It stayed open as she shed her peacoat, leaving it in a pile on the floor, then turned on the Christmas tree lights, flooding the room with a warm glow.
“You can come in,” she called out.
So he did.
“Don’t look in the kitchen. I haven’t done the dishes. Cricket uses plastic cups, but I need dishes, you know?” Anne said. She was still wearing her knit hat as she walked out of the living room and down the hall. Then the apartment fell silent.
“Anne?” he called out. When she didn’t answer, he followed where she had disappeared a moment before.
At the end of the hall, he came to an open door and stopped dead in his tracks.
Anne was lying face down on a bed, limbs flailed out like a starfish. The view was so adorable that it took him a moment to realize that the room itself was barely big enough to fit the bed. It also didn’t appear to have any windows.
But then he started to notice the details.
He had dated Anne Elliot for almost three years, was in love with her for even longer than that, but this was the first time he had ever been in her room.
He had imagined what it would look like so many times, but the reality felt different.
There were layers and imperfections, each one hinting at a different part of her.
The organized bins labeled for different office supplies above her small desk.
The line of books about math and philosophy on the shelves.
His mind flooded with questions, all the details he had been too proud to pursue before, but with Anne still lying face down in bed, he realized now wasn’t the best time, either.
“I like your room,” he said, still standing by the door.
Anne mumbled something into her duvet.
“Sorry?” he asked.
She turned her head and sighed. “I said thank you.”
Her eyes were closed, so she didn’t see as he took a few steps inside. Next to her on the bed was a folder labeled Eufloria.
“What’s Eufloria?” he asked.
Anne opened one eye to peek up at him. “Oh. It’s nothing. Well, not nothing. It’s something.”
“That narrows it down.”
She rolled her one available eye. “It’s your sister’s flower shop. But not really. That’s just the name I came up with. She doesn’t have to use it or anything.”
He nodded.
“Anyway. It’s coming along really well,” she said.
Then she pushed herself up to sit and pulled off her hat.
The static electricity sent her blond hair flying out in every direction.
A bigger man would have told her, but he rarely saw this version of her anymore, unpolished and imperfect. He had missed it.
“That’s great,” he replied.
“I’m meeting her tomorrow to go over all the last-minute stuff, so…” Her voice faded as she fell back against the bed again, this time facing up. Her eyes were closed, and for a moment he thought she might have fallen asleep, but then she said, “I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve never been in my bedroom before.”
He considered. “That’s not entirely true.”
“No?”
“Your old bedroom is my office now.”
Silence swallowed up the small room again. After another long moment, she opened her eyes again and sat up. “You know that window in the corner? The one that overlooks the park?”
He nodded.
“I used to have an old armchair next to that window,” she said wistfully. “My parents had these long velvet curtains that I would drape over the arms. It made it feel like a little cocoon. I would curl up there with a book and read for hours.”
He let the words sit in the air for a moment.
“Is it uncomfortable?” he asked, his voice low as he took a step toward her. “Having someone else live there now?”
She shook her head. “No. Just sad.”
Shit. “I’m sorry, Anne. I didn’t mean—”
“Wait.” Her head tilted to the side, a drunken motion. “I just remembered something else.”
He waited as she narrowed her eyes, like her brain was trying to catch the thought.
“You speak Spanish.” She said it like it was a revelation.
His eyebrows bobbed up. “Yes?”
“When did you learn Spanish?”
“I lived in Argentina for seven years,” he said, trying not to smile at the way her brow furrowed. “How did you know I spoke Spanish?”
She waved a hand randomly at the space between them. “After I graduated from Columbia, I created a fake Instagram account so I could follow you. In one of the reels, you speak Spanish.”
An old scar along his heart began to ache again.
“I didn’t know you were checking up on me,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Just because you blocked my number doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you.”
His heart dropped. He hadn’t thought she knew that. The only way she would have was if she had tried to call, if she had taken the time to notice that it rang and rang without going to voicemail, a telltale sign.
“Annie…” His voice faded.