Chapter 36 Jillian
JILLIAN
“And the hardest part / Was letting go, not taking part”
— “The Hardest Part” by Coldplay
I make it back to my desk without anyone stopping me.
How that happened, I don’t know. The Big Man Upstairs must finally be taking pity on me.
I drop into my chair, tug my blouse straight, and pull up the zoning filing again.
But once again, the words swim and dissolve into gibberish.
How can I focus on the intricacies of city building codes when my thighs are still trembling and there’s a tender spot on my neck where the belt sat?
Or the soft weight of Kir’s handkerchief wadded up in my pocket, damp and incriminating?
I pick up my coffee. It’s cold, but I drink it anyway, because it gives my hands something to do.
Weston rolls his chair around the cubicle partition about forty-five seconds later. “What a day at the office, am I right?” he says with a wolf-whistle. “The eye candy was off the charts.”
I pretend to scoff. “Nothing to write home about.”
But Weston is in a persistent state of mind, apparently. His jaw drops in disbelief. “Are your eyes malfunctioning? You saw him up close, right? He’s a dreamboat in Tom Ford, girl.” He puts his elbows on the edge of my desk and props his chin in his hands. “Please tell me you got his number.”
I snort. “Why would I get his number?”
“Because he looks like he was grown in a lab? Because he smells like a very expensive candle? I was four cubicles away and I caught a whiff and I have not forgotten.”
“He’s a source, Weston,” I remind him acidly. “I cover his company.”
“Okay, but like, hypothetically,” he insists. “If he wasn’t a source.”
“Hypothetically, still no.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not my type.”
Weston blinks at me. “Jillian. Jill. Jilly. My girl. My love. My darling… The man is everyone’s type.
He’s universally, objectively, scientifically attractive.
” He tilts his head. “Since when do you even have a type? Weren’t you just telling me about that Hinge guy a couple weeks ago?
I think I specifically recall you saying, ‘He wasn’t my type, but he was still hot, so I went back to his place. ’”
My face blushes as I remember that lie, one of a billion similar ones I’ve told since Weston and I first became friends and I started my whole Sexually Liberated Jill shtick to keep the heat off me. “That’s different.”
“How?!” asks Weston, incredulous.
“It just is, okay? I’m not talking about this anymore.
” I turn around as if to go back to work, but Weston makes no move to do the same.
I can feel the heat of his gaze on the back of my neck.
I shrug my shoulders and pray that the high collar of my blouse hides the lines of Kir’s belt, because if Weston sees that, his inquisition will know no end.
This is getting harder, though. I can feel the performance cracking around the edges.
Two weeks ago, this would’ve been easy. I would’ve leaned into the bit, made a joke about Kir’s jawline, asked Weston to DM him on my behalf, played the whole thing for laughs.
That version of the routine used to come so naturally I didn’t even have to think about it.
But now, there’s a handkerchief in my pocket and belt marks on my throat, and the breezy deflection that used to fit so well feels two sizes too small.
“You’re being weird,” Weston decides. “Weirder than usual, even.” He narrows his eyes, then drops his voice into a concerned register. “Jill… Did something happen at that hospital event? You’ve been off ever since.”
I shake my head without looking back at him. “Nothing happened. I’m just tired.”
Weston squints at me for another few seconds, then sighs and shrugs. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” He rolls his chair back to his side. “But for the record, you’re a terrible liar.”
I turn back to my screen. Once upon a time, he would’ve been wrong: I used to be a very good liar.
Not anymore, it seems.
After a long and incredibly unproductive day, I leave the office at six and take the long way home.
I don’t plan the detour; my feet just go where they go, and by the time I realize where I’m headed, I’m already crossing into the park with the last bit of daylight bleeding out behind the buildings.
The air is cold enough to sting my cheeks and I should’ve worn a heavier coat, but I keep walking.
The playground is emptier than it was on Thanksgiving.
But on the swings, a woman is pushing a little girl.
The girl is four, maybe five. Her brown hair is tied up in two stubby pigtails and she’s wearing a purple coat with a fur-trimmed hood and rain boots with daisies.
She kicks her legs on the upswing and squeals every time she reaches the top of the arc.
Her mother catches the chains on the backswing, gives another push, and says something I can’t hear from here.
The girl throws her head back and laughs, the purest sound I’ve ever heard.
I wrap my fingers through the chain-link fence.
I do the math in my head, same as I always do. Five years and three months, if I’m being exact, and I’m always being exact, because the math is the only thing I let myself cling to. Everything else, I gave away. A hospital bracelet on a tiny, chubby wrist—gone.
The girl on the swing has brown hair. Hers would have been red. I’m almost sure of it. My mother was a redhead. My grandmother was a redhead. It runs in the blood so deep that I can’t imagine it skipping a generation just because the other half of the equation was dark-haired and monstrous.
She’d have freckles across the bridge of her nose. She’d be stubborn. She’d be loud.
She’d be mine.
I don’t cry. I used to, whenever I came by here and did exactly what I’m doing right now, but I’ve trained that out of myself. Crying is a door, and once you open it in a place this public, it’s almost impossible to shut it again.
The mother looks over. Our eyes meet across thirty feet of woodchips and rubber matting, and I watch her face change when she sees me staring.
She stops the swing mid-arc, scoops the girl off the seat, and walks briskly toward the jungle gym on the far side of the playground.
The girl protests, reaching back toward the swings, but her mother doesn’t slow down.
I look down at my hands. My knuckles are white around the chain-link, fingers threaded through the diamond-shaped gaps so tightly the metal has left red grooves in my skin.
I can’t really blame her. I feel a rush of guilt and shame all at once.
A woman standing alone at a playground fence, watching a child that isn’t hers…
I know what that looks like. I know exactly what that mother just saw when she looked at me, because I would’ve done the same thing. Any good mother would.
I let go of the fence. The grooves in my fingers fill back in slowly, red fading to pink.
I turn around and walk home. I don’t look back at the playground, no matter how bad I want one more glimpse of a happy little girl and the mother who loves her.
My building comes into view and I dig for my keys, head down, still shaking off the lingering feeling left behind by the playground. It’s like a residue that sticks to my skin and makes it cold and clammy. I take the stairs up, then slip inside my apartment.
I drop my bag on the counter and kick off my shoes, the usual ritual. Then I hear a tap on glass.
He’s on the fire escape. No mask tonight. Just Kir as himself, sitting on the metal grating with his back against the brick, one knee drawn up, wearing a dark sweater and jeans.
I unlatch the window.
“You wanted access,” he says instead of a greeting. “Let’s talk.”
I step back and let him climb through. He stands in my kitchen, full height, and I feel the familiar twin surges of both what am I doing and how could I ever stop. So I open the cabinet and pull down two glasses and the whiskey.
“Okay,” I say as I pour one for me and one for him. “Talk.”