Chapter 55 Jillian
JILLIAN
“This could be the end of everything / So why don’t we go somewhere only we know?”
— “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane
We end up at a tiny Italian place on Bleecker Street with a half-dozen bistro tables crammed onto the sidewalk.
It’s too cold for outdoor seating by any reasonable standard, but the sun is out and there are heat lamps and I am with a walking, talking furnace who seems intent on keeping his arm looped around my shoulders, so I don’t mind the chill in the air so much.
The hostess gives us a wobbly two-top wedged between a potted boxwood and the building’s brick facade.
Kir holds my chair out and kisses me on the top of the head once I’m seated.
We order cappuccinos and pastries, then sit and talk for a while with the sun on our faces. “You have foam on your chin,” I tell him. “No, your other chin. No, your other other— Look, just…” I lick my thumb, lean forward, and wipe it off for him.
“I feel like a puppy being tongue-bathed,” he complains.
“Don’t act like you don’t like it.”
He catches my wrist before I can pull it back and sinks his teeth gently into the meat of my palm. When I yelp in surprise, he grins and kisses the spot he just bit. His eyes stay fixed on mine the entire time.
“Stop that,” I scold, even as that by-now-familiar squiggly heat ignites in my belly. “Stop looking at me like that. In public, no less. Have you no decency?”
“How would you say I’m looking at you?” he purrs.
“Like I’m… I dunno. Like you’re a lion and I’m a steak.”
“From puppy to lion, hm? I’ll take it.” He releases my wrist and leans back in his chair, stretching his legs out until his ankle hooks around mine under the table.
“I’ll take this, too.” He steals a piece of my croissant, then grins wolfishly in a way that defies me to keep pretending like I’m irritated with him.
“You’d be very annoying if you weren’t so cute, you know.”
He arches a brow. “So I’m cute?”
“Mhmm. Cute like a puppy. A squirming, helpless, teeny-tiny widdle—”
“If you finish that sentence, little fox, I assure you you will regret it.”
I’m grinning just as wildly as he is when Kir’s phone buzzes against the table. He glances down, sees it, and frowns. “I need to take this,” he sighs, standing and pushing his chair back. “Two minutes.”
I wave him off, happy to sit here and photosynthesize. “No worries. Take your time.”
He stands, kisses the top of my head once more as he passes behind me, and walks toward the corner of Bleecker and Perry with the phone to his ear. I watch him go, and then I pick up my coffee and take a sip and tip my face toward the sun, eyes closed.
This is nice. This is so, so nice. Too nice? No. Just the right amount of nice. I could deal with the rest of my life being exactly this nice.
That, of course, is what should’ve told me that it couldn’t possibly last.
“Jillian?”
My eyes snap open.
Doug is standing on the sidewalk four feet away, holding a brown paper bag from Murray’s Cheese and a large coffee.
He’s wearing a beat-up khaki jacket with the collar popped wrong and his reading glasses are pushed up on top of his head.
He looks like he always looks, which is to say rumpled and vaguely irritated at the world for daring to exist.
But his eyes aren’t on me. They’re tracking something down the block, toward the corner where Kir just disappeared with his phone.
Then they come back to me.
Then they go back to the corner.
Then back to me.
I watch in mute horror as Doug’s brain connect the dots. Even if he weren’t a reporter with forty years of experience, it’s not a hard puzzle to solve. I’m still wearing Kir’s shirt, for God’s sake. I might as well have GUILTY henna-tattooed on my forehead.
He knows I’ve been sleeping with the enemy.
“Hi, Doug,” I say weakly. “Fancy seeing you here.”
He shifts the cheese bag to his other hand and takes a step closer to the table. “Was that Kir Lazarev?”
Like a good reporter, he already knows the answer to his question. He’s just waiting for me to confirm it on the record.
“I… plead the Fifth?”
“Jillian.”
“Doug, it’s not—”
“Stop right there.” He holds up one finger. “Because whatever comes after ‘it’s not’ is going to be a lie, and you and I both know I can’t unhear a lie once you’ve told it.”
I grip my coffee cup, but it’s suddenly gone so, so cold. The sun is still bright on my face but I can’t feel its warmth anymore. Any heat that once lived in this world has been sucked out into the void.
Doug pulls out Kir’s empty chair and sits down across from me. He sets his coffee and the cheese bag on the table between our plates, folds his hands, and looks at me with the saddest disappointment he’s ever worn.
“Alright,” he commands. “Start talking.”