Chapter Sixteen #2
“The reference is subtle for sure,” he said, pointing. “Can you see the hidden dagger on the man’s belt?”
“Just.” If I squinted.
“This was painted during the Italian war of Independence,” Elliot said. “So, the fact the man is armed, combined with the time period, suggests he is off to combat.”
“Huh.” I rocked back on my heels.
“But look how tightly she grips him – her curled fingers digging into his arm. And see how his foot is on the step? He’s literally tearing himself away from her to go to war for his country.
When you really think about it, there’s something so desperately …
tragic about this picture but uplifting.
Like … they have a love worth fighting for, but who knows if they’ll make it? ”
For a long moment, I didn’t know what to say. There was something transformative about Elliot’s face when he got lost in a story. I’d noticed it in the writers’ room, and I was noticing it now; his expression grew soft, all tension gone. He looked free.
“Okay … that makes sense,” I said eventually. “I think what I’m missing is—”
Elliot threw his hands up. “If you say a fucking meet-cute right now, I swear to God—”
“If I could finish? Sometimes people need a little help. Why do you think museums hand out guides?” I gestured around us at the patrons, many of whom were wearing the museum-issued headsets and were clearly listening to the audio guide.
“All I’m saying is, at times, in our script, like in this painting, the characters feel inaccessible.
We need to let people in, and doing that doesn’t diminish the piece’s quality or worth. ”
Elliot shuffled his feet. “Point taken,” he muttered.
“Clearly, my use of meet-cute gave the wrong message,” I went on. “But trust me when I say I do understand why you resisted me.”
He laughed. “Are you telling me you’re now irresistible?”
I flashed back to the first day I met him and blushed. “I meant – not like that – I meant—” Oh good, the gibbering idiot from Have a Java had returned. “I was talking about why you didn’t want to work with me, nothing else—”
“I know what you meant,” he said with a low, throaty laugh, showing those dimples yet again.
He really had no business being this appealing.
I turned back to the painting, trying to imagine myself making such a sacrifice and feeling grateful that I’d never had to.
But then, I’d never been in love before, had I?
My career had seen to that. And that had been my choice; after all, you opened yourself up to love, you opened yourself up to the possibility of the pain the couple in Il Bacio were facing.
Was I better off for never having let someone in?
Until recently, I’d always thought it was the most efficient form of existence.
But look at Bex. Crushing it at work and about to start a new chapter with a wonderful man.
Love wasn’t stopping her from achieving greatness. What was wrong with me?
The bespectacled man popped up again, chasing away my troubling thoughts. “Excuse me,” he said to Elliot, “but my wife and I really would like to look at this properly and you’re so tall.”
“Come on,” Elliot said to me. “I paid entry, we should try and take some of this place in before we head back to the office.”
We drifted around the museum for a little while longer; there was so much to see it would truly take days.
But I found it incredibly peaceful soaking it all in and, despite my initial irritation at Elliot’s attitude, I pushed myself to give the more abstract and obscure pieces of art a chance, which is how I found myself trapped staring at a circular painting of jewel-like shapes called Coney Island.
“Good choice.” Elliot’s deep rumble startled me.
“It’s a funfair, right?” The picture’s kaleidoscopic qualities did feel somewhat jubilant and sunny.
“Oh, Coney Island is so much more than a ‘funfair.’” Elliot’s eyes lit up. “We had lots of vacations there when I was a kid. It’s a boardwalk, a fair, a beach … It’s got everything.”
“Sounds a bit like Blackpool,” I said.
“Black Pool?” His pronunciation placed equal emphasis on both syllables.
“It’s a seaside town in the north of England,” I explained. “That’s where I spent my summers as a kid. Riding donkeys, eating toffee apples and, of course, the illuminations.”
“Illuminations?” He mouthed the word as if it were one he’d never heard before.
“A light show,” I explained. “All along the seafront. Iconic and cheesy but so, so fun. More importantly, it was free, which was kinda necessary. But I loved it.”
“Sounds very Coney Island.”
“I once had a dream that a tsunami wiped out Blackpool and I was so heartbroken I cried for the whole day.” Elliot frowned and I hurried to explain.
“In my defense, I was seven.” Nana Kath had had to lie in bed with me to calm my sobs.
She’d stroked my hair, this no-nonsense woman, and reassured me Blackpool was safe, that I was safe.
She’d folded her body into my cramped little bed to hold me, filling my head with her familiar scent of menthol cigarettes and Imperial Leather soap.
And in her arms, I’d believed her whispered assurances.
Although not enough to immediately wipe out the visual of Blackpool Tower crumbling under the onslaught of relentless, uncaring waves, but she’d held me for what felt like hours.
Fuck, I missed my nan. “Can you imagine if a tidal wave took out Coney Island – how would you feel?”
Elliot let out a sigh so intense his hair flipped. “I’d do whatever it took to rebuild it. Hmm.” He let out big huff. “Kinda like the way the script ends, the rebuilding of New York City. And on that note … we should get back to the office.”
My stomach let out a big rumble and I checked my watch. It was a long way past lunchtime. “Okay, but I am literally about to devour my own face,” I said.
“Right,” Elliot said. “We need to get you fed and less irritating. What do you want?”
“Anything,” I said. “Pizza. Pasta. Scabby horse.”
“Scabby what now?”
“It’s an expression,” I said. “It means you’re so hungry you’d eat—”
He lifted a hand. “Okay, okay. That’s so grossly British.” He pursed his lips in thought, then brightened. “I know just the place. Are you able to manage a walk? Twenty minutes max.”
I groaned. “I might actually die.”
“The best hot dogs you will ever have. Guaranteed.”
“Hot dogs?” I repeated as we followed signs to the exit.
“It’s a little place in the East Village,” he explained. “It’s awesome.”
I didn’t want to offend him, but my experience of hot dogs were those rubbery sausages you got in a jar of brine shoved in a dry bread roll and slathered in ketchup. Hardly appetizing.
Elliot clocked my face and tutted. “Oh my God, you’re not even talking and yet somehow I know you’re dragging my choice.”
“I’m really not!” I rushed to reply. “It’s just, I mean, how exciting can hot dogs be?”
Almost forty minutes later, I had my answer. I sank my teeth into a chili-maple-bacon-wrapped hotdog, layered with sour cream, scallion and chili flakes in an exquisite brioche roll.
“Is that exciting enough for you?” Elliot grinned wolfishly as he scarfed down his own guacamole-slathered hot dog.
“So much that I forgive you for lying about how long it took to walk here,” I said through a mouthful of food.
Brekdogs was an unassuming fast-food place in the East Village, its grungy sign almost obscured by political stickers and graffiti.
Inside the exposed-brick interior, there was barely enough room for a few high tables, all of which were busy.
“Man, I gained like ten pounds when I first discovered it. It took a lot of work to correct that.” He rubbed his belly, accidentally flipping his shirt to reveal a glimpse of rock-hard muscle.
I couldn’t help it. The sight of his chiseled abs sent all my blood down south and I gasped, accidentally inhaling crumbs of bread bun down my windpipe and causing a coughing fit of epic proportions.
Elliot slapped my back. “You okay?”
Red-faced and hacking, I nodded, reached for my root beer. “I’m alive.”
“What is it with you and choking to death on baked goods?” Elliot wondered.
“It is a skill of mine,” I said as I soothed my throat with sweet, delicious fizz. God, I was hard up. It took the smallest sight of bare skin and I was wheezing all over him like a perve.
“I’m honored to have witnessed it in action twice then,” he said with a grin.
I blushed, grateful for a mouth full of root beer preventing me from saying anything. Did he ever look back on our first meeting, the way he’d flirted with me when he didn’t know who I was? Did he regret that I became his colleague, what else I might have been?
I sighed. There was no point even dwelling on this. He was my colleague and anything more than that was out of bounds.
Elliot checked his watch. “Yikes. We should head back to RJF.” He looked pointedly at the remaining hot dog in my hand. “You ready to go?”
I shoved the last morsel in my mouth. “Mmmph.”
His eyes met mine. “Then let’s get outta here.”