Damaged

Sophia

I decide to leave once my cheeks have cooled. This night was a bust from the beginning, and I just insulted the most handsome man I’ve seen, let alone talked to, in ages.

Whatever. If a man that good-looking isn’t taken, he probably has some baggage I don’t want to deal with anyway.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

I congratulate Richard on the big sale. He’s always the one selling the pieces that would cover my rent for a year. Of course, it’s structured that way.

I can only sell inventory worth less than one-hundred grand until I’ve been here one more year. Then my ceiling is a quarter million. Not many galleries operate this way. There’s a reason there was a job opening here—Richard is a little tyrant and my boss.

“Did you sell anything tonight?” he asks.

“I struck out.”

“Well, you can’t leave. There are still potential customers.” Richard smells like a distillery. He always gets roaring drunk at these things.

I want to explain that if I tried to sell anything, my zombie-like enthusiasm would just scare people away from the gallery. But I bite my tongue.

“Right,” I say. “I’ll keep hitting the floors.”

“Good.” His little white mustache quivers, and he returns to his conversation.

I go into our back office to get my coat and purse, and I slip out into the alley through the delivery door.

Secretly leaving work early is number two on the evening for things I’ve never done before. Three, if you count insulting a customer’s choice of million-dollar art to their face.

Playing hooky doesn’t come without consequence—the alley is unplowed, and I’m shin deep in snow. I can’t see my bare feet in my heels as I walk to the sidewalk, and when I finally get there, they hurt from the cold and burn bright red.

Ow. Ow. Ow. What was I thinking? I should’ve just left out the front when Richard wasn’t looking. I stomp my feet to get the remaining snow off them and try to warm them up.

The other problem I face is that there’s not a single damn car on the street. It’s the storm.

I pull out my phone and see a twenty-five-minute wait for an Uber. I should find a bar and warm up while I wait, but I’m hit by an urge to get home. I can walk. It’s only twenty minutes.

Twenty snowy, freezing minutes, and I already can’t feel my feet. Can I get frostbite in only twenty minutes? Maybe.

I’ll duck in a bar and warm up after I’ve been walking for ten.

I start to cross the street.

I’m halfway to the other side, and too busy navigating my shoes through the slush to notice the headlights in my periphery until it’s too late.

My dumbass is jaywalking, and I look up and see a black SUV coming straight at me.

This is it. My death.

I throw one arm up pathetically like that will save my life, but they slam on the brakes to stop. I’m expecting the tires to lock on the slick street, but the SUV comes to an immediate stop.

It’s German. A black Mercedes SUV with tall black tires. The most shocking part of the entire situation is that they haven’t honked. I put on my best apology face and wave, but I get nothing from behind the dark-tinted glass.

I’m most of the way across the street when I hear a window rolling down. “Hey, snowflake.”

I turn to see the handsome man from the art gallery leaning out the driver’s window.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Where are you going in this mess?”

“Home,” I say.

“And where’s that?”

“Civic Center.”

“That’s close to me,” he says matter of fact, and then his brow narrows like he realizes the chivalrous thing to do is offer me a ride, but I can tell he doesn’t want to. “Come on,” he says, sighing, and nods at the passenger side. “It’s no night for a walk.”

“Sorry, but… stranger danger, you know.”

He looks past me, and then he points. “Do you see that traffic camera?”

I turn and see the black little orb sticking off the nearest light pole. “Yeah.”

“Do you think it’s recording grainy footage? The kind that gives you Big Foot and Nessy?”

“Probably not.”

“They can see every feature of my face.” He leans out the window so the street light shines on him. “One look at this footage, and they know exactly who I am and where I live. The same goes for you.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I am right,” he says, like he knows something about this technology that I don’t.

I’m annoyed, but I’m not about to try to prove a point by walking home in the cold. I do want to get in the car with him. Not just because I feel like my feet are about to fall off, but because he’s handsome and I feel bad for being a know-it-all about his purchase at the gallery. People can like modern art. I’m not the gatekeeper of all things tasteful in this world. I certainly have some questionable takes myself.

“Okay.” I sigh. “Thank you.”

I walk around to the passenger side and hop in. It’s without a doubt the nicest vehicle I’ve ever been in. I sink into the leather seat. The inside cabin is lit dimly by purple light that runs along the dash and wooden center console.

He puts his foot on the gas, and the Mercedes glides over the slushy street as smoothly as if it were dry.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“.”

“Nice to meet you, .”

“You’re not going to give me yours?” I ask, but he’s not looking at me. He’s focusing on the road as we turn.

“James.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” I say. “By the way, I’m sorry I shit on your art. That wasn’t very cool of me.”

“I’d only be insulted if you thought I purchased it out of taste. It’s an investment. I’m sticking it in a storage locker in New Jersey for three years.”

“Oh.” I smile. “Oh, thank God.” I’m relieved but then a tad ticked off. “Why’d you let me stew in embarrassment, then?”

“Because it was funny,” he says without a smile.

“Funny? I thought you were going to talk to my boss and have me fired.”

“I still might.”

“That’s not funny,” I say, but really, getting fired doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world. Tonight has proved I’m growing sick of my job.

“I only kid. I’m not a rich snob.”

“I couldn’t tell from the car. This thing is…” I look around the detailed cabin. The real clock in the dashboard says Patek Phillippe .

“Is what?” James asks.

“Ridiculous,” I say but with some admiration in my tone.

“What about it is ridiculous?”

“I don’t know. The oversized tires. Everything.”

“I have this car for days like this. The tires aren’t oversized. They’re offroad.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that guys in cars like this…”

“Usually have a complex?” He finishes my sentence.

“Yeah. Usually have a complex.”

He grins. “I’m driving a lifted Benz because it’s snowing eight inches, not because I don’t have eight inches.”

I pause, a little taken aback. I wish I wasn’t so exhausted and existential from work. This man is something else. He’s vaguely familiar, like he could be an actor I’m forgetting. I think of something to say to flirt back, but my brain is mush.

“Cocky” is all I say.

“Mm. No. Confident,” James corrects me. “So where do you live, specifically.”

“I’m at the Blossoms.”

“On Cherry Street?”

“You know it?”

He’s dead silent for too long. “Oh yes, I know it,” he says, like he has history there. An ex, maybe.

“It’s not bad. I don’t need roommates, so I’m not complaining.” I say this, but a roommate to split rent with would make my life much, much easier. I’m trying to make something like that work with my two best friends, Hailee and Alana. Right now, I don’t have an emergency fund or a retirement fund. Or any of those funds that articles online tell me I should have by a certain age.

I watch James’s right hand resting on the center console. Thick blue veins web the back of it. I feel myself growing hot, and I point the vent fan away from me and speak to fill the air.

“I’m probably moving out soon, anyway.”

“How come?”

“They converted the floor above mine into a single penthouse, and this nightmare moved in.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He’s a comically bad neighbor. Unless you’re deaf. It’s loud sex. Loud music. And then he does what I can only assume are burpees at four in the morning, banging the floor.”

“I—” James starts to talk, but I interrupt him. I’m finally venting about something that’s been getting on my nerves for months, and I’m not holding back.

“Last week I had to look at a painting done by a man who dipped his balls in paint and dragged them across the canvas. It’s supposedly some masterpiece of masculinity. Can you guess how much it went for?”

“Um. Thirty thousand?”

“About ten times that. Over four-hundred grand. It would take me years to make that money. I’m getting off topic, but I’m trying to paint the mood I was in. So, I get home after I’m forced to hear all about this one-of-a-kind piece, and I lie down to go to bed, and you know what I hear? Sex. I hear sex. More specifically, I hear…” I trail off and shake my head.

I could only say balls in front of this stranger so many times without seeming deranged.

“Balls?” James fills in the blank again.

“Yes. I hear balls. The sound of them slapping on skin. And I hear it all the time now. It’s like my apartment is haunted by ghosts who bang.”

“Sounds like a rough time. Have you ever complained to management?”

“No. I don’t want to be that woman.”

“What about talking to your neighbor?”

I shake my head.

“It sounds like you’ve tried absolutely nothing and are all out of options.”

I lean back, a little offended. I’m frustrated, but James is right. “I guess that’s true. I just wish people had the self-awareness not to do shit like that in the first place.”

We pull up in front of the Blossoms, but we pass the entrance. My stomach shoots into my throat. Am I about to be kidnapped? “Hey, James, that was my stop.”

The SUV slows in front of the door to the parking garage. The garage door opens. My mouth is open in confusion for a few seconds before more fear fills my blood.

But it’s not fear for my life. It’s mortification.

“Do you live here?” I ask, my voice almost trembling.

“Yeah.”

I’ve put it together. The car. The suit. The money to buy that modern piece of crap in the gallery. My heart pulses with shame.

“You’re my neighbor…”

James stops the Mercedes in front of the elevator doors to let me out.

“Yeah,” he says in the exact same plain tone as before.

I slowly paw for the door handle like I’m drunk. I’m looking for words. Do I apologize? No. That would be a weak move. I was telling the truth. Still, I can’t help it. He was nice enough to give me a ride in the snow and didn’t flip out when I called his expensive art garbage. “I’m sorry, James. Thank you. Thank you for the ride.”

“My pleasure.”

I open the door and stand in the parking garage. It smells of exhaust and wet concrete. I try to focus on that and not my embarrassment.

“I’ll try to keep my balls down for you,” James says.

“Thanks,” I say earnestly, like he just told me he’d play music quieter.

“It was nice meeting you, . I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You too,” I say and shut the car door. Wait. See you tomorrow? What did he mean by that? But his wet tires are already swishing to his private parking area.

I don’t move to call the elevator. I stay still until the sound of James’s car is gone and it’s silent, but it’s never completely quiet in a parking garage. My ears can sense the vastness of the space. It feels as hollow as my insides.

I had a chance with a hot guy, and I more than blew it. But that’s for the best. I don’t need to be another notch on his bedpost. Even if it does sound like the sex would be good. I’d much rather keep my pride and not give this jerk the pleasure.

I punch the elevator button and hold my head high. I’m less bothered already. It’s more so his words that are nagging me. They’re almost ominous.

What the hell did he mean by see you tomorrow?