Chapter 14 Generation of Variation by Mutation and Recombination #2
Holding one of my pharmaceutical-grade Americanos in one hand and Tara’s wrist in the other, we dodged a biker, a pair of hospital workers, and the scent of boiled street meat on the sidewalk outside the cancer center.
It was one of those Manhattan mornings when the sky could not decide whether to rain or bestow sunshine, and the mood matched the meteorology: volatile and uncertain.
Andreas stood waiting in front of the glass entrance, his back to a wall of “No Smoking” signs, glancing at his phone.
He wore a lightweight charcoal coat over what was probably, if I had to guess, an obscenely expensive cashmere sweater—maybe I’ll usurp that one too!
—and his hair had a windswept, just-got-out-of-bed look that almost nobody outside of hairstylists could achieve.
The man truly was fussy about his looks.
For reasons I couldn’t untangle, my first, second, and third reaction to seeing Andreas was relief. Which likely had more to do with the night I’d had than anything else.
Releasing Tara, I rushed up to him. “Sorry we’re a little late. Were you waiting long?”
Andreas’s gaze lifted, green eyes locking on mine with such sharpness that, for a second, I forgot how to breathe. Then he flicked his gaze to Tara, nodded, and said, “Not at all. I did not wait long. It is completely fine. And I am sorry.”
It took me a second to remember why he was apologizing, but then it clicked.
He’d promised, yesterday, to apologize every time he saw me.
At least for the next ten times. I couldn’t help feeling a pulse of satisfaction that he’d not only remembered, he’d complied.
I wasn’t sure if it made anything better, but it was something.
I gave him a small smile. “I appreciate that.”
But Andreas didn’t appear to hear me. His eyebrows pulled together as he studied me and I felt his assessment as a corporeal thing as he traced the disaster that was my unwashed hair, my caffeine-glazed irises, and my lack of makeup to hide the bleary circles beneath my eyes.
“You look . . . very tired,” he said. “Are you okay? You are not getting sick, are you?”
This is where I should have lied, or at least come up with a plausible explanation for why I looked like the “before” photo in a cosmetics commercial. But instead I sighed, because that was easier than forming an entire sentence, and then I glanced at Tara in mute desperation.
She picked up the cue and said, “She sleepwalked out of her building last night.”
I tried to wave it off, but Tara’s answer hung in the air, pulsing with implication.
Andreas jerked to attention, his posture going rigid. “Are you serious? What happened?”
“My friend Diya couldn’t stay over last night,” I fumbled to explain, shoving my hand in my jacket pocket and ducking my head.
“She’s been sleeping with me all last week, and she always wakes up when I sleepwalk.
But last night, she had a thing, so my other friend, Nakita, stayed with me instead.
She’s a heavier sleeper. I guess she . . . didn’t notice when I got up.”
Tara chimed in, “Basically, Nakita slept through Sam waking up, walking out of the apartment—”
“It’s not her fault,” I interrupted, because it wasn’t her fault.
Tara kept going, undeterred. “—taking the elevator downstairs, walking out of the lobby and on to the sidewalk. Luckily, her doorman figured out something was wrong because Sam was in her pajamas and not responding.”
Andreas’s concern sharpened, and he looked at Tara like her recitation of the details personally offended him. “The doorman woke her up? Where were you? Where was her team? And why is it just the two of you now?”
Tara bristled, shoulders climbing an inch.
“She doesn’t have a shift assigned when she’s at home.
That would be ridiculous. She’s smart. Not going to let anyone inside the apartment she doesn’t know.
She’s been training in self-defense with me at the gym.
She’s supposed to be safe at home. And it’s just me today because I had to pull Chan and Tomar out of bed in the middle of the night to stand guard outside her door, just in case she did it again.
Plus, you’re here. Your psycho brother won’t do anything with you here. We’ll be fine.”
Listening to the two of them talk over me, about me, in detail, triggered a weird wistfulness.
My parents used to have these conversations in front of me when I was a kid, as if the most effective way to solve a problem was to pretend the problem didn’t have ears or feelings.
I didn’t miss that dynamic necessarily, but it still felt nostalgic.
And I did not blame Tara for her bad mood. I’d gotten so little sleep last night, the entire sequence felt more like a fever dream than something that actually happened.
I rubbed my eye with the heel of my hand, fighting the urge to yawn in Andreas’s face. “Okay, that’s enough. It happened. We need to get going or we’ll be late for our appointment.”
He caught my arm as I reached past him for the door handle. “What are you going to do tonight?”
I hesitated. I’d given exactly zero thought to tonight, but I was terrified.
I didn’t want to sleep, or even try, knowing how easy it was for my brain to betray me.
But I also didn’t want to impose on Diya or Nakita or anyone else who needed rest. There was always the possibility that I could ask Tara to spend the night, but she couldn’t watch me day and night forever. The woman had her own life.
“I’ll figure it out later,” I said, and it sounded as hollow as it felt.
It was time to concentrate. This meeting was important. And my sleepwalking worries could wait until tonight. For now, getting through this interview was all that mattered.