Chapter XIII
XIII
Teddy
I wake up with a sore back, a dead phone, and a Zen-like calm I haven’t felt in years.
The sun is warm, casting a pale light across the office.
I tiptoe over to Marin’s desk, wiggle a mouse to check the time, and see that it’s almost noon and that—according to an OOO notification that pops up on the screen—she took the day off.
Marin Voss has taken exactly zero vacation since I started working with her.
I count my wins: She didn’t kick me out.
She isn’t dismissing me for work. In the kitchen, there’s a carafe of water with a matching cup and a note on the counter: “Be back soon x MV.” Marin’s handwriting, the way it flops to the right somewhere between print and script, puts a stupid grin on my face.
That I get to see it at all feels like we’ve unlocked some new level of closeness, earned or not.
I’m buzzing as I settle at a barstool. Things could work out , I dare to think.
This could be the moment we look back at in forty years, the fulcrum in the story where everything changed.
In the bathroom, Marin’s left a D.S. & Durga candle burning over the toilet, and I instantly recognize the scent as the perfume she wears. Or at least, the perfume she wore five years ago.
I am in desperate need of another shower after hours of tossing and turning while trying to force my body onto Copenhagen time, to keep it from picking apart every single gesture Marin made and every syllable she uttered since I arrived.
Under the steady stream of hot water, I give up on collecting my thoughts.
I’m here because I think I might be in love with Marin.
Or at least, I’m here to find out if I could be.
If the entire thing blows up in my face, at least I’ll know I tried.
Maybe then I can finally let go of this crush I’ve harbored for most of my adult life.
Thoughts at top volume, I wrap myself in another towel and walk back toward my makeshift accommodations.
I turn the corner in the hall, and as I slow in front of a Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition poster— how did we never talk about both seeing this?
—I promptly slip on the hardwood floor. I am on the ground, at the feet of Marin Voss, wrapped in a camel coat, carrying what smells like pastries.
Seminaked, I look up at her expecting to see something smug cross her beatific face.
At my clumsiness. At my presence at all.
But instead, Marin can’t stop laughing, dropping her bags to the counter and stabilizing herself against the wall.
“It’s... it’s so funny, in a slipping-on-a-banana-peel way.
That you’re here at all. I’m sorry, are you OK?
” She pulls me up, and for a second, we’re inches away.
My chest damp and heaving. The belt of her coat undone.
I notice her pajama shirt from the night before, still so goddamn unbuttoned.
Her cheeks are flushed from being in the cold.
The afternoon sun streams into the room with full force, lighting up a face I’ve only seen on a computer camera for the last two years.
She does that hair-tuck thing, reenacting a moment I can’t stop replaying in my head from the road trip, and I realize I am getting hard underneath her monogrammed towel, which is possibly the only thing that could make this situation more awkward.
“Nothing to see here.” I stand taller and rewrap my towel.
Her eyes flit to my waist, and she rests her hand on my bare shoulder and leans to speak into my ear. “Breakfast when you’re ready.”
She’s cheerful, maybe even flirtatious. Enough so that I momentarily consider pressing her against the wall, yanking the belt of her coat, and kissing her for the second time in my life.
But if I want this trip to be more than one kiss or the culmination of our phone sex session, there’s talking to do first.
I scuttle into the office to change into a sweatshirt and pants with wool socks.
The whirl of the espresso machine strikes me as intimate in a way it never has before, and I realize there’s been a pair of rose-colored glasses permanently affixed to my face since the moment I walked through Marin’s door.
Well, probably the moment I spent $4,000 on a last-minute ticket.
Making the decision to ignore the voicemail from my doctor that came in during the flight, I tell myself that everything else can wait.
Someone stop me. I’m an optimist on the loose.
Marin
“I assume you take yours with milk and sugar?” I ask, handing him a mug of my dad’s so precious to me that I wrapped it in two cashmere sweaters and transported it in my carry-on when I moved.
“And yours is black still, I presume?”
I laugh, then blush—that we would both recall these details from the one time we had coffee together, procured from a motel lobby in suburban Illinois and consumed along I-294.
He slides into the chair across from mine, eyes bright and eager. Seeing Teddy in daylight, not across a screen, I can catalog how he’s changed and how he hasn’t. He’s grown into his features. He still carries himself with confidence, but it’s more relaxed, less straight-backed.
I wish he’d stop staring at me with those eyes.
And I wish I could focus on something other than the way his shoulders are pressing against his cotton sweatshirt.
I never feel nervous on dates—not that this qualifies as one—and I’m not big on morning-after hangs.
This is novel. I’m glad Teddy’s the first person I’m making breakfast for.
In a weird way that I’m not sure how to interrogate yet, it feels right.
I tried to make a pros and cons list in my journal this morning, before calling Sloane, but the competing thoughts were so disorienting that I shoved the notebook away like it was to blame.
I’m determined to try my best not to analyze my feelings to death, not to let my rational mind hijack the day.
And now I have Teddy here in the flesh to help with that.
The scene of him sleeping, shirtless with an erection.
His chiseled body fresh from the shower, in accidental repose on my floor.
Now, watching him watch me, my rational mind is no longer a factor.
All I can think about is enacting every scene from our phone call here on the kitchen counter.
That has to mean something. But does it matter?
I straighten my spine and push my hair out of my face, the way I always do when I’m nervous.
No one else makes me feel this way. What if I let myself think of that as a good thing?
Stop belaboring it , I tell myself. You’ve already decided you’re letting him stay.
“Does your surprise trip come with a surprise agenda?” I ask.
Teddy smiles. “The only game plan was to not get thrown out of your apartment. I saw you took the day off.”
I smooth the linen tablecloth mindlessly, moved by the eagerness in his voice. That he wanted to ask more but didn’t. This time, we’re not stuck on the interstate with a broken radio. We have the entire city of Copenhagen at our disposal.
“Here’s the plan. Sloane’s visiting in two weeks with Violet for her spring break. I’m going to test run a trial itinerary on you.”
Teddy leans back in his chair, and I feel something warm in the middle of my hips.
“You’re telling me Marin Voss is looking for some constructive feedback? I’m in.”
“We leave in thirty,” I instruct, tossing back my cortado. Trying to swallow a feeling stronger than a crush, sweeter than desire.