Chapter Five
Casey
I’VE BEEN SEEING HIM for six weeks, and I think I know Sterling pretty well now.
Six weeks doesn’t sound like much, but I’m paying much closer attention than I usually do.
I’m anticipating the moments we’ll spend together with excitement that makes my stomach churn with nerves and has me counting down the minutes until I see him again.
It’s completely terrifying but oddly wonderful too. I’ve never let myself feel this way before. I’ve been too busy or making other excuses. I run when men get even partially this interesting, but I don’t want to run this time. I know him and am learning more every day, and I want to keep learning.
He works the way other people breathe, constantly and without appearing to decide to.
His phone goes off at hours that would make me murderous if I weren’t a night-shift nurse who already lives on a schedule the rest of the world finds offensive.
He reads contracts like I read labs, scanning for the number that doesn’t belong, and when he finds it, his whole body changes, not into excitement but into correction.
He straightens in his chair, squares the papers in front of him, and becomes the most disciplined version of himself.
That Sterling is a thing to watch, even when what he’s being exacting about is a tax code I’ll never understand.
He doesn’t sleep well. He sleeps enough, the way you sleep enough when you have trained yourself to function on less than you need, and at 4 a.m., he’s often awake, reading or answering emails.
When I’m on nights and he’s on his phone, we exist in the same strange predawn hours without either of us commenting on it.
He texts me at 4:22 once, a single line about a building he can see from his window that has one light on. I text back that it’s probably a nurse. He doesn’t respond for a minute, and then he sends a period, which I’ve learned is Sterling for I’m thinking about you and I don’t have words for it.
His penthouse is ridiculous. I’ve made my peace with it the way you make peace with a fact that won’t change by having feelings about it.
The kitchen alone is bigger than my apartment.
The closets have systems. There’s a room he calls the study that contains a desk, two walls of books he has actually read, and a view of Charlotte that looks designed rather than accidental.
The first time I stay over, it’s not planned.
We’ve been to Sal’s. We’ve been to his place for wine and a documentary about financial fraud that he picked because he wanted to point out everything it got wrong, which took longer than the documentary itself.
It’s after midnight, and I’m sitting on his couch with my shoes off, my feet tucked under me, and the last inch of wine in a glass I’ve been nursing for an hour.
“I should go.” I don’t move.
“You should.” He doesn’t move either.
We look at each other across the couch. The documentary credits are scrolling.
The city is doing its thing forty-two floors below, all light and distance and other people’s problems. Sterling is sitting on the far end with his arm along the back, not touching me, not reaching, just present in a way that takes up more space than it should.
“If I stay, it’s because I want to. Not because it’s late, the wine was good, or your couch is more comfortable than my bed, which it is, and I resent it.
I’m staying because I want to, and in the morning, I’m going to get up, put on yesterday’s clothes, drive home in the Corolla, and not have a conversation about what it means. Can you do that?”
He hesitates for only a second. “I can do that.”
I’m still skeptical. “You can’t turn it into a negotiation.”
He frowns, but he doesn’t look upset. “I’m not negotiating.”
He’s fun to tease. “You negotiate everything.”
“I’m not negotiating this.” He’s looking at me with those gray eyes, and there’s no calculation in them. He’s just a man on a couch who wants me to stay and is letting me decide.
I set the wine glass on the coffee table, cross the couch, put my hands on his face, and kiss him.
This time, it’s not brief and warm but slowly and thoroughly.
He’s careful at first, the way he was careful at Sal’s and has been about everything since the card under my windshield.
He cups my waist but stops there, waiting.
I take his hands and move them where I want them. “Stop being careful.”
That’s all the encouragement he needs. We move from the couch to the bedroom in a flurry of clothes flying and kisses landing.
His bedroom is absurd. The bed could sleep four people.
The sheets probably have a thread count that requires its own line item.
I don’t care about any of it because Sterling is pulling my shirt over my head with hands that know exactly what they’re doing, and I’m unbuttoning his shirt with hands that are steadier than his, which pleases me more than it should.
I expected him to be good at this, which he is, and I’m annoyed at myself for being right, because being wrong about Sterling Hollingsford would make the whole thing much simpler. He pays attention. He watches my face, listens to the sounds I make, and adjusts without being asked.
Afterward, I lie in sheets that cost what I make in a shift and stare at the ceiling, which is very far away, because this is a penthouse and even the ceilings are excessive. “I’m not having the conversation.”
“I’m not starting one.” He’s on his side, watching me. “Stay or go. Both are fine.”
I stay because the sheets are ridiculous, the bed is enormous, and the man lying next to me makes me feel like I’m standing at the edge of something I can’t see the bottom of, but I want to jump just to find out if I keep falling.
I stay because going home to my apartment, to my cracked-spine books, dented couch cushion, and my running shoes by the door would be the safe thing. Tonight, I don’t want to be safe.
In the morning, I put on yesterday’s clothes and drive home in the Corolla. We don’t have a conversation about what it means.
After that, I sleep there on nights I don’t work. He sleeps on his side and keeps to his half even when I’m not there, which I know because his side has a permanent dent and the other side looks like a hotel bed.
I haven’t given up my apartment. I haven’t quit my job.
I haven’t stopped paying my own rent, buying my own groceries, or driving the Corolla, which now has a new noise in addition to the check-engine light and the whine/rasp.
This is a rattle under the dash that only happens above forty.
Sterling has noticed all of this. He hasn’t commented on any of it, which must be killing him.
I appreciate his restraint and ability to respect my boundaries.
I know he wants to take care of things. The car, the apartment, and the student loans I mentioned once at Sal’s that I have already paid off.
He wants to fix the parts of my life that he reads as broken, and he can’t, because they’re not broken.
They’re mine. The distinction matters to me in ways I don’t fully explain, and it matters to him in ways he doesn’t fully understand.
We’re six weeks into a relationship that feels like standing at the edge of a cliff, and neither of us has named what’s at the bottom.
On a Saturday morning in his kitchen, we have the argument that changes everything.
It starts small. He wants to fly me to Charleston for the weekend.
There’s a restaurant he likes, a hotel on the water, and a jet that apparently just exists, same as a car.
It’s something you use when you want to go somewhere.
It sounds fun, but I have a shift Saturday night.
“Move the shift.” He shrugs like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
I scowl at him. “I’m not moving the shift. Marnie’s daughter has a dance recital and I told her I’d cover three weeks ago. I told you about this.”
“I’ll fly us back by four. You’ll make the shift.”
“I’m not getting on a plane to go to dinner, Sterling. That’s not how I eat dinner. I eat dinner at Sal’s, or at your place, or at my place where the food is terrible, and I drive to all of them in a car that makes a noise.”
“The car makes a noise because you won’t let me take it to a mechanic.”
I grit my teeth. “The car makes a noise because it’s eleven years old, it’s mine, and I’ll take it to my own mechanic when I can afford my own mechanic, which will be next month, when I have the money, because that’s how I do things.”
He stands at the island in his kitchen, coffee in his hand, wearing a T-shirt and the expression he gets when a negotiation isn’t going where he planned. Not that I’ve seen the expression often. Things almost always go his way, except with me.
I stand on the other side of it, barefoot on cold, expensive marble, and neither of us is backing down because we’re two people who don’t back down. That’s the engine of this, and also the problem with it.
“Casey.” He sets down the coffee carefully, aligned with the edge of the counter. “I’m asking you to come to Charleston. I’m not asking you to change.”
“You’re asking me to change my shift for a restaurant I’ve never heard of in a city I can drive to in three hours. You’re asking me to get on a private jet to eat seafood. Do you hear how that sounds to a woman who packed her lunch every day for eight years?”
“I know how it sounds. I’m asking anyway. I have the money to do nice things for you, and I want you to let me sometimes.”
I open my mouth to tell him why this won’t work, why the gap between his life and mine isn’t charming or interesting but structural, and why flying to dinner and packing your lunch aren’t two versions of the same life no matter how good the conversation is at Sal’s.
I hesitate, because I don’t want to tell him this won’t work.
“Marry me,” he says.