29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
Stanley
She’s looking down at her hands, and she just asked me to dinner.
Minutes ago, she was dead certain that I’d sold her out and secretly planned this.
And now that she has the truth, I feel a truce coming.
I can’t read her. I don’t know what’s going on in that pretty head of hers.
The old version of me cracks a joke here and says the thing that puts me back up on top of the moment where I’m comfortable.
I don’t reach for it. I don’t want it to be like that with her.
“Yeah,” I say because there’s no way I’m saying no.
“Yeah. Let’s — yeah.” And then, because I cannot stand in a hallway holding a moment this size without doing something with my hands, I reach for motion.
“Now. Let’s go now, before the place downstairs closes.
They stop seating at ten, I saw the sign on the way in. ”
Her eyes meet mine for a flicker of a second, and then she nods in agreement.
We use our cards and unlock our doors. I walk into my separate room, and I’m aware of the entire ten seconds I’m alone in mine, standing in the middle of a hotel room I haven’t even looked at, staring down a guy in the mirror who is now, apparently, going to dinner with Aspen Linwood.
I meet her back in the hall. She’s changed her sweater, but I keep that bit of information to myself.
We walk to the elevator together, and the silence between us is killing me.
I watch the numbers count down until we’re on the main floor.
The doors open, so I let her walk out first, catching her perfume as she walks ahead.
The hotel restaurant is the kind of place that’s beautiful and empty this late — low light, white cloths, three other tables, a waiter visibly wanting to go home. We’re seated in a corner. We sit across from each other, and I have to swallow down my nerves.
I’m nervous. More nervous than I’ve been in this entire ridiculous arrangement — more than the lobby, more than the porch — because there’s no show to put on for anyone.
Nobody here knows us. And apparently, my chest doesn’t know the difference between nervous and excited because the waiter comes by, and I start.
“Evening, folks. Can I start you off with something to drink?”
“Evening! Hi. Hello.” I have his eye, and I am not giving it back. “Big night for us, just so you’re aware. Huge night. You’re part of it now, which I realize is a lot to drop on a man at this hour, but here we are. What’s your name?”
“Channing.”
“Channing,” I say, staring right at him like I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet one.
“Like Channing Tatum. I never met one of those before. Cool.” I look him in the eye.
“Forget the menu for a second. I want to know what you’d eat — not what you’d sell me, what you’d actually order here.
That’s what I’m having. Whatever you just thought of, that’s the one. ”
Across the table, Aspen’s gone very still, water halfway to her mouth, watching me wind up.
“The fish,” I say, before Channing can get a syllable in. “Is the fish a good decision, or is the fish a thing that happens to a man and he spends the rest of the night regretting it?”
“The branzino’s really—”
“Branzino!” I point at him, then at Aspen. “Did you hear that? That is a man who stands behind his fish. I respect that more than I can tell you. Channing, I’d run through a wall for you.” I pick the menu back up and hold it out at arm’s length. “I’ll take the steak and veggies.”
Channing nods. “Okay.”
Aspen laughs.
And that’s the gasoline. That is the whole problem, right there, because the second I pull a laugh out of this woman, my entire body decides the only acceptable use of the rest of my life is getting another one, and I am gone.
I keep ordering food. I order for the table like a man with four buddies about to join, which I do not.
I ask Channing where he’s from and tell him I’d like to go there.
I read him three things off the wine list in the voice of a nature documentary until he stops fighting the smile altogether and just lets me have it.
The jokes are the walls, and I am laying them down brick on brick on brick fast as my mouth will build, and I cannot for the life of me put the trowel down.
And then, somewhere around when the waiter clears the menus, brings back Aspen a glass of wine. She takes a sip and sets her wine down. She gives me that look and calls me out gently. No knife in it at all, which is somehow worse.
“You don’t have to do that with me.”
I keep the grin bolted on. “Do what?”
“The show.” She tips her head, and there’s no meanness anywhere in it. “I’ve seen you with it off, Ermington. On the street. In the dark at my parents’ house. I know what’s under it.” She pauses, looking at her wine as she swirls it. “You can stop. There’s no one here to sell to.”
And it stops me dead.
Because that’s mine. That’s the exact thing I handed her on the sidewalk five days ago — run it again, who was I selling it to — and she’s picked it up off the ground where I left it and handed it right back to me.
I have no counter, because she’s right, and because nobody does this.
Nobody. Everybody lets me run the jokes.
It works. It has worked my entire life. It has walked me out of every room I ever wanted out of.
And she’s telling me that she doesn’t need it.
So I put it down.
And it turns out I have no idea what to do with myself.
Without it –– the charm, the easy grin, the golden kid who walks into the room and makes it lighter –– I don’t know who I am.
My father’s always been proud of the show.
I’m drafted because of the show. Every room I’ve ever walked into wanted the show, and I gave it to them gladly, because the show is the thing I’m best at, and somewhere a long way down, I have never once been sure there’s anything underneath it worth keeping if I quit.
She doesn’t let me off the hook for the silence, either.
“Can I ask you something real?”
“That’s ominous.”
“Tomorrow.” She turns her glass a slow quarter-turn on the cloth — her father’s gesture, hers now too. “The meeting. Sign now, leave, go pro — or finish out the season at Camden and sign in the spring.” She looks up. “What do you want to do?”
And I open my mouth to hand her the answer I hand everyone — wherever they want me, whatever’s right for the org, you go where the game takes you — the smooth one, the round one, the one I sanded down nice for exactly this question.
It dies in my throat.
Because that’s not what she asked. She didn’t ask what’s smart, or what the org wants, or what the kid named for the trophy is supposed to do. She asked what I want.
“I want it.” It comes out honest and raw. “Obviously, I want it. I’ve wanted it since before I could spell it. I’ve put in more hours at that rink than I’ve spent doing anything else in my life, so that part’s not a question. I want it so bad I can’t see around it.”
“But.”
“But nothing.” I drag a hand through my hair.
“That’s the whole problem, Linwood. There’s no but.
I want exactly the thing they built me to want, down to the letter, and I can’t tell if that makes it mine or just makes me good at following instructions.
You’re asking what I want, and the honest answer is I’ve never once gotten to find out, because the wanting got installed before I had a vote.
So I want it. I just don’t know if it counts. ”
That’s more than I meant to say. It sits there on the table with no joke under it, and I feel the bareness of it crawling up my neck.
And something doesn’t track.
She’s too still. There’s something running under this, and for a second I almost ask her straight out — why do you want to know, Linwood, what is this really — because it isn’t lost on me that this woman who ran from me is now asking, very carefully, whether I’m about to sign a contract and leave.
I don’t ask. So I do what I do.
“Anyway,” I say, and display the grin, “the league would be lucky to have me. I’m a delight. I bring snacks.”
It’s a bad one. I know it’s bad even as it leaves me. And she lets it go. The waiter drifts past and starts quietly turning chairs up onto tables at the far end of the room. I should fill the silence. That’s the move, that’s always the move. I’ve got six things ready to go.
I don’t reach for any of them. I just sit there, mask off, the realest thing I almost said still sitting on the cloth between us where we can both see it, and I let it be quiet. I have never in my life let a table go quiet on purpose. It turns out it’s the loudest thing I’ve ever done.
We get our food and eat our hearts out. We don’t talk about it again.
We eat in complete silence, and because the server is trying to get out of here, we make it fast. I get the check and sign the receipt.
Then we’re standing. She’s pulling her coat on, and I’m holding the door, and we’re walking out of the empty restaurant into the lobby, and the whole way, I am aware of exactly how much space is between her shoulder and mine, which is not very much, and getting smaller.
The elevator comes. We get in. I hit eleven.
The doors close, and the box gets very small, and very quiet.
I have nothing to put in it because I used them all up on a waiter named Channing, and there’s nothing left between me and the fact of her standing eight inches away with her hair down, breathing, watching the numbers climb.
I can smell her perfume. I can hear her swallow.
Eleven floors has never taken this long in the history of my life.
I don’t look at her. If I look at her, I’m going to do something, and the one thing I have figured out is that this cannot be me.
Not this time. I’ve reached for her twice now.
I told her the truth and kissed her with no audience.
Both times I was the one who moved, and both times she ran.
I am done being a thing that happens to Aspen Linwood.
So I keep my eyes on the numbers, my hands to myself, and I do the hardest thing I have done all year, which is nothing.
The doors open on eleven.
We walk. Her door comes first. She stops at it, key card in her hand, and I keep going the two steps to mine like my whole body isn’t screaming, like I’m a guy who’s going to say goodnight to a friend and sleep just fine.
“Goodnight, Linwood.” I get my own card out. I mean it. I’ll do it. I’ll walk into that room and shut the door and lie in the dark and let her keep every inch of distance she needs, because it’s hers to keep. “Sharp day tomorrow. Wake me if you want the hotel coffee, it’s—”
“Stanley.”
I look at her.
She hasn’t opened her door. She’s standing in the hall with the key card still in her fist and a look on her face I’ve never seen on her.
“I don’t want to do the thing I always do,” she says. “Where I get scared, and I leave.”
My own card is dead weight in my hand.
“Then don’t,” I say.
And she steps towards me.