Chapter Fifteen
The sun beats on my shoulders as I walk down a wooden path on Pier 66 toward the permanently docked floating barge-turned-bar—the Frying Pan. Two ships are docked on the barge to my left: the original Frying Pan , which the restaurant is named for, and a smaller red fireboat. I take a moment to breathe in the fresh summer air, the smell of fish and fry oil, the robin’s-egg-blue sky above me clear as a coat of water color paint. The sound of gulls overhead and the bump of the loud music and voices from the restaurant ahead grow louder as I approach. I look back over my shoulder at the city behind me, the brown and gray buildings breathing down my back. I don’t spend too much time in this area of Chelsea, but it’s important to Sonya, so I brave it.
Sonya is my oldest friend, but sometimes it just feels impossible to get back to how we used to be together. We slipped away from each other when we went to different colleges, though Sonya did come visit once—it was before Sam and I got serious, but Andy and I were already best friends. I felt awkward about introducing my old best friend to my new one, but Sonya and Andy were quick to get along, even though they only had a couple days to get to know one another. The three of us spent the weekend drinking too much and watching bad movies. Sonya only visited that one time, and she never met Sam, a fact that I can’t tell if I’m grateful for or deeply sad about.
In time, Sonya made art school friends and I lost myself in my relationship with Sam, and we just sort of drifted. It was pure chance that Sonya wanted to move to New York at the same time I did…and I only knew about it because she told my mom.
I get to the bustling restaurant area of the barge—a dining platform open to the air and big enough that you almost feel like you’re on land. There are tables pressed to the rails on all sides, as well as picnic tables scattered in the center. I nod to the host as I spot Sonya and Jamie at a large table by the rail—they are with a whole bunch of people I don’t know. Sonya waves at me, and I pivot on my heel, suddenly feeling like I should order a drink at the bar before I head over there to face a table full of strangers.
I order some kind of coconutty rummy drink and am shocked when the bartender hands me a neon-blue beverage. I cringe as I take a sip. I think I ordered the most obnoxious-colored cocktail on the menu. There might as well be rubber duckies floating in it.
I take a deep breath and center myself. Maybe I can use this opportunity to do what Henry did: practice talking to people until I’m not afraid anymore.
As I head to the table, I study each face, hoping to find a friendly one among the strangers. Sonya and Jamie are deep in conversation with their backs turned to me, talking to someone I definitely don’t know. I don’t recognize anyone else until I see a shimmer of blond sitting at the table, facing me. Sarah.
“Oh my gosh, look who it is.” She stands as I approach her. Maybe this won’t be miserable after all. I smile and open my mouth to say hello, but she walks past me, not even acknowledging that I exist, and greets someone behind me.
Oh my god. Embarrassed is not strong enough a word for what I’m feeling right now.
I pivot to make a beeline to the bar and smack right into a very broad, very sturdy chest. I spill my blue drink all over us both, soaking the front of his white shirt. The barge rocks and I lose my balance, almost falling backward, but the man grabs me by the arms and holds me upright. His thumbs press into my skin, firm but gentle. I know these hands.
“So, these were your big Saturday plans? Spilling drinks and making a scene?”
Of course Henry’s here. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s everywhere. I would not be surprised if Henry had an army of identical siblings lurking around New York City, all on a mission to catch me in humiliating positions. But this is him. The one and only Henry. And I hate how my heart is racing just looking at him.
I let him keep hold of me, and I have to try to stop my body from moving closer. “What are you doing at a party for my roommate?”
He shrugs. “Sarah invited me.” He guides me to a balanced stance, and I get my sea legs back. He bends to pick up my plastic glass from the floor. The front of his shirt is dripping with my wreckage.
It’s so random that he’s here. But I’m too distracted to think about that for more than a millisecond, because the stain from my cocktail is spreading down his chest. Rapidly.
“Come on.” He smiles and gestures to the soaked front of his shirt. “I think I saw a bathroom over there. Let’s get cleaned up.”
I glance behind me as Sarah watches us head inside, lips pursed. She definitely sees me now.
We find a single-stall bathroom with a lock. It’s smallish and nautical, with shiplap lining the walls and a couple of porthole windows high above our heads. There’s a tiny sink and an even tinier mirror above it.
My clothes are relatively unscathed—I mostly splattered the blue cocktail on my skin—but Henry’s shirt is as good as tie-dyed. I blot my chest with a paper towel.
“Did you know I was going to be here?” I ask as I dab.
“No.” He smiles. “I just keep getting lucky.”
My blood feels hot in my veins. I press at my shirt with paper towels to keep my hands busy.
“I’m not trying to be weird, I promise,” he says, “but I’m going to take my shirt off. Is that okay?” He gestures to his cocktail-soaked shirt.
I nod.
He peels the shirt over his head and runs the stain under the faucet.
I glue my gaze onto the wall, but a flash of skin in the corner of my eye is like gravity. I glance over, as if on an impulse, and then I can’t look away. His body is different than I expected, much leaner. Trimmer. His skin stretches over the contours of his muscles, gentle as rolling hills. I spot a kidney-bean-shaped birthmark on his rib cage and trace my eyes to his bicep, but with the way he’s standing I still can’t make out what his tattoo is.
He catches me staring.
“What?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Nothing.” My stomach flips like pancakes on a sizzling griddle. I try my best to avoid making eye contact as he vigorously scrubs at the shirt, his muscles tensing and relaxing under his skin. My throat goes dry.
I don’t know what’s coming over me, but remembering his hands around my arms, the way he saved me from falling on my ass, his vulnerability in the park…I’m sweating . I’m realizing that I haven’t been in a room with a shirtless man in way too long. The fact that it’s Henry is making me short-circuit a bit.
“Henry?” I crumple my paper towels into a wad and toss them in the trash.
“Yes, Bennet?” He glances over to me out of the side of his eye, and I feel a flood of nerves in my gut.
“I was just wondering what your tattoo was.”
He tosses his shirt over his shoulder like a rag and stretches his arm out to show me. “It’s a mountain range.” A drop of water trails from his wrist to his elbow. “My dad and I used to hike a lot.”
I study the jagged edges of the mountains laid over his inner arm. I want to swipe the pads of my fingers across it, feel his taut arm under the ink.
“I noticed his dementia for the first time when we were on a hike, actually. He couldn’t lead us back down the trail. One we hiked like a million times.”
He bunches his shirt up and holds it under the hand dryer, turning his back to me. “I’m sorry,” I say.
He shrugs and brushes it off, like he always does. “It’s okay.”
I watch his shoulder blades move, the way his spine curves and slopes toward his hips. I wonder how warm his skin would feel if I were to brush against him.
Every time I’ve noticed something in Henry’s physical appearance I’ve been able to shake it away in two seconds. But now…it’s sticking to my bones. I press my palms to my eyes, trying to drive the image of him out of my head, but when I open them again, he’s still there, his back to me, half-naked. It’s not like I hadn’t known that Henry was attractive. I just didn’t really register it until now.
He pulls his shirt over his head and smooths it across his torso. The wet spot clings to his chest.
“Henry”—I swallow—“I’m going to give you a compliment now.”
He rakes his fingers through his hair. “You saw me with my shirt off and now you want to give me a compliment?” He raises an eyebrow. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
My skin burns. I shouldn’t, but I’m feeling reckless in this terrible bathroom. I swallow. “That tattoo…is hot.” Jesus fuck, what am I doing?
Henry’s face flickers with surprise. “Bennet. Are you flirting with me?”
“No!” Shit. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just like the damn tattoo. Are you happy?”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
I cover my face with my hands. I can’t even look at him. “It’s just that you’re all clean-cut, and then you have a tattoo, and it’s just…unexpected.” I wince under my palms.
His lighthearted laugh fills the tiny room. “I am genuinely flattered.”
“Oh god.” I peel my hands from my face. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
He shakes his head, smirking at me. “Never.”
“I regret telling you. Pretend I don’t exist.”
“Yeah. Like I could do that.” The playfulness in his eyes flickers into something else when he looks at me now, something different. We’re so close I can smell the soap he uses in the shower. It’s different from the spearmint. Sweeter. My pulse races in my neck, and I feel weak.
I could bottle up the way he’s looking at me and take shots of it. I could get drunk on them. The heavy eyelids, the spearmint aftershave. I feel bigger, brighter. I feel shiny in his eyes.
I swallow, allowing myself to glance at his slightly parted lips. “Henry?”
“Mm-hm?”
We’re standing so close, water from his shirt drips down the front of my leg. “Your shirt is still soaking wet.”
“Oh.” He looks down at the spot on his shirt that is clinging to his chest.
“Let me get it.” I grab a stack of paper towels and dab the wet spot on his torso. His body tenses when I touch him. The paper towels soak through one by one until we’ve gone through the entire stack.
“There.” I lay my palm flat against his stomach when it’s mostly dry. The fabric is damp, but not soaking. “Better.”
He looks down at my hand on his torso, then back up at me, his eyes wide, his jaw tense. I can tell he’s thinking what I’m thinking—that this feels charged. It feels electric. I glide my hand up to his chest, feeling his erratic heartbeat under my palm. He doesn’t move, doesn’t take his eyes out of his locked-in gaze on mine.
For once, I don’t want to break eye contact. I want to stay exactly where I am, studying Henry. Studying his expressions, discovering what they mean. This is one I haven’t seen yet. One I’ve yet to learn.
We hover like this, each baiting the other to make a move or break away, but neither of us will budge. He finally moves, placing a palm on the side of my neck, just above my collarbone. I want him to touch me even more.
I inch toward his mouth ever so slightly, letting my eyelids flutter closed. My heart is thudding and my fingers are shaking, and I can’t even think thoughts.
“Bennet,” he whispers, gently pushing back on my shoulder, stopping my advance.
“What?”
He slides his hand down my arm. “No.”
All the air leaves my lungs. “No?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not going to kiss you.”
“Oh,” I say. I bring my lips together when I realize my jaw is hanging open like a stunned fish.
“I’m not going to kiss you,” he says, dropping his hand from my arm. “Because you told me you want to be friends. And I believe you. You’re caught up in the moment. This isn’t what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want.” I reach again for the wet spot on his shirt. He flinches when I touch him.
“Yeah, but…” He takes my hand and squeezes it once before pulling it away from his body. Our skin against each other is slick with water and cocktail. “ I do.”
What does that mean? What does he want? I open my mouth to ask, but an angry knock on the door snaps us apart.
“One minute!” Henry turns away, dabbing his shirt.
“Fuck.” I cover my eyes with my hands.
“We’ll be out in a second,” he calls.
“Oh my god.” I wince, feeling the smallness of the bathroom get even smaller around me. The reality that I just tried to kiss him comes crashing down around me. And the reality that he rejected me makes me wish I could turn to dust. “Oh my god.”
“It’s okay,” he says.
“I just tried to…” I cross my arms and slump down onto the toilet, wishing I could shrink to the size of a urinal cake. When I close my eyes, I see Sam frowning at me, shaking his head. My heart lurches into my throat. It’s even worse than I thought. I wanted hands on me. A man’s hands. Hands that aren’t Sam’s. It’s a whole new level of screwed up.
“Don’t freak out about this, please,” Henry says, his eyebrows coming together to create a tiny concerned wrinkle in the middle of his forehead.
“How can I not freak out about this?” Now it’s going to be weird. And he was right. I’m not ready for anything to happen. Not when I still feel so guilty about Sam every single day. Why did I compliment that stupid tattoo? I don’t know what came over me. Why would I assume he wanted to kiss me anyway? Sure, we have fun together, but maybe I’m having more fun than he is? Maybe it’s just been platonic fun the whole time? It was naive of me, presumptuous to think that something could happen between us. That someone could see beyond the mess and want to take it on.
His eyebrows furrow as he frowns. “Do you want to talk about it?” I look up at his pretty, angular face, walnut hair, the kindest eyes on planet earth, and the humiliation washes over me again. He didn’t want to kiss me. I thought he did, and I was wrong. I don’t think I could articulate to him what I’m feeling even if I wanted to. I wish time travel were a thing, and I could delete the last ten minutes of my life. Actually, the last ten years would be better.
“No. I don’t want to talk about it,” I mutter.
Technically nothing happened, so why does it feel like I’ve just committed a crime? A betrayal of myself. Of Sam. Of Henry.
“Let’s just get out of here and forget this,” I murmur.
“Bennet—”
“Please, Henry. I’m serious,” I snap.
“Okay.” He raises his hands in the air, as if to say, I surrender . “Fine.”
We burst out of the bathroom to Sonya waiting impatiently, tapping her foot.
Caught.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She grits her teeth, eyes flicking between the two of us. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“We weren’t…um…we weren’t doing anything,” I say.
She crosses her arms. Her mouth is tight.
“She spilled on my shirt.” Henry gestures to the wet splotch. “We were cleaning it up.”
“It’s fine,” she says, nudging her way between us.
“Sonya, wait—”
She whips around. “You know what? No. It’s not okay. Ever since we moved here, I’ve been begging you to hang out with me. Begging you to be my friend again, and you finally come out with me, and what do you do? You lock yourself in the bathroom with a guy. You must really loathe spending time with me.”
“I don’t—”
She zeroes in on Henry. “Did you know that Bennet is my oldest friend? Now she can’t even be bothered to say hi to me at my own party.”
Henry shoves his hands in his pockets, dodging my eye.
Sonya returns her attention to me. “And you can’t even remember the most basic details about my life, like the fact that I design jewelry.”
“I’m so sorry,” I sputter, “I have a lot going on—”
“We all have a lot going on, Bennet, and I’m done pretending you’re not hurting my feelings. Jamie tells me to give you a pass because you’re going through a tough time, but it’s not an excuse anymore. Just because you keep everything locked up in a cage doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. Just because you think you’re all alone doesn’t mean you are. People care about you. People want to care about you. Stop pretending we’re the enemy. It’s really tiring.” She slams the bathroom door behind her, and my heart feels like it’s caving in on itself.
“Oh my god,” I whisper. I had no idea she felt that way.
“So that’s Sonya…” Henry says.
I pushed the nicest person I know to her breaking point. I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone. I glance over to Henry, who’s stunned.
“I don’t know what to say,” he says.
“Don’t say anything.” It comes out terser than I mean it to.
“I…” He scratches his chin. The last time I saw this expression on his face was at the restaurant the first time we met. When he was licking his wounds. He runs his hand through his hair and stares at the floor. “Maybe I should give you some space for a little bit.”
He looks at me, expecting me to say something, but I can’t.
Don’t go , I think. Say it, Bennet: Don’t go. Don’t let him walk away. Maybe I’ve just humiliated myself, and maybe I’m confused, but I know I don’t want him to leave. I want things to go back to normal.
But I can’t. I stand there frozen.
“Okay,” he says, nodding softly. “I’m going to go.” He turns, heading toward the massive city that for once feels far away, shaking his head as he walks.
Tears sting the corners of my eyes as I catch my breath. I let Henry get too close. I pushed Sonya too far. In one day, whatever fragile relationship I had with each of them is shattered.
I consider trying to make amends by heading back to the party, but I realize I don’t know what that would even look like. I don’t know what I would say or do, and I just want it all to stop .
I watch Henry until he is far enough away that I can’t see him anymore, and then I follow the same path he took to get off the barge, desperate for solid ground.