Chapter 21
FRIDAY, JULY 30
When Sawyer woke up on Friday morning, it wasn’t raining, but clouds sat thick and heavy over the sky, like a dark gray lid.
The weather stayed that way all day, giving the workday a strange, hourless feeling. Morning and noon looked the same, according to the gloom of the window. The only real mark of time came when Johanna finally left the office for the day.
Sawyer and Kaylee turned to each other and smiled, then promptly packed up. Sawyer went down the hall to the ladies’ room and spruced up her hair and makeup. When she emerged, Kaylee was waiting by the elevator.
“Whoa.” Kaylee whistled. “I noticed you were kind of dressed up today—hot date?”
Sawyer blushed. “Nah. Just meeting up with a friend.”
“I’m only teasing.” Kaylee winked. “Although, dressed like that, your fiancé should take you out, before some tall, mysterious stranger comes along and sweeps you off your feet!”
Sawyer flinched and stared.
“Did I say something wrong?” Kaylee asked, innocent.
“No, no—you’re fine.”
The clock in Grand Central’s main hall turned out to be a less ideal meeting point than Sawyer had hoped.
It was, in essence, a clock sitting atop an information booth. Sawyer had never used the information booth before, so she’d never really noticed its function. She noticed now, however, as she tried to figure out how to stand near it and not be in the way of New Yorkers doing their thing.
And it wasn’t so much the information booth as it was the sheer volume of people who crisscrossed the Main Concourse. It felt like the entire world was streaming toward her, and veering away, which was unnerving. The clouds had held steady and rainless during her walk to Grand Central, but just as she’d stepped inside, lightning flashed and a crack of thunder sounded. It was almost like a tarp that had been holding too much water finally ripped open. The sky unleashed a downpour so prodigious, Sawyer could actually hear it as she continued farther inside the busy train station. Even now, as she stood waiting by the clock, she could see raindrops spattering against the gray panes of the three giant gilded windows, streaming down in little rivers. As large and cavernous as it was, the hall began to fill up with humidity and the scent of wet leather as people tracked in watery footprints from the pavement outside.
She glanced at the clock—an ornate golden globe from 1913, with four glowing faces. According to the clock, it was a few minutes after one thirty.
She fidgeted. She was wearing a very slim dark navy sheath dress. It was a dress she’d only worn once or twice before, but she’d always felt good in it; it was one of her dresses that seemed to invite Audrey Hepburn comparisons. In the bathroom at work, she’d slyly converted it from office wear to something a bit more suited to going out, subtracting her cardigan, putting her hair up, and adding earrings and heels.
But now she just felt overdressed and silly.
She wondered, briefly, if Nick might not come after all.
The way he’d logged off during their last chat was more or less like he’d hung up on her. And given that she was the one who’d refused to get on the phone after firing off a bunch of personal questions about his love life…she didn’t blame him for being fed up.
She stood and waited, scanning the faces coming toward her, inexplicably nervous to see the one face she was hoping to see. The hall echoed with hurried footsteps, the hard heels of shoes like stones clacking together in a riverbed. She took a deep breath, and looked up to admire the ceiling. The ceiling was one of her favorite parts of Grand Central. It was painted a turquoise-ish Tiffany blue and embellished with golden constellations, the stars gathered into whimsical illustrations of Orion, Taurus, Pegasus—as on a vintage celestial map. Sawyer rarely had a chance to stop and simply look up; New York had instilled a kind of peer pressure in her to always avoid looking like a tourist. But now she tipped her head back and stared, gazing at the stars.
And then, after gazing upward for a few minutes, when she looked down again…there he was: Nick.
Her throat tightened instantly to see him. He was headed straight toward her across the echoing marble hall, shaking an umbrella and tying it shut. For a moment, Sawyer was overcome by how attractive she found him; it was as if she had forgotten the handsome lines of his face and was now suddenly reminded. He wore a nice suit, and it even looked like he’d gotten a haircut since she’d seen him last.
She couldn’t read his expression, but at least she knew one thing: he hadn’t stood her up.
He stopped short in front of Sawyer. “Well, well. You clean up nice.” His tone was gruff, almost begrudging, but in a way that suggested he felt true admiration.
Sawyer blushed. “I was starting to doubt that you were going to come.”
“You should know better by now.”
She smiled but he remained stoic. She glanced down at her feet.
“Listen,” Sawyer said, “I’m really sorry about—”
“It’s OK.” Nick waved a hand to stop her. “I get it.”
He paused, and shrugged.
“The way we met in the first place,” he said. “You know, the reason we started communicating to begin with…”
He meant Charles and Kendra.
“…makes things pretty awkward.” He paused and shrugged. “That’s not your fault, Sawyer,” he finished.
Sawyer mulled this and nodded. “I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. But cut me some slack, too,” Nick said. He took a breath, then looked at her with a steady, unflinching gaze. “Trading online messages with you frustrates me because I would prefer to talk to you face-to-face. I hate it because I want more of you, Sawyer—not less.”
Sawyer felt her blood rushing to her face. Her ears were instantly hot.
Nick read her reaction. He took the pressure off by changing the subject.
“So! What are we here to do today?” he asked. “I know your summer Friday bucket list by heart, and ‘get dressed up and stand around in the middle of Grand Central’ was never on it.”
Sawyer composed herself and nodded. “It wasn’t. But I was thinking, because of the rain…have you been to the Campbell Apartment?”
“Ah,” Nick said in a revelatory way. “I’ve heard about that place, but I haven’t been.”
Sawyer smiled. According to the New York magazine article, the Campbell Apartment was a “secret” apartment inside Grand Central, originally owned by railroad financier John W. Campbell back in the 1920s. Campbell hadn’t really lived in the apartment, per se; he’d wanted a stately office that was centrally located smack-dab in the middle of it all, and a place for him and his wife to entertain guests. The space had fallen into disrepair in the 1950s…until recently, when the novelty apartment had been turned into a bar.
“It’s tucked in somewhere here in the station, right?”
“Yes,” she replied. She pulled out a handwritten note with info she’d copied out of the magazine. “Supposedly if we go down the corridor in the southwest wing, we should find a little elevator there with a plaque next to it that says ‘The Campbell Apartment.’?”
“What are we waiting for?”
After a short walk through the terminal halls, they found the elevator. It was a somewhat old-fashioned one, with art deco touches and a three-paneled door that looked a little like windowpanes.
“After you,” Nick said, and Sawyer stepped inside.
Once off the elevator, they saw another plaque for the Campbell Apartment, and a carpeted staircase bathed in a rose-colored spotlight. Sawyer’s heels wobbled on the carpet as they made their way up the stairs.
Despite the photograph Sawyer had glimpsed in the magazine, nothing could have prepared her for the unusual bar at the top of the stairs. It was like a medieval great hall, with gothic arched windows, stone walls, and a heavy, ornately painted, dark-wood-beamed ceiling. As they walked in, Sawyer realized the wood-paneled wall behind them had a small balcony level above it, built in a fashion that reminded her of a choir loft in a Gothic church. On the opposite wall was a massive fireplace with a giant stone hood, modeled in the fashion of a French chateau. The bar ran along the right side of the room, and behind it was a spectacular multipaned window of leaded glass.
“Wow,” Sawyer uttered. “God, my parents would love this.”
“The professors?” Nick smirked and nodded. “I’ll bet.”
A beautiful, sophisticated-looking hostess approached them, and asked them in an incongruently childish voice whether they were looking for a table or the bar. They opted for the bar and perched on a pair of high stools with curved backs.
“Do you think they know how to make a Sea Breeze in this joint?” Nick joked.
“We can find out,” Sawyer suggested.
“Nah—pretty sure it wouldn’t hold a candle to Vic’s.”
Sawyer smiled. “Yes. Vic’s are probably the best in the city. And then Jake’s surely take the prize for runner-up—seeing as how they come in a giant pint glass and all.”
“Jake? Oh! Blake. At the club,” Nick said.
Well, now she knew. “It was loud in there,” Sawyer said, and they both laughed.
By then the bartender had approached them and was ready to take their order.
Sawyer gestured in Nick’s direction.
“Anything the gentleman wants,” she said. “My treat.”
Nick raised his eyebrows, amused, but shook his head. “It’s more fun when you choose,” he insisted.
Sawyer thought for a few seconds, then turned to the bartender.
“Champagne?” she said. “And maybe—if you have them—in Gatsby glasses?”
The bartender gave her a wry smile. “?‘Gatsby glasses’?” he repeated.
“Those glasses that are wide but shallow,” Sawyer explained, feeling stupider by the minute.
“A coupe,” the bartender diagnosed. “But I like ‘Gatsby glass’ better—that’s what I’ll call it from now on, old sport.” He winked, then turned to pour the drinks.
She couldn’t tell if the bartender was making fun of her or flirting with her. She surreptitiously put the back of her left hand to her cheeks, one at a time, feeling each one for warmth and imagining how red her face must be.
Nick smirked. “Do you have to charm everyone we meet?” he teased.
“Hardly.”
“Gimme a break,” Nick said. “Old sport.”
He rolled his eyes, and Sawyer laughed.
“But hey—if it winds up getting us free drinks, I won’t complain,” he concluded.
The bartender returned with two coupes of chilled champagne. “Cheers,” he said, with another wink at Sawyer.
Nick raised his glass once the bartender had gone. “To Jay.”
“Jay?” Sawyer echoed, quizzically.
“Gatsby, of course.”
“Oh—hah.”
“I should be making fun of you for naming a goldfish ‘Moby’ and a champagne glass ‘Gatsby.’?”
“And you’re…not?” Sawyer challenged.
“No,” Nick said. “Actually, I’m…I don’t know. Enjoying the details that make you, you.”
He held his glass out for Sawyer to clink, and gazed at her with that unnervingly intense stare. Suddenly, Sawyer was jittery, self-conscious, overtaken by nerves. She moved to clink his glass with her own but her hand was trembling, and the wide brim of the “Gatsby glass” betrayed her. Before she knew it, she’d accidentally spilled a good quarter of her glass right over Nick’s lap.
With instant, catlike reflexes, Nick jumped off the stool, setting down his own glass.
“Hoooo boy!” he quietly exclaimed. “Refreshingly cold, but not in the most refreshing spot…” he joked.
Sawyer, meanwhile, scrabbled for bar napkins, mortified. She handed them to Nick, who blotted his suit pants as they laughed. Her hands continued to tremble; she tried to hide them.
“I’m sorry. You…make me nervous.”
Nick looked at her. “I make you nervous?”
Sawyer cast her eyes down, unable to return his gaze. She focused all her energy on trying to rein in the trembling she could still feel in her stomach, her hands, her eyelids. “Yeah,” she insisted. “You know that. It’s pretty obvious. I…get nervous when I’m around you.”
When she looked up again, Nick was quiet, but there was an expression on his face she couldn’t quite read—it was like a mixture of sympathy and delight and satisfaction all at once. On some instinctive level, she understood she’d just given him something, and now he was taking a brief moment to savor it.
“You’re enjoying this,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him and calling him out.
Nick shrugged. He sat back down. “It’s nice to know I have an effect,” he said.
Sawyer rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you have ‘an effect’ on lots of girls.”
“We’re back to that again?” Nick challenged her.
“Well, it’s true.”
Nick looked her full in the face. “It’s nice to know I have an effect on you,” he repeated firmly.
Sawyer blushed again.
She looked down at her glass and took a sip. The bubbles tickled her nose, and the champagne greeted her tongue with a peppery dance, crisp and dry as a green apple.
Nick fell quiet, mulling something.
“Champagne coupe for your thoughts?” Sawyer teased.
Nick snapped out of his reverie. He cleared his throat.
“It’s just that…I can tell you don’t believe me when I say things like that.”
Sawyer attempted to pass the insecurity off with a casual, jokey air. “I don’t know…I heard a rumor that good-looking musicians get laid.”
He looked at her.
“No?”
He shrugged. “It’s been known to happen, I guess.”
“I just have to remind myself that other people don’t take things as seriously as I do. You probably say these things to a lot of girls.”
“I don’t say ‘these things’ to a lot of girls,” he retorted in a low voice.
“I’m not trying to offend you.”
“I’d hate to see you trying.”
Sawyer tried to put it into words a little better. “You said what you liked about Kendra was that she was uncomplicated. I’m…not.”
“I did like Kendra because she was uncomplicated,” he admitted.
He paused.
“But with you…” Nick continued. “I’m different with you. It’s like everything is backward.”
Her heart fluttered. Sawyer glanced up from her drink. They locked eyes.
“With you, I’m putting it all out on the table,” Nick said. “And the ironic part is, I can tell you don’t believe me.”
He stared at her, unabashed, his eyes hungry. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks again.
“It’s a way for you to deflect,” Nick concluded.
“Deflect from what?” she asked.
“Having to acknowledge what I want, and telling me what you want.”
Sawyer stared back at him. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? Her heart was pounding; she could feel her pulse in her neck, and her throat was tight again.
But before Sawyer could speak, the bartender approached them, carrying a bottle of champagne.
“Thought I’d top up your Gatsby glasses.”
He refilled their coupes and winked at Sawyer again.
“On the house,” the bartender said, and turned to go again.
Nick eased the moment with a grin.
“See?” he said. “I told you—as long as it winds up getting us free drinks.”
Sawyer pretended to shoot him the stink eye. They broke up into a mutual chuckle.
“How is your mother?” Sawyer ventured.
Nick gazed at her, then gave a gentle smile.
“She’s good,” he said. “She really liked you. I could tell.” He paused, then added, “Which means, of course: now I’m going to have to put up with her asking questions about you every time I visit.”
Sawyer smiled. “I liked her, too.”
Nick’s expression turned serious. “You really are the first girl I’ve ever brought there, to her house,” he said. “And it’s not because my mom wouldn’t welcome them; it’s me. Girlfriends—even friends, sometimes—I don’t let a lot of people in.”
Again, that intense gaze. Sawyer flashed back to the kiss in the courtyard of the club. She was overcome with a surge of wanting that terrified her, and that she was afraid to let him see. She tried to come up with something to say, and felt her brain and mouth wrestling between saying too much and saying too little.
Nick noticed her squirming.
“What’s the latest with your work stuff?” he asked, changing the subject.
Sawyer told him.
They talked it over and ordered another glass, and talked some more.
“What’s next?” Nick asked, once they’d closed out their tab. “You got anything else planned?”
Sawyer smiled, feeling the effects of the champagne. She felt light as a feather, and “floaty,” as she liked to call it. Her fingertips tingled in a pleasant way.
“Well…” she said. “I mean, I don’t know how impressive it is, but…there is something else, right here in Grand Central. I read about it once, but I’ve never checked it out.”
“All right. Lead the way.”
Nick followed Sawyer as they left the Campbell Apartment, retraced their steps down to the Main Concourse, and then went farther down, to the lower level.
Finally, she stopped in the brick-and-marble Romanesque archways just outside Grand Central’s old Oyster Bar. She turned.
“We’re here,” she said with a grin.
“The Oyster Bar?”
“No. Here. Right here.”
“What’s right here?” Nick asked. He sounded sincere.
“You ever hear of the ‘Whispering Gallery’?”
Nick frowned and gave Sawyer a funny look.
“You haven’t!” she exclaimed. “Hey—something about New York that I knew first.”
“Well, don’t gloat,” Nick admonished. “Tell me what the deal is already.”
Sawyer took a breath. “Maybe I’ve oversold it here, I don’t know,” she said, losing confidence. “But this section of the hallway is called the Whispering Gallery. It’s supposed to be an acoustical phenomenon. Evidently, if two people stand in opposite corners of this archway and speak into the corners of the arch, they can hear each other loud and clear, as if they’re standing right next to each other.”
“Ah,” Nick said, looking intrigued. He studied the archway, craning his neck to look at the shape. “I guess that makes sense, engineering-wise,” he said. He looked back at Sawyer and smiled. “Sounds pretty cool. Shall we try it out?”
Sawyer nodded, and they moved to opposite corners of the archway, diagonally from each other.
“I don’t know if it works. We might just wind up looking like two weirdos, talking to the walls!” she called over her shoulder to Nick.
Nick laughed. “You’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve done something really weird in public and not given a shit who sees you,” he called back.
“OK, let’s try it?” Sawyer called.
He nodded and they each turned to face their corner wall of the archway. In a quiet, low voice, Sawyer said, “Hey, can you hear me?” She inched her face in, closer and closer to the wall, and tried again, until finally she heard Nick:
“Yup.”
“Oh, good! It works?”
“It works.”
“Hmm, OK, then—go ahead,” Sawyer whispered.
“Go ahead, what?”
“Tell me a secret.”
“A secret…” There was a long pause as Nick ruminated. “When we were in Coney Island, I was hoping we’d fall into the water all along,” he said. “After you mentioned swimming, that’s all I wanted to do.”
“That’s not a secret!” Sawyer admonished, raising her voice. She dropped it back down low. “Your mom basically said that was your MO.”
“OK, then—you tell me a secret,” Nick challenged in return.
Sawyer bit her lip and thought for a long minute. She knew what she wanted to say, but she didn’t know if she had the real courage to say it.
“Fine,” she whispered, finally. “I’ll tell you the secret of what I want.”
She waited again, gathering one final burst of nerve.
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Nick. All I want is to kiss you again.”
With that, Sawyer froze. She could feel that Nick had already turned away from the corner of the arch and was facing her. Very slowly, with her heart pounding in her ears, she turned around to face him in return.
They locked eyes and stared at each other from across the space of the archway. Commuters passed between them, simply going about their business.
As they stared at each other, it felt as though a million unspoken thoughts and emotions were exchanged. Sawyer remained frozen, but her heart was still pounding, her whole body tensed, waiting.
Then, all at once, he began to stride toward her with purpose. She stepped toward him in return. When they reached each other, their bodies instantly intertwined, the surge of desire suddenly erasing the last traces of awkwardness between them. The next thing Sawyer knew, they were kissing, their mouths melding together, the smooth muscles of lips and tongues moving together in a language beyond words, the aftertaste of champagne mingling between them.
A kiss.
A damn good kiss.
New Yorkers—being New Yorkers—walked past them with seldom more than a second look, stepping around the two young people locked in passionate embrace with indifference, and hurrying on to their urgent and infinitely varied destinations.