Chapter 14
Sloane
I hold the sweater near my neck, admiring the subtlety in the golden fibers woven throughout the brown wool.
It’s earthen and rich and soft, and it pulls my own blonde hair warmer, less severe than it is when I stick to cool tones.
Olivia dangled it before me, her eye for refinement much better than mine.
It could do with a fringe, or a frayed edge. Maybe a cold shoulder.
I quickly put it back when I realize it reminds me of Andrew’s eyes, suddenly thinking about the way he didn’t want to kiss me.
About the way I offered the easy kind of intimacy he wanted to begin with, and he rebuffed it.
It’d be a lie to say my pride wasn’t somewhat sore; that I haven’t thought about what it would’ve been like even more often than I did before.
It’s a hazard of knowing someone like him—tall, imposing, charming, like a nineties movie star.
Just a hazard, one I’m managing fairly well when I don’t see sweaters that remind me of his gaze.
“That sweater would’ve looked fabulous on you.” Olivia slides on her black Prada sunglasses, designer shopping bags slung across her arm as she sips from the to-go coffee we snagged from the Nordstrom cafe. I’m struck once again by how different she is from the way I saw her at the team dinner.
Wallflower, she is not.
I discerned that just from our visit at Veronica Beard.
She commanded the space, gave every employee a task and yet they seemed to be eating out of the palm of her hand.
Her entire presence opens up without Will around.
Her posture straight, her shoulders back, her head arched up ever so slightly, her eyes intense when she’s pinning you with a question.
I admire it but can also see how some may find it a little intimidating.
And maybe I would too if I didn’t watch this magnificent force dim the moment her shitty boyfriend made a backhanded compliment.
I tighten my hold on my own shopping bags at the memory.
At how one mediocre man could have such a hold on not just her, but Gen, too.
I put my aviators on and watch Olivia inspect me from my periphery. I’ve noticed her doing this a few times, cataloging in the same way I’ve catalogued her. Appreciating, envying, judging every little detail.
We constantly compare ourselves to women who aren’t even our mirror but a framework for a different life we could’ve led.
I feel that sickening sense of being perceived, of someone etching a story in their brain that isn’t quite right but is, nevertheless, the one I’ve thrown into the world.
The story I’ve decided people will remember me by, even if it is a fiction so carefully laid over the facts that it’s hard to distinguish what's real.
I shake the thoughts away and turn my face to the sun on a sigh.
“I’m starvin’,” I say, looping my arm through hers and can feel her tense at the unexpected physical touch, before quickly relaxing.
“There’s a cute little brunch spot up the street. They have incredible french toast,” she smiles, warmer than what you might expect from her, and it’s an honest detail that means something.
“Sounds perfect,” I nod and we begin our trek down the cobblestone street. I breathe in the freshly cool air, the muggy greenness of the summer giving way to a canvas of yellow, orange and red.
I’ll give Boston one thing: it’s beautiful in the fall.
We pass an art gallery and I linger on a window placed portrait of a mother and son. It’s a mixed media piece, done using a photo transfer technique that leaves them looking almost haunted.
“Do you want to go in?” Olivia asks, noticing. She nods her head at the door, her eyes curious.
“You don’t mind?” I ask but my foot’s already halfway through the door.
She laughs, untangling herself so I can explore freely.
The gallery assistant is clad in all black, in a way I’ve noticed they always are.
An attempt to look like they are from New York, especially when they aren’t.
I gaze at the different collages, sculptures, and everyday items altered to have a whole new meaning when my eyes land on a large, familiar white canvas littered with dried citrus.
The sticky sweet juice from slicing and squeezing haunts my finger tips now. The death it’s had since I breathed life into it is startling, and I still, studying it as my gut churns.
On first glance the canvas radiates warmth, an endless summer that I can almost smell, can almost remember, but the longer I stare the more the illusion fades.
And that was the point—to cover the fruit in a thin layer of resin, preserve its texture but not its vitality.
Highlight the edges of the oranges that curl in on themselves, the dark moldy spots of the lemons that even I, the artist, somehow missed at first glance, the pulp now brittle from time.
Some of the fruit has become translucent, so the audience can see the love notes underneath, promises written in my hand that send a familiar wave of nausea through me.
I have the urge to tear them from the canvas and burn them.
“Oh, we just got this one in—it’s an Elliot Walker original.” The curate rounds her desk and grins, waiting for me to be impressed.
My eyes fixate on the small white card near the canvas.
Sun Dried, love exposed to life.
My gaze settles on the love note under an almost rotted blood red orange, the familiar slope in the E matching the one permanently etched to my inner arm and it’s like I feel him, his breath, his touch, the way his stubble would brush my neck.
It’s suffocating and terrifying, the way I miss it.
The way I can’t seem to unframe the version of me he painted, his damage radiating through every stroke.
I fear that, regardless of how much time has passed, regardless of how well my mind releases all claim to him, that piece of him that no doctor could ever purge will haunt my bones.
Will ring through me and make me remember who I almost was with him.
I turn my back to the woman whose slightly pretentious smile senses none of the torrent of emotion roiling within me and I head straight back through the gallery door, the brisk Massachusetts air a reminder of all that I’ve lost as I rush down the long street.
I finally stop, shutting my eyes and leaning against the cold brick of a store I don’t recognize.
“What the hell just happened?” Olivia’s breathy voice interrupts my thoughts as I watch her swat away the stray hairs that sprang from her long ponytail in her jog to catch up, her shopping bags spun so messily in her arms that she gives up on them, dropping them on the brick street.
“You ran out of there…?” Her eyes are asking a million different questions but she must catch something in my expression because she nods to the building across the street. “French toast?”
I suck in a breath, silently nodding, attempting to shake off the memory of him and reminding myself that I came here to find the girl I was before his brush touched me.
I slice into the thick piece of french toast, the crispy outer edges perfectly complimenting the fluffy interior and I’ll give it to Olivia, I do feel a hell of a lot better. Elliot’s been pushed away, even though fragments of him still swirl in the base of my stomach. But I can feel them settling.
“Sugar fixes all,” she says with a mouth full of brunch and I laugh because I’m seeing yet another side of her.
I find myself wanting to paint this version.
Powdered sugar is sprinkled against her black turtleneck and her previously coiffed ponytail is now haphazardly pushed up into a messy bun, the perspiration of the day melting away her foundation to reveal a smattering of freckles I didn’t notice before.
The harsh discerning glint in her eye gives way to pure amber flecked warmth, and I can already see the pigments on my shelf.
“You ever modeled?” I ask, stacking pieces of cut toast on my fork. When I flick my gaze up to her, her brows are drawn tight, a disbelieving smirk on her face.
“Not my thing.”
“I’m serious. You’re stunning, Liv. No one’s ever approached you?
” The comment takes her aback. She stops mid-bite like she didn’t expect it, her corners of her mouth turning downwards.
Caution pools in her eyes like I’m tricking her or trying to hurt her in some way.
I shrug, not wanting to force her to sit in this discomfort and suck down the final dregs of the house iced coffee they poured us when we walked in.
“I was a late bloomer,” she finally says, clearing her throat. “Unibrow and all.”
“Stop it. You’d kill a unibrow.” The ferocity of her brow should’ve made it more obvious that she’s plucking a barrier between the two sides of her face, and I nod vigorously so she knows I’m being serious.
“Your body your choice and all that, but you’re fucking gorgeous, Olivia.
Free the brow,” I shrug, shoving the sugary bread into my mouth.
Her hesitance shrinks a little, her lips melting into the softest smile. “Well, you are, too. Obviously.”
I roll my eyes, smirking. “God, you really don’t have girlfriends, do you?
” I signal the waiter for a refill and glance back at Olivia who's more closed off, her cheeks a rosy hue signaling her unease. “What I mean is…we could just exist. There’s no measuring stick. If I tell you you’re pretty, you can trust I told you because you deserved to know…
not because I want something from you. You know?
” I dip my head, taking a long sip from my newly refilled iced coffee, keeping my eyes tipped up to her.
She hums to herself, her gaze going far off before blinking back to the present. “That is new for me. But I’ll try it. For you, ‘midnight princess’.” Her mouth twists into a playful smile as she recalls just one of the many names the gossip columns call me.
“You looked me up?”
She shrugs, easing into us. “Course I did. You can’t just pop up out of thin air and expect people not to ask questions.” She eyes me, tilting her head. “Call me crazy but…could it have something to do with the way you bolted out of that gallery?”
Pulling in a breath that reaches my diaphragm, I nod, slowly. “Have you ever been involved with someone you knew you shouldn’t be?” I use my fork to move the final pieces of egg still lingering on my plate.
Liv shifts in her seat, discomfort now stifling the air around us and my mind flicks back to the team dinner, to the heat between Ben, Will, and Olivia, and I realize that may have been the wrong question to lead with.
“That…piece of art…” I trail off trying to find the words.
“With the oranges?” she asks, interest overtaking her former embarrassment now that she realizes the question was rhetorical.
“Right. I, um—” I take a sip of my coffee, nodding at the waiter in thanks. “I collaborated on that piece.” Olivia’s eyebrows shoot up in excitement and I realize yet again I am not framing this well.
“No way! Sloane—that’s amazing. Oh my god, we can go back? I can get a picture of you with it and—”
“It’s not really known. That I collaborated, I mean.” Her eyebrows bunch in confusion before her mouth forms an oh shape, clearly realizing there's more to the story.
“With the person you shouldn’t have…”
I nod, trying to reel in this story that I’ve hidden so deep within myself until I can almost feel the pulp of the oranges that I so carefully sliced: not too jagged, not too perfect but somewhere in between.
“Like us.”
Elliot’s voice rings in my head like dust traveling through air, the clarity transporting me to the floor of his loft. Every note we’d pass before and after his lectures sprawled between us like stolen scripture, sacred and trembling with the things we couldn’t say out loud.
At the time he’d convinced me that the installation was about the ripeness of new love.
How alive one person could feel when they met another.
I feel stupid, seeing that fruit in the gallery, how it’s been preserved.
Every bruise lacquered into permanence, nothing softened with time, the rot just settling deeper.
I swallow, the hatred now souring in my mouth with the realization that he had me help him immortalize our decay, and with the understanding that all the evidence of what I was to him is just framed and hung on a wall.
I can still see his genius. Still want it all to mean more than it does.
Olivia sighs, reaching over to squeeze my hand, a gesture I can sense is foreign to her which makes it all the more meaningful. “Do you want to talk about it?” Her eyes are sincere. Tender.
Still, I shake my head. “Honestly, I just need to get my mind off it.” I begin to push around the eggs again.
“Well…if it’s any consolation, I do have a taser.
So, if we ever see him.” A warm laugh miraculously finds its way through me and I smile at my new friend.
“Seriously though, I know what it’s like to have to deal with a man who doesn’t want all of you.
” She’s nodding into her food, the mousiness from the other night making an appearance and I pinch my eyes trying to see what she’s not saying.
“Anyway…” she interrupts my scrutinizing. “Should we go get a manicure?” She eyes my chipped nails that have been bitten down to the stub and I mock a gasp.
“Don’t judge me! I haven’t had time—”
She holds her hands up in innocence but rolls her eyes. “Would I be a good friend if I didn’t tell you when you were in need of a french tip?”
I shake my head, allowing myself to push Elliot back down just underneath my surface, and feel all the better for it.
Olivia grins, pleased, and for a moment we sit in the charged space of the restaurant, dish ware clinking somewhere in the background, in what is no longer the silence of strangers but two women slowly unlearning the need to perform for each other.
I signal for the check and when I look back she’s still watching me, not cataloging this time, just…
noticing. I wonder if she notices that I feel lighter, like I notice she does.
“Thanks.” It comes out like a whisper but I hear the genuineness of my own voice.
“Anytime.” Her smile is soft, like she knows exactly what I mean. I pull some cash out, leaving a generous tip, and loop my arm through hers again as we rise and this time, she doesn’t tense at all.