Chapter 19
We walk back home (maybe I hobble a little bit, let’s be honest), and I reject the many ice cream trucks he points out in favor of holding out for something better. We stop into one of my favorite spots, Pamina Dolci e Gelato, and have a long debate over flavors, with him ultimately being excessively boring and ordering vanilla (and refusing to say fior di latte on principle, even though I promised him it would sound better in a British accent than any of the American ones surrounding him). I attempt to embarrass him by fully Americanizing nocciola and fragola , but he deliberately ignores it.
We lazily stroll with our cones as we head east, winding through the tree-lined streets with majestic brownstones as we make our way through the West Village and into Greenwich Village. Maybe part of the strolling is that I slow down as we go along, my attempts to forget about my leg not really working the more I walk.
“Sorry that I’m a slow mess today,” I say.
“Well, usually we have George, so I’ve never been on a really speedy walk with you either way,” he points out. “And as for a mess, you’re conveniently forgetting that you took care of me when I had strep, so I’d say you’re still worlds better than I was.” He takes the last bite of his cone, and it’s extremely distracting. “We’ve certainly seen each other at our least attractive.” He chuckles as we approach our building.
I want to ask, Why would that matter? and it’s on the tip of my tongue, the question hanging in front of me, exacerbating the niggling desire to know if he sometimes finds me attractive the way I often inadvertently do with him.
But leaning up against my building, typing away and engrossed in her phone, is my mother. She’s wearing some lime-green spandex walking gear, even as her wild hair looks much too untamed for any sporting outing. She’s got Waldo (the blueish-gray one) on a leash that she’s holding so precariously I want to reach out and wrap it more tightly around her wrist. She doesn’t notice as we walk up, but I’m sure she has to be here for me. Although I guess with my parents, it’s safest to never be sure of anything.
“Mom?” I ask, and she looks up.
I can see Eli’s eyes flick toward me, surprised and putting the pieces together. On our long night on the roof, I had some not-so-flattering things to say about my mother. Maybe it was the frustration of being trapped or maybe it was that particular way that Eli makes me incapable of obfuscating. But I appreciate the concern already embedded in his expression.
“Oh, honey, hi!” she says, pushing herself off the wall and coming to give me a hug, apparently oblivious to my disheveled state. I wonder if she doesn’t see it or if perhaps she’s so used to being in her own states that it doesn’t seem unusual. Waldo gives my leg a lick, clearly the only one of this duo who’s going to notice that I’m bleeding.
“I was going for a walk and wanted to bring you something.” She holds out a large wooden sign with Fischer Island painted on it. “See, it’s funny because in Florida there’s a Fisher Island, but it’s our last name instead.”
“I got that, yes,” I say drolly, wondering why this is an item she’s bringing to me.
“Suzy gave it to me; I think maybe she made it? I don’t know what she was thinking. But anyway, it’s cute, right?”
I keep staring at it. It’s confusing on so many levels. It’s a joke that isn’t funny and is too specific to really even make sense (none of us have been to Fisher Island, and it’s not famous enough to really make an actual joke out of). It’s painted on some kind of driftwood, so it seems more appropriate to a house in Florida than an apartment in New York. And most importantly: Why would I want this random decor instead of my mother, the recipient of the “gift”?
“It’s very cute,” I lie. “But I’m not sure what I would do with it.”
“Oh, you could stick it on your wall somewhere,” she breezes.
“My walls are pretty well decorated at this point,” I say, trying to figure out how to politely wriggle out of this situation. “And besides, if Suzy made it for you, don’t you want to keep it for yourself?”
“Oh, you know I have a thing about text on the wall.” She shrugs, as though that’s an obvious, normal proclivity I should remember. “It’s a little too ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ for me.”
“But not for Nora?” I hear a voice say next to me.
In the surprise over this inane discussion with my mother, I forgot Eli was standing beside me. And apparently she didn’t notice, either, because her head whips toward his voice, suddenly very interested and seemingly amused at the rude man in my company.
“Oooh, hello,” she says. “You’re a sharp one.”
“You’re handing your daughter a piece of art ”—he says the word like it’s dirty, and I have to stifle a laugh—“that you yourself don’t like. That would make anyone sharp.”
I’ve forgotten how acerbic he can be when he’s bothered and self-righteous. It’s as though I’ve peeled away those layers and forgotten about them in the subsequent weeks. But that version of Eli—that therapy-evading, renovation-provoking, know-it-all combatant—is still him, even if he’s softened around me. He always lingers above the surface before anyone can get below.
But of course, my mother being my mother, she just laughs. She enjoys being the windup toy that confounds and annoys.
“I never said I don’t like it,” she teases.
“You don’t, though,” he replies quickly, not letting her off the hook.
I watch, enraptured. I never call my mom out on anything. It’s not worth it. Normally all I want is for whatever line of questioning she has to end. But in this instance I have to admit I’m enjoying watching it play out.
“You can like something and not think it’s your style,” she counters.
“That’s just a nice way to say you don’t like something.”
“Oh, you’re a doll!” she says, doing one of her favorite conversation tactics of completely ignoring what someone has just said and instead giving them a vague compliment to distract them. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” She sticks out her hand. “I’m Tina.”
“I’m Eli. I’m Nora’s neighbor,” he explains.
“Well, very neighborly of you to look out for my daughter.”
He grumbles something under his breath, and I have to step in before he fully turns back into the pissy version of himself I’ve mostly expunged from my life. “Mom, thank you, but I don’t think I have space for it,” I say, trying to steer the conversation back to what I need to share.
“Oh,” she says, deflating. “But I walked it all the way over here! And that was especially hard with Waldo.”
“Do you want me to hang on to it and then I’ll bring it back whenever I’m next at your apartment?” I ask, noticing that Waldo is looking sort of desperate to get a real walk in. My mother can sucker me in fairly easily, but add in a dog, and I’m a goner.
She claps her hands together. “Oh that would be great, thanks, love. And then you can also see how it looks in your apartment, in case you change your mind.”
“She’s not changing her mind,” Eli says under his breath.
“Oh, you Brits always take life so seriously,” my mother says, waving him off.
“Like someone who can’t deal with ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ signs?” he retorts.
And at that I grab his arm and unlock the door.
“Okay, Mom, well, don’t let me keep you!” I say, grabbing the sign in question and trying to make this whole interaction end. “I’ll see you at dinner next Friday, okay?”
“Yes! Just don’t bring any tomatoes; I’m still avoiding nightshades,” she says.
I wave as I pull Eli in, then shove him onto the elevator.
I stare at him, and he stares right back. He doesn’t press the button for his floor, so I guess he’s coming up to mine. When the elevator opens, I walk out and open my door. George pops up from his perch on his bed, his black shaggy hair in need of a cut. I reach down and pet him, still ignoring Eli even as he walks into my apartment and sits down at the table.
“Why do you let her do that to you?” he finally lets out, articulating what I know he’s been itching to say.
“If I answer that, will you answer why you always seem so primed for a fight?” I put my hands on my hips, defiant and unwilling to give in that easily to his passive judgment.
“Sure,” he says with a wicked smile, clearly thinking he’s won whatever fishing expedition he’s on.
I sigh, caught now in having to try and explain my mother . I turn on the kettle to keep my hands busy and then start pulling out tea bags and teacups.
“It’s easier,” I finally say, hoping that’s enough.
“Bullshit.”
I pour the tea, bring the cups over, and sit down across from him. I like the way my dainty painted mug looks in his large hands.
“It is, though,” I say. “She makes everything so complicated. It’s like, she could be walking in a straight line from point A to point B and somehow break her foot, cause a car accident, knock over an unwitting bicyclist, and shatter a planter. So when she starts anything , it’s easier to just go along with it as much as possible and push back only as far as needed to get where I need to be.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t get what you need,” he counters.
I take a long sip of my tea. “But I did. I don’t care about sticking this thing in my closet for a week. I need to not have her questioning why it isn’t hung up. I need for her to not tell Suzy to come over and look at her art in my apartment. I need to not give an opening to the idea that my apartment is open for decoration. So I did that but also didn’t drag it into some giant thing.”
“That’s exhausting,” he says, blowing on his cup as though he can get the frustration out through that small action.
I’m surprised that’s his response. I always expect him to needle me more, but maybe when it matters, he knows that sometimes a person just needs to be seen. “It is,” I concur.
He seems satisfied by that admission. So I attempt to change the subject. “Okay, your turn.”
“Oh, I’ll blame my parents, too, for all my detriments,” he says with a grin. When he sees that’s not enough, he tries again. “My father is a barrister, so I was raised to be primed for a fight?”
The question at the end makes it quite clear that that isn’t the whole answer. I fix him with a look, and he smiles sheepishly, knowing he’s not getting away with anything.
“There’s a version of you that isn’t like that,” I prod, and he puckers his lips in thought, taking the sentiment in.
“I am like that,” he says, tilting his head, considering.
“I don’t think so,” I challenge. “You are sometimes . You were like that in therapy, on your guard. You were like that when we met in person, when you wanted to challenge me. But I think when you’re comfortable, it’s not you at all. You’re open and fun and not this spiky person you start out as with everyone.”
He lifts his tea and blows on it again, even though by now it’s probably cool enough. But I think he wants the excuse to not say anything for a moment. He’s trying to have a poker face, but the fact that he isn’t capable of that—except while playing actual poker with Kwan, apparently—is one of the best things about him. He looks caught; he looks like he’s considering an idea he’s never considered before.
It’s easy for me to stay silent and watch as the concept plays out and settles into his mind. Part of being a therapist is knowing when to go quiet and let thoughts marinate.
And finally, he sets the tea down. “I don’t know why I have that shell ... I mean, I wasn’t completely off base when I said it was probably about my father. But you’re right that it wasn’t just his job. It’s sort of who he is. My father always made me live on my toes. But not in a kooky way like your mother. His version of it is that he’s naturally combative. And I just ... well, I guess I mirrored it. Or used it to deflect and keep my mother and sister away from it.”
“That’s hard,” I say softly, wanting to give him the validation he so kindly offered to me earlier.
He lifts his shoulder, like it’s no big deal, but his body language can’t outrun the expression on his face. “I guess you have to be spiky if you’re the only one standing at the front line.”
“I like seeing what’s below the spikes,” I say and reach out to pat his hand. He doesn’t look at me, only at that simple movement.
“Thanks for the tea,” he says, abruptly standing up, a physical closing of the conversation. “Sorry I conned you into an activity that got you scraped up.”
I look down at my legs, having forgotten completely.
“Oh shit,” I say, realizing only in that moment that I’m actually now bleeding.
At my expression, Eli immediately kneels down to take a look. He lifts up my leg, and the way he’s holding it is like it’s something fragile. It’s just a small cut, but it must have come open more while we were walking.
Whatever dull sting I’d been feeling from the cuts is erased by the total awareness of where his hands are. I can’t breathe while they move up and down my leg, like he’s mapping me, taking stock of every scrape and of every curve. An electric current shivers through me at the way his hands brush me, and I wonder if the goose bumps that burst across my skin are making my internal thoughts obvious now.
“We have to clean this up,” he says, standing again, the absence of his touch now glaring.
He walks into my bathroom and roots around for a minute, noise clanging and helping to break me from whatever was happening a moment ago.
But it’s short lived, because soon he’s kneeling in front of me again. He props up my leg on his knee and assesses, taking it as seriously as a surgeon would in an emergency. He pours hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and carefully blots it against me. I hiss, and he grips my leg, as though he’s trying to help me through the pain. And then he blows on my skin, right where it’s stinging. I know he’s simply trying to help, and maybe this is just my recent dry spell, but I swear it’s somehow the most erotic thing anyone has ever done to me.
The shiver goes beyond my legs and reaches my thighs. I’m bacon in a pan, not realizing when I started sizzling because the heat’s only gradually been turned up, but now it’s fully on high.
Our breathing is the only sound between us. In and out, a metronome of consistency belying what’s happening for me under the surface. I wish I could see below his surface. I wish I could poke inside and see his very simple assessment of a friend’s injury so it could maybe tamp down whatever nonsense is living inside me right now. Every time I’m convinced that by being friends, this unrequited attraction will go away, I have to have some palpable reminder that it’s still there.
He’d probably be mortified if he knew. I’ve never met a man so insistent on using the word “friends.”
And I think he needs a friend. He started over in a whole new country, and the only person he’d had here was the one person who died and left him the apartment he moved into. Maybe he thought the place of childhood peace could be a reset.
But that attraction always seems to hum for me, no matter how much I willfully ignore it. And right now, it’s inescapable, and incredibly inconvenient. His grip on my leg is like a fire, creeping up and burning as it goes. I want to pull away, but I worry it would make it even more obvious.
He’s still looking only at my leg. His gaze doesn’t travel up. He bites his bottom lip in thought, and it just makes everything happening inside me worse.
But it’s then that I suddenly realize ... he’s feeling it too.
I’ve been so concerned with my own reactions that I haven’t noticed him . The inability to meet my eyes. The furrow in his eyebrows. The way his jaw muscles have tensed. I thought my inconvenient gravitation was one sided, but the way he’s shifted makes me suddenly aware .
Have I purposely missed it? Has this always been sitting between us and not just singularly in my mind?
Maybe I’ve deliberately not noticed it because my life is already too confusing and I’ve been adamant about the former-patient line. The specter of going to London and seeing J has taken up all the romantic headspace that I’m capable of. And this definitively isn’t romantic. This isn’t the weird spun fairy tale of true love I’ve woven for myself with J and remain terrified of. This is a version of desire I’m not used to.
And with his eyes deliberately not meeting mine, I can’t gauge how to get out of it. I want to laugh with him like we usually do and say, Hey, isn’t this funny? I want to brush it off; I want to have him look at me and make me realize, Oh, actually, you misinterpreted.
But I also want. I want, I want, I want. I’m at a boil, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
But thankfully, before I implode, he suddenly lets go and stands up. He douses the fire with distance. And a rigid stance I’m not used to.
He clears his throat. “Sorry again,” he says, and I know he means it about the cuts, but I also wonder if he means the prolonged holding of my leg. “Thanks for the tea.”
“You already said that,” I point out, unable to move, the high of the moment only starting to dissipate slowly.
“Right, I did, that’s true.” He nods. And then grimaces. How did we both get so awkward so fast. “Okay, well, next time a regular walk. George would like that better anyway.”
I notice George staring at both of us. His expression is a version of Don’t bring me into your nonsense, please . Which is fair enough. I don’t want to be in this conversation either.
“That sounds great,” I say, so breezy, so casual, so ignoring that my entire body was tingling a few moments ago from him blowing on my boo-boos like a pathetic, lusty, completely bewildered person.
He runs his hands through his hair, tousling his curls and not helping my situation at all. “Okay. Great. That’s great. I’ll see you soon, Nora,” he bumbles.
And within a moment he’s out the door, like a cartoon character who leaves so fast there’s a hole in the wall.
And I’m left with some cuts and scrapes along with an equally inconvenient feeling of total confusion.