Chapter 9 - Jess #2
I say goodbye to Nish at the door. He holds me by the shoulders and looks at me with an expression so openly proud that I have to look away.
"This is the beginning," he says. "You know that, right?"
I nod. I don't trust my voice.
Then I'm on the street, alone, the November air biting through the green dress.
I should have brought a coat. I didn't bring a coat because Tess said the dress needed to be seen unobstructed, and I listened because Tess is usually right about these things, and now I'm freezing on an East Village sidewalk at 10:30 at night.
I start walking toward the subway. Two blocks, maybe less.
He falls into step beside me.
I don't hear him approach. One moment the sidewalk is empty, the next he's there—to my left, matching my pace, his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket. He doesn't announce himself. Doesn't say anything. Just walks.
"I didn't ask you to walk with me," I say.
"I know."
"So why are you?"
"Because it's late and it's cold and you don't have a coat."
"I don't need a coat."
"You're shivering."
I am shivering. The dress that looked so perfect under gallery lighting offers nothing against November. My arms are bare and covered in goosebumps and my jaw is tight from clenching against the cold.
He takes off his suit jacket. Doesn't ask. Just shrugs it off his shoulders and holds it out to me in one smooth motion, still walking, still not looking at me directly.
The presumption of it—the sheer, unapologetic presumption—should make me furious. It's the hardware store all over again. The man who reaches for things without asking. The man who decides what you need before you've said a word.
The jacket is warm. Warm from his body. I can feel the heat of it radiating from the fabric, and the scent—that clean, expensive, infuriating scent—rises from the collar like smoke.
I should hand it back. I should tell him I'm fine, that I've walked colder streets in thinner clothes, that I've been taking care of myself since I was seven years old and I don't need a man's jacket or his company or his presumptuous, uninvited presence on my walk to the subway.
I put it on.
It's enormous on me. The shoulders hang past mine, the sleeves cover my hands, the hem falls to mid-thigh. I look ridiculous. I also stop shivering immediately, which I hate, because it means he was right.
We walk in silence for half a block. The streets are quiet—East Village quiet, which means there are still people around but they're muted, absorbed in their own nights. Our footsteps fall into rhythm without either of us adjusting.
"You don't have to do this," I say.
"I know."
"It's not the 1800s. Women walk alone at night."
"I'm aware."
"So this is—"
"This is a man walking in the same direction as a woman. Nothing more."
"We're not walking in the same direction. You're following me."
"I'm walking beside you. There's a difference."
"The difference is about six inches of sidewalk."
He almost smiles. I catch it at the corner of his mouth—the ghost of something real, not the practiced warmth of the bodega nods. It disappears before it fully forms, but it was there.
We reach the subway entrance. I stop. He stops. We're standing under the green globe of the station light, facing each other, and the jacket is still on my shoulders and my skin is still warm from his body heat and the whole thing is far more intimate than it has any right to be.
"Thank you," I say. "For coming tonight. For what you said about the work."
"I meant it."
"I know." That's the problem, I want to say. You meant it, and meaning it is more dangerous than flattery, because flattery I can dismiss and sincerity I can't.
I start to take the jacket off. His hand comes up—not touching me, but close. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of his palm near my shoulder.
"Keep it," he says. "It's cold on the platform."
"I'm not keeping your jacket."
"Bring it to the bodega. Whenever you want."
He says it lightly, casually, as if lending a woman his jacket and trusting her to return it is nothing. But it's not nothing. It's a tether. A reason to see him again that doesn't require either of us to admit we want to.
I should take it off. Hand it back. Walk down the subway stairs and ride home and hang the green dress on the good hanger and forget about the way his eyes looked when the mask slipped.
I pull the jacket tighter around my shoulders.
"Fine," I say. "But I'm not dry-cleaning it."
I turn and walk down the subway stairs without looking back. The jacket smells like him—warm, clean, expensive, wrong for every part of my life and impossible to take off.
On the platform, waiting for the train, I stand in his jacket with my arms crossed over my chest and my heart beating too fast and my mind doing the thing it does when a piece of metal won't cooperate—turning the problem over, looking at it from every angle, trying to find the shape that makes sense.
Damien Cross doesn't make sense. He's too controlled and too honest. Too smooth and too raw. Too presumptuous and too right. He's a contradiction wrapped in a dark suit, and every time I think I've figured out which side of him is real, the other side shows through.
The train comes. I get on. The car is mostly empty—a couple leaning into each other, a man asleep against the window. I sit with his jacket around me like a second skin and watch the tunnel lights streak past.
I'm in trouble.
I know I'm in trouble because the jacket is warm and it smells like him and I have no intention of giving it back tomorrow or the next day.
I'm going to hang it in my apartment and I'm going to look at it and I'm going to think about the way he said "brave" in front of my sculpture and the way he said my name like it was a complete sentence and the way he took off his jacket without asking because he knew I was cold before I admitted it.
I'm in trouble because I like the weight of it on my shoulders. I like that it's too big. I like that it smells like a man I don't trust, and the not-trusting doesn't make me want to take it off.
The train rocks through the dark. I press my face against the collar and breathe in.
I'm in so much trouble.