Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
HENRY
“Henry?” It’s Julian, pestering me. I’d say I’m focused on work, but my screen saver has turned on. “Henry?”
“Yes?”
“I said your name three times. Are you quite alright today?” He asks that every day.
“Of course. I’m fine.” I’m a little distracted, but I’m getting by.
“Coffee time? Fly or buy?”
“Both. My treat.” I grab my coat. The memory of shopping for it, of Kait and Saoirse hitting it off by phone, is as harsh as the cashmere is soft. I grab my scarf and wonder why I don’t wear a parka like everyone else in Chicago, but I know. She was with me, sort of, when I bought this coat.
“Henry?” Julian calls after me as I head for the door.
“Yes?”
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “If you aren’t happy, it isn’t over.” I pretend that’s reassuring, with a nod and what I hope is a smile, before stepping out into the hallway.
One of the worst things that can happen to a person is hope.
I’ve lost so much time staring at my lamp from Kait, touching it, trying to make hers light up and send some sort of message that I’m a mess without her.
I wish I could make it blink SOS. Who knew a single light bulb could devastate me by existing, but here we are.
Hope that she will call is pointless. She said she wouldn’t, so she won’t.
Despite anything I said to the contrary, Kait was honest to a fault, so I can rest sadly assured she’s not speaking my name or ringing me up anytime soon.
Ever. The only thing left is some freak chance she moved here and I hear her voice across a room.
That I’ll be in a bar and the cosmos will see fit to reunite us. It would help if I left the house.
Magical thinking.
Except she’s real. And she’s out there. And I’m never going to find her. I wouldn’t even know where to look. Or who to look for.
The solution lies in being busy from the moment I wake until the moment I fall asleep—which is positively easy these days. Except I dream of her and with perfect clarity, and I feel like a loser because I’m struggling with moving on. Correction: I’m struggling with the outcome of my choices.
“Thank you,” I say as a polite regular holds the door for me at the Other Bean.
The warm blast of cream-and-coffee-scented air hits me, and I take a long, heavenly breath.
I narrowly avoid eye contact with my giggling morning acquaintance, to whom I never speak but who seems to delight in my admittedly minor humiliation.
Regardless, she’s wearing an adorable pair of pink Converse All Stars with a matching pink shirt, and the hair bun chopsticks as always. She’s the definition of adorable. And familiar. Maybe I’ve had a dream about her, something that makes her seem familiar and her laugh appealing.
Every time one of Julian’s odd names on the coffee tickles her fancy, she giggles, and it’s a physical thing. A frisson of energy goes skittering down my spine when it hits.
“Hello, Irish!” Duncan announces in his burly Scots accent. He gives me a fist bump as he froths or whatever baristas do.
“Duncan, good to see you as always,” I say and jam my hands in my pockets, trying not to feel awkward and conspicuous. It’s a side effect of Julian’s name game.
We chat as he puts together orders. It’s busy. I wait for him to yell out whatever name Julian has selected to embarrass me. Duncan, however, is a gentleman and hands it to me. Silently.
And consequences being what they are, I exchange the lack of embarrassment for a day without a giggle. I prefer the minor spectacle. It feels like being noticed again.
I accept the two cups, a little sad. No matter.
Elliott, the barista, can’t let it stand and, despite me already holding the drinks in my hands, yells, “Americano and Earl Grey for… Henry Cavill!”
And there it is. My adorable friend lets out a tiny peal of laughter she tries to squelch but still reminds me of happy, tinkling bells ringing with delight.
Making her happy for a moment helps me. I can’t make it up to Kait, so I try to put small doses of good into the world where I can.
A penance. Some days, I hope that it was another day at the office for her, solely because I hate the idea of causing her pain.
When I’m selfish, I want her to miss me too. I want her to long for me.
I must be blushing because Elliott smiles and says, “Sorry, it was too good. I had to.”
Duncan nods. “Who doesn’t like Sherlock Holmes?”
“That’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name Henry Cavill?” Elliott deadpans. “Sherlock Holmes? Not his perfect butt?” he asks with a bawdy wink.
I thank him and try to escape.
A closer look at my cup sends a little jolt through me.
It’s not the usual white paper; it’s got Eóghann MacGregor art, a series of hearts.
First mine, then a few more demonstrating a slow-motion breaking down before rising again from the fallout like a glorious multicolored phoenix.
My knees get weak, and I lean against the counter until I’m sure that I won’t crumple.
And in the least expected development of the day, hope rises up. Wild. Untamed. Gut-wrenching. I’ll be here for the opening party, even if I have to walk over flaming coals and shards of glass barefoot. I’d crawl through hell to find her.
I don’t dare mention it to Julian. I just put it on my calendar in all caps and set two calendar alarms. We no longer talk about Kait because it reminds him of how angry he is at me for ruining his “girl bifff” coming to town. He’s not wrong.
If I could find Kait, even if she doesn’t want me, surely she would want him. That would please him, and maybe we could be like we used to be.
All of us.
The days pile up and stretch into infinity. I thought about asking Duncan for the artist’s email, but it’s far easier to negotiate in person than by email. If he says no from afar, it’s hard to argue, but I’m persuasive for a living, so I decide to bide my time, even though waiting is dreadful.
For over a week, time moves backward, wrapping me in barbed wire and calling it hope. Then suddenly, I’m standing in the shower, getting ready to meet Eóghann.
I put on one of my lucky ties and out of pure desperation ask Saoirse’s opinion on my most impressive outfit.
If I radiate professionalism and good taste, Eóghann might be more inclined to humor me.
I get a haircut. I shave. I wear what Fashionista Sterling tells me.
I polish my perfectly shiny shoes, and I even pop a mint in my mouth on the two-minute walk to the Other Bean.
My phone rings. Julian.
“Where are you? A bunch of us are going out tonight to watch the game at the pub,” he says.
“The Other Bean.”
“Grab your beverage and come on over.”
“I’m staying in tonight.”
“You’re out now. You stay in every night. Come with us.”
“Let me think about it,” I say. I’ll probably need a drink later, when this whole wild goose chase crashes and burns. “I’ll try to stop by later.”
Julian grumbles but finally says, “Come by, mate. It’ll do you good.”
I check my tie in the reflection of the door, and like every day since I first saw it, the sight of the poster makes my chest tighten until it squeezes the wind out of me with traitorous hope.
This is a long shot, Henry. Don’t get too excited.
“Americano, four sugars,” I say. Elliott thinks nothing of it when the name I give is boring old Henry rather than Keanu Reeves or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
The Other Bean couldn’t be better for displaying art. High ceilings, long runs of neutral walls begging to be filled, and heaps of natural light. Even now that the sun is going down, it’s perfect. I spot four big heart paintings from the doorway. They’re lined up next to a print of my painting.
“Here’s your coffee,” he says. “Enjoy the art.”
“Do you think I could have the poster from the door when the event is over?” I ask. “I would happily pay for it. Or maybe I could order another one if it’s an imposition?” I know it’s a bizarre thing to ask for, but the barista seems unfazed.
“Sure, whatever. Come get it tomorrow,” he says with a shrug. “I think there’s a second one in the back, still rolled up in its tube. Ask Duncan.”
My coffee is too hot to drink, so I blow on it.
My cup has a heart and Eóghann’s stylish signature in silver, large and scrawled over the art.
The place is transformed, the blond hardwood and beige walls a background for the eye-popping art.
Every bit of wall outside of the seating area is either covered in framed paintings or deliberately provides white space for a dramatic display of the big hearts that caught my attention.
The tables and chairs have all been shunted to the side; I stand and take it all in.
There are dozens of small hearts arranged across the wall by color.
The first are cold hearts, gray and black, pain radiating from the delicate brushstrokes.
Then more industrial steampunk stuff with lots of charcoal and graphite and snow white and an occasional rivet with rusty metal, followed by more grayscale, but these grays are warming; the most recent ones have orange and hints of red mixed into the charcoal, and then there are a few where color has really slipped back in.
Bits of fuchsia sneak in on the last one.
Maybe Eóghann will tell me how he found hope in the darkness.
The hearts seem to be walking a mile in my shoes, traversing happiness, devastation, and recovery.
I’m not an art guy. I can’t stand in front of a squiggle-filled painting and say something pithy like “This is such an informed take on the rise and fall of humanity” when it looks like a cat got carried away in a yarn store.
But this? Eóghann’s work? It’s like having someone examining my soul and putting it on canvas.
I’d want every single piece if it didn’t hurt so much.
“Irish, how are you and your shite Irish whiskey?” Duncan asks, pulling me back into his small office. Duncan has become a good friend over the years, one cup of coffee at a time, despite his Scottish ways.
“Fine, thank you,” I reply. “I decided to check out the art tonight at your recommendation. I’d have a drink, but why waste calories on something as useless as Scotch?”
Duncan laughs, as intended. “I did bring a bottle tonight. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about having the place full, so I came prepared to self-soothe.”
He pulls a bottle of fantastic Scotch out of a desk drawer and pours me what has to be a double and threatens to end me if I put it in my coffee.
We laugh about drinking it out of paper coffee cups.
The burn is soothing, and after a few minutes, a medicated languor spreads through me.
Still, I can’t tell him the whole truth of why I’m here.
The saga of Kait and Eóghann is too pathetic to share.
“Have a look around, but before you leave, I’ve been meaning to introduce you to Eóghann. Come find me before you go?”
“That would be great,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Really?” he asks with a little smile and a lot of suspicion. I forget that coffee is a second career after a too-long stint in hostage negotiation. The man listens like it’s his job because it was. “You know Eóghann?”
“I have the first one of the heart paintings, like the one on the door poster,” I say. “I’d appreciate an introduction later.”
I want to talk to Eóghann before things get busy.
This is shaping up to be a capital E event.
Trays are staged in the coffee area with hors d’oeuvres.
There are bottles of champagne on ice with a counter covered in flutes, and gourmet s’mores ready for nibbling, and a few servers dressed in crisp white tuxedo shirts and bow ties standing behind the counter, waiting to be of service.
There’s a buzz of energy as two women stand back and straighten paintings with an eye for perfection, and Bean staff willingly do their bidding, moving tables and chairs to show the art to its best advantage.
I hope the big hearts aren’t obscenely priced because I wouldn’t hesitate to sell a kidney to take them home.
It’s not like when I bought my black chair.
I wanted it but would have been fine with something else.
This is different. If I can’t have Kait, I will have the art that reminds me of her. Art that calls my name when she won’t.
“Have a look around,” Duncan says, gesturing to the walls of paintings. “We’ll talk later.”
One of the women is a tall and leggy blonde.
To say she’s stunning would be accurate but doesn’t capture her genetic blessings.
Yet it’s the woman with auburn hair who captures my attention in her black dress and heels.
Every light in this place is turned on to show off the art, and her hair is gleaming, long copper-tinted tresses that shine as she moves, pointing at one frame and tweaking another.
She’s the boss, calm and in command of the entire operation, and a temptation while doing it.
I’ve always imagined Kait looking like this woman.
I managed to get long and auburn out of her one day.
She also said she was plain at best, which I never believed for a second.
I’ve had multiple girlfriends who were ultimately revealed to be ugly on the interior, but I’m well aware of how good a person can look when they’re beautiful inside.
I don’t know what the brunette says, but the blonde replies, “Yes, Your Highness,” with affection and sarcasm that pings a memory I reach for but can’t grasp. Odd—I know I’ve never met her. She’s memorable in a way beautiful people often are. “Your wish is my most favorite command, Empress.”
The tall one almost walks into me, stepping backward from the wall until I clear my throat to let her know I’m present. She says, “Excuse me,” and walks around me with a painting in hand.
That’s when I get it. The woman in the little black dress is Tiny Giggle in her dressed-up adult form, and holy hell, I wish I were a guy who could appreciate her more. Sure, I’ve had a bit of heightened interest in her for a few months, but this sleek and sexy version is terrifying.
I’d leave now, but my desperation to find Kait forces me to reach deep inside for the courage to speak to her. I don’t want to. I have to.
I need to find Eóghann, and Tiny is clearly working in some capacity tonight. And if she’s the way I find Kait, then talk to her I shall. Because if Eóghann doesn’t know who bought my painting, this is it.
If this doesn’t work, I’m done.
No more looking.
No more hope.
I let her go.