Chapter 15 #2
“Well, I’ve enjoyed the champagne enough and now I need to pee.” Nikki turned to me and handed me her glass. “I’ll be right back.”
“If you see Brooklyn, tell him where we are,” I called after her. When another hostess walked by with a tray of champagne, I felt compelled to grab my own. Despite the fact that I knew champagne needed to settle and should be drunk slowly, I immediately took a long gulp.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who needs to relax.” Mom raised her eyebrow at me.
“What?” I scoffed at her. “You said enjoy yourself. I’m enjoying free champagne.”
A younger man (and truly only younger compared to the posh older people walking around) walked by the two of us, assessing Mom’s oil paintings with a musing smile. He then glanced at her and offered her the same one before walking away.
I nudged Mom with a sly grin, but before I could instigate any further, Nikki came waltzing back to us, and without Brooklyn.
“Did you see Brooklyn at all?” I asked her.
“No,” Nikki replied. “I thought he was back out here with you.”
I stiffened, feeling Nikki’s eyes on me. “Oh, then I’m sure he’s just wandering around, admiring some of the art.”
“Oh that’s sweet,” Mom chimed in, but she was bouncing on her toes and looking for the younger guy who had walked by us before.
Nikki gave me a sideways glance. “It’s not that big of a gallery, Nat, and he’s also, like, built like a tree.”
She swept her arm outward, where almost every corner of the space was visible from where we stood.
There was absolutely no reason for everyone to be getting so worked up, and I was about to relish the feeling of being right. I handed Nikki my champagne glass. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as I was out of her line of sight, I made a beeline to the back hallway that led to the bathrooms and curator offices, and for maybe one fraction of a second my mind wandered to more sinister thoughts.
I wasn’t even sure what a relapse for someone like him looked like, but that was where I forced the thoughts to stop.
Sure enough, Brooklyn emerged from the dimness seemingly on cue, looking as calm, cool, and collected as ever.
“Everything all right?” I asked when he made his way over to me.
“Yeah, it was a whole adventure to find a glass of water, and my bladder is the size of a quarter.” He gave me one of those endearing smiles, and it made the tension whoosh out of my shoulders.
“I’m sorry.” I sighed, silently kicking myself for even suspecting there wasn’t a reasonable explanation for his absence. “I should have realized with you being sober, this might be uncomfortable for you.”
“I’m fine,” Brooklyn said. “Never was a champagne guy. Gives me bubble guts, to be honest.”
I giggled and shook my head. I wasn’t sure exactly what bubble guts were, but it seemed like a reasonable description for whatever was going on in my stomach now. No more champagne for me, that was for sure.
He offered me his elbow. “Shall we?”
I slid my arm through the crook of his elbow, and he felt as sturdy as ever as he led me back into the heart of the gallery.
We did a few laps, admiring some of the more abstract artwork and making pretentious sideways comments as if we knew exactly what we were talking about.
We laughed, and maybe it was simply champagne guts, but everything inside me warmed, the way the sun warms the ocean in the mornings.
We made our way back over to Mom, where Brooklyn effortlessly slipped into conversation with her about her creative process (and god knows she loved that). He was so good with people, I was almost envious.
We were debating if a painting had actually been hung upside down when his phone rang in his jacket pocket, and annoyance flashed across his features.
“I’m sorry, I gotta take this.” He gave me a quick nod before retreating to the back hallway by the bathrooms again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a smaller painting on the back wall of the gallery that we seemed to have missed in our laps, and I wandered over to it.
It hadn’t gathered much attention compared to some of the larger pieces, but I was drawn to it.
It was an oil painting like my mom’s, but much darker.
Parts of the ocean and sky were nearly black, and the only pop of lightness was a hand sticking out of the water.
I didn’t know why, but looking at it for too long gave me chills. It was like something I would have nightmares about as a teenager—drowning, suffocating, and reaching out for help that wouldn’t come.
“Where’s your man now?” Nikki jolted me from my grim thoughts.
I shrugged in response, not willing to humor her sideways comment. “He got a phone call he had to take. Probably his mom. She likes to check in.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” She scrunched her nose up and gazed around the room, where Brooklyn was nowhere to be found again. “Like, first he’s late, and now he’s basically been MIA since he got here.”
“I don’t think it’s weird,” I responded. “I think it’s weird that you think it’s weird.”
Nikki scoffed and gave me another dramatic eye roll. “I’m saying it’s sketchy. For all you know, he could be like snorting cocaine in the bathroom or something.”
That one hurt. Not just because it was coming from my sister, but because there was the smallest iota of a chance it might have been true. But I wouldn’t let her know that.
“I don’t understand, Nikki, where is all this coming from?”
“Nat, he’s got drug problems,” she said bitingly, her tone hushed but still sharper than knives. “And I’m getting a weird vibe from him tonight. Something’s not right.”
“You know what?” I folded my arms over my chest, not bothering to hide my irritation anymore. “You of all people should be more understanding.”
She scowled. “That’s exactly the point. I’ve seen people like him in rehab, Nat. They sneak around and hide and lie and they’re good at it.”
“Well, you obviously haven’t seen enough,” I snapped back, immediately regretting it as she recoiled with hurt in her eyes. Desperate to regain any sense of composure, I paused and rolled my shoulders back. “Brooklyn’s different, Nikki.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“And you know everything, don’t you?”
I paused and gritted my teeth. I didn’t need to justify it anymore. I spent the most time with Brooklyn, and I knew that he was fine. I would know if he wasn’t.
“More than you think you do.” I lowered my voice. “I’m not having any more of this conversation. Not here, and not now.”
“Everything cool?” Brooklyn came up behind me and draped his arm over my shoulder. “Sorry about that, it was my mom. You know how she gets.”
I shot Nikki a hard glare. I told you so, again.
“Whatever,” Nikki grumbled, dropping her gaze to her silver stilettos.
“Everything’s good,” I told Brooklyn. “Great, actually.”
He beamed at me, oblivious to the emotional standoff my sister and I were having. He led me away back into the gallery crowd, and it took everything in me not to look back at her.
>> <<
Mom sold two paintings that night, one of which was to the younger guy she’d been making eyes with. Otherwise, the gallery had mostly cleared out.
“You go, Nikki and I have this handled.” She winked at me before looking over my shoulder at Brooklyn, who lingered by the door, his suit jacket draped over his arm.
“Mom, I don’t know where you think I’m going except to bed.”
Mom chuckled and shook her head in response.
I glanced across the room at Nikki, who’d been talking to one of the curators, still clutching an empty champagne glass in her hand. When we made eye contact, she scowled.
“Seriously.” Mom swept me into a quick hug. “Thanks for all your help. Be smart.”
“Oh my god.” I groaned before walking away. “Pretending I didn’t hear the implications behind that.”
I met Brooklyn by the door, who gave me one of those effortless smiles. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” I returned his smile. “Take me home?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
We drove home with the windows open, and I tried to let the stinging sense of unease from earlier fly out of them and into the night air.
Everything had ended up being fine—great, even—and maybe I shouldn’t be so expectant of the other shoe dropping out of the sky.
Brooklyn slowed to a stop in front of my house, and some old, soft rock song I didn’t recognize crooned faintly on the stereo in the background.
It was quiet; not the kind we forced ourselves to sit in during family therapy, but the kind of quiet that only came when you were just so comfortable with someone, words couldn’t express it.
I’d never had a person who understood me like he did, and it felt so good and so right that I almost had to wonder if he was even real, or if he was someone I’d made up because I wanted something like that more than I’d realized. Until him.
“We had a good night,” he said over the faint lulling of the music.
“We did, didn’t we?”
Brooklyn dropped his eyes to the stereo. He hit the Next button, and I couldn’t help but notice his shaking hands. He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brows, carefully mulling over his next words.
“Everything all right?” I asked him, absentmindedly running my hands back and forth over the silky material of my dress.
“I don’t know, Nat.” Every time he looked like he was about to say something else, he pressed his lips together again. My heart began sprinting.
“What, Brooklyn?” I reached over the center console and gave his arm a playful shove. “Please say it. You can tell me anything.”
He looked over at me, and the glow from the moon above us turned his eyes into little pools of light. “I feel like you’re the only person I can tell anything to.”
This time, I reached across the console to gently put my hand on his. “And I’m glad you feel that way.”