Chapter 22
MATTHEW
I’m still angry when I get to Maggie’s the following morning. She wants me to walk with her and Stuart to the appointment with the florist. I don’t want to go, but she insists she needs my “artistic eye.” As if her ability to compose a setting is in any way inferior to mine.
“What’s the matter?” she asks when I come in.
“Just tired,” I grunt, taking off my jacket in the entryway and hanging it up.
I’ve been sleeping like shit. I’m desperate for rest. For sex.
To shut off my brain. To leave the goddamn country for years like he did.
I jerked off in the shower when I got home last night and then again this morning, but it didn’t help settle me down.
Probably because of the subject matter I used to get myself over the finish line. I can’t think of anything but him.
But I guess I’m the only one with that problem.
When he didn’t text me after the night we kissed, I went back to the Bronx, thinking I’d give him some time.
But our communication has been awkward and lacking this week, and it’s always me reaching out.
I’m scared to ask for more, worried what he would say—more worried he’ll say nothing.
I figured our insecurities were feeding off the other’s and one of us would have enough eventually.
Until last night when he came in with Ravenna.
I’d seen her out the door four hours prior. She asked how she looked. Told me she had a date. She was fucking beaming. Granted, neither one of them were smiling when they returned, but they were together. And I’m in the dark. I fucking hate this.
“You look cool,” Stuart says entering the living room. I’m wearing my usual. Khaki cargos, a black Henley, and Docs. It’s not the height of fashion, but it’s clean.
He, on the other hand, looks classy in designer jeans, a white untucked button-down, and a navy blazer.
The look helps fill out his tall, lanky frame.
Sometimes it seems like his head is too big for his body, but today it looks normal.
The Marches are Irish—dark hair, pale skin, ruddy cheeks.
Stuart wears wire-framed glasses that make him look both nerdy and unassuming.
Conversely, Maggie is in some mossy green hippy flower child dress with her hair down and her contacts in.
They couldn’t look less like a couple if they tried.
I wonder if it’s the slam poetry or the cello that helps her overlook the fact that he’s in “society.”
He’s a smitten kitten, still. Heart eyes and everything—like he landed Taylor Swift.
“Coffee?” Maggie asks as I crash onto one of the kitchen counter stools.
“I could use it.”
“Yep. Those circles under your eyes aren’t going to fix themselves.” She mixes me a mug the way I like it, with heavy cream and raw sugar.
Stuart takes a seat next to me, his phone out with a picture of my tree sculpture pulled up. He’s got it zoomed in on one of the words in the branches. “Settle a bet for us. Does this say penis?”
“Penance.” I say with a surprised laugh.
“I told you,” Maggie says.
“It looks like penis.”
“I have shitty handwriting.”
That makes Stuart laugh, too. “So I’ve been staring at this a long time. It’s about death, right?”
“More like the circle of life,” I tell him.
“Everybody looks like they’re dying though,” he says, zooming in on an etched face.
“They’re coming,” I say.
“Oh…” He zooms in on a few more faces. “Oh.”
“Why would I make a sculpture about death?”
He comes back with, “What even is art?”
“Art is life,” I say, sipping my coffee.
“I love this. I’m gonna show it to my boss and get him to buy it for the lobby.”
“How much should I charge?” I ask, being serious even if he isn’t.
“One point two, minimum.”
“That wouldn’t even cover materials,” I argue.
“He means million, Matty,” my sister says.
I laugh loudly at that, but they just stare at me. “It’s not worth that.” I gesture at the phone. “It’s practically porn.”
“No one knows how dirty your mind is,” Maggie says. “It could easily be seen as a metaphor for suffering and beauty or whatever.”
I need to write that down.
“Let me know what he says,” I say sarcastically to Stu.
“I will,” he says. “This is the best thing you’ve ever done. Although it probably should be in a gallery. That’d drive up the price. Get you some press.”
The mention of the press flings my mind straight back to the gutter with Fischer. Because he’s a member of the press. Fuck, I’m a mess. I don’t know if I can go another day without talking to him. “How long is this gonna take?” I ask.
“Maybe an hour,” Maggie says. “Then lunch. Why?”
“I have some things I want to get done afterward.”
“We’ll be done before dark. Promise.”
Should I go see him? Call first? If I see him, I’m gonna want him. I already do.
My body misses his so bad. My mouth wants to reattach itself to him. My tongue wants to taste him. I have to remind myself constantly he probably doesn’t want that. It’s way more likely he wants her.
Trying to get my mind on literally anything else, I ask Stuart, “Is your mom coming?”
“Nah. She’s got her book club every Saturday.”
“They read a book a week? Seems ambitious for a book club.”
“It’s just an excuse to drink and gossip. No one questions Mother’s book club.”
“Drink up, Matty,” my sister says, patting my shoulder as she breezes behind us. “We gotta get going.”
Mustering what’s left of my energy, I drain my cup and get ready to head back to the Upper East Side.
* * *
The florist for The Pierre events is an elderly white woman in a pencil skirt and four-inch stilettos. She’s giving Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Not what I expected, and I wonder if she knows about the sex club next door.
Initially, she mistakes me for the groom because Maggie and I make more sense as a couple, but I quickly fall back to stand with my mom, who’s looking toward the entrance. Her face brightens. “Oh, there they are!” She waves.
I turn. Fuck. Fischer.
Of course. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me he would be here. He lives a block away, he’s helped plan a wedding in this century, and Maggie loves attention.
Our gazes meet, and he nods. In a lightweight sky blue sweater and dark, fitted jeans, he looks so good I want to gouge out my eyes.
He’s with Vaughn, who starts running at my mom like a mini freight train. I spot her with a hand on her back so that when he leaps into her arms, she doesn’t go tumbling backward. Fischer gives Mom a grin as he makes his way over to us. “Am I late?” he asks, keeping a safe distance.
“Not at all,” she says indulgently, then turns her attention to her grandson.
Fischer’s actually twenty minutes late. But he could murder someone in cold blood, dismember them in front of me, and I’d still look at him like he walks on water.
“Hey,” he says to me, offering his hand.
If he expects a handshake, he’s an idiot. I may be jealous, I may even be dying inside, but I take his hand in mine and tug him toward me, using my other hand to pull our heads together. “We need to talk.”
He wraps an arm around my back and pulls his head away, staring at me. One look, and I’m already overstimulated. “You look exhausted,” he says.
“So do you.”
“I’ve been lonely. What’s your excuse?”
“You didn’t look lonely last night,” I counter.
“Guys—we’re going this way,” Maggie calls to us. “Hey, Vaughn! Come here!”
Our mother hurries to follow them. Fischer and I hang onto each other and walk that way, too, just…slower. I splay my hand on his hip beneath his jacket, firmly reasserting whatever claim I might have on him. “So coming home with her was a coincidence?” I ask.
“No, she invited me to a show at her gallery.”
“You went on a date.”
“It’s possible for a man and a woman to meet somewhere and it not be a date.”
“She said it was a date,” I tell him.
“She was mistaken.”
“And while that might be possible, the probability of it not being a date when said woman is sleeping with said man is small.”
He huffs. “Nevertheless.”
“Let’s not talk about her anymore.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry,” he says.
“Me, too.”
“Is there anything you want to talk about?” I ask.
“Not here, but Vaughn’s going home with Donna. I got him on loan today.”
“That was nice of you. And Nicole.”
We enter the area where the wedding ceremony will take place with its frescoes, chandeliers, columns and the double staircase topped with French doors where a bride can make a dramatic entrance.
It’s huge, gaudy, and it’s so not Maggie, I want to laugh.
But I don’t, because she’s not laughing.
She’s taking this whole thing very seriously, beckoning me over to help them decide how they want to set up the altar space—how many arrangements, how big, and how much is too much.
This whole place is too much, I want to tell her and remind her while I’m at it that she used to want to get married barefoot on a beach.
But with Stuart looking at me like even he’s ashamed of the over-the-top grandeur, I go ahead and add my thoughts while Vaughn runs up and down the stairs like he’s calculating how to turn the bannisters into slides.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mom doing to Fischer all the things I want to be doing.
Touching his suit, tucking his hair, stroking his arm fondly.
He must be losing his fucking mind. I cringe in solidarity.
When the plans for the altar and the steps are sorted, it comes down to the color palette, and Maggie gets stuck.
October is a tricky month to scheme out. Even I struggle to determine what’s appropriate for an autumn wedding without being too on the nose.
We almost settle on ivory, peach, and dusty green, but Maggie has a mild psycho bride moment and blurts—“It’s just not me!”
While I don’t have an answer for her, I’m relieved that a piece of my sister still exists inside her somewhere.
“What about wine?” Fischer asks.
Maggie shakes her head. “I’m fine, I’m just having a meltdown. Ignore me.”