Chapter 3 #2
He pats his back pocket. “I will absolutely put it on if you’d like…but also, please don’t make me. I have a thing with ties. They are like fancy nooses.”
My lips twitch, but the smile doesn’t fully land. “I’ll spare you this time.”
With a gentleness that doesn’t match his size, he uses the handkerchief to dab at the skin beneath my right eye, then my left. I stand very still. His face is close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his blue eyes, which is information I absolutely do not need to focus on right now.
“I want to be honest with you,” he says, still dabbing.
“Okay.”
“This isn’t going to cut it.” He pulls the kerchief back and examines it. Black mascara is smudged across the linen like a tiny Rorschach test. “We have a situation.” He folds the kerchief neatly and tucks it back into his pocket like he’s preserving evidence. “Did you bring makeup?”
“I have a bag in the trunk.”
“Great. Because right now you look like a very beautiful raccoon, and I say that with the deepest respect.”
A laugh cracks out of me—short, surprised, almost painful.
The kind of laugh that sneaks past grief when you’re not guarding the door.
Saylor grins, and it’s the grin of a man who knows exactly what he just did.
He reached into the wreckage and pulled out something small and light and handed it to me, and I took it, and for three seconds the world didn’t feel like it was ending.
“How about you let me drive?” he says, already moving toward the trunk. “I have street cred with the trashcans. They never jump out to attack me.”
There’s a click-clack against the asphalt as I follow him.
He pops open the trunk, and after depositing his overnight bag next to my Hermès Togo Travel Bag.
To my shock, he opens it and starts fishing with a level of comfort that should not have been earned in five minutes.
Before I have a chance to react to his audacity, he finds my emergency kit—the leather case with the Tom Ford foundation, the Charlotte Tilbury concealer, the Dior mascara, the Chanel blush, the Pat McGrath eyeshadow palette, and the Hermès lipstick—the arsenal that normally lives in my purse because Celeste Brinley does not exist in public without a contingency plan.
He hands it to me. “Is this what you need?…What’s wrong?”
“You opened my bag. I have…intimates in there.” I cradle the leather bag in my hands.
He sucks in his lips in an attempt to hide his smirk. His attempt fails. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking and I wasn’t after your intimates. Fetching things is second-nature for me. My mum is…” he trails off. “Never mind.”
Instead of pushing the automatic button, he closes the trunk manually with the easy physicality of someone whose body is a tool that simply works, no vanity required, and moves around to the passenger side. I hurry after him, my Louboutins clicking against the pavement like tiny exclamation points.
“Why never mind?” I ask, surprised by my sudden curiosity. “What about your mom?”
He opens the door for me.
It’s such a small thing. His hand on the frame, a step back to give me space, the briefest touch at the small of my back as I step up into the seat. I was married for fourteen years to a man who stopped opening car doors for me approximately three weeks after our first date.
“Sorry, small slip,” he says. “When I’m with a client, it’s all about her. I keep my baggage all locked up.” He juts his thumb toward the trunk, emphasizing his pun.
“You can tell me what’s on your mind. It’s a welcome distraction.”
I’m reaching for my seatbelt when I notice he’s paused.
He’s standing in the open door, one hand on the frame, and he’s looking at me.
Not staring. Not the way men in clubs look at women, or the way Greg looks at the twenty-two-year-olds in our office.
It’s more involuntary than that. Like a person rounding a corner and catching a view they weren’t prepared for.
Something crosses his face, quick and private, and then he blinks and redirects his gaze to the seatbelt buckle, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.
“Are you checking me out?” I don’t mean to sound as shrill and uptight as it comes out.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Quietly. Like he means it. “I just—” A small shake of his head. “It’s impossible not to notice you. Sorry.”
Something warm sparks in a region of my chest that has been in cold storage since Greg told me, during our last real fight, that the market for women my age was “niche at best.” I feel it flare, brief and bright, and I extinguish it immediately.
“How old are you?” I ask, even though I already know. Too young for him to be smiling like that. But I need to hear him say the number. I need it to fall between us and do its job.
“Twenty-six.”
Twelve years my junior? He’s a puppy.
“Cool,” I answer. The word feels rusty in my mouth, like I’ve pulled it from some linguistic time capsule buried in two thousand five. My God, am I really trying to seem hip to a twenty-something?
“And how old are you?” he asks, because he apparently didn’t take that training course informing him that it’s practically a misdemeanor to ask a woman her age after her twenty-first birthday.
“Way too old for you to be looking at me like that.”
I let it land. Then, because his face has gone slightly uncertain and I don’t want to punish him for being honest—not to mention, there’s something in me that’s dangerously close to being flattered and I need to shut that down before it gets ideas—I add, more gently, “This weekend, I’m not expecting anything from you except friendship.
Think of yourself as a very supportive little brother. ”
Saylor cackles.
Not laughs. Cackles. His head tips back against the car frame, and the sound is bright and unguarded and completely unselfconscious, and for a disorienting second I want to bottle it.
“Little brother,” he repeats, tasting the words. Finding them hilarious. “Okay, cool, Celeste. I can do little brother. I’m very supportive.”
I’m almost certain he’s teasing me with that word, but I don’t give it more attention. “Good.”
“Do little brothers get to pick the music, or—”
“Don’t push it.”
He’s still grinning as he closes my door and comes around to the driver’s side.
He adjusts the seat, sliding it backward until his long legs have room—a silent commentary on our height difference.
He handles my car the way he handled me on the sidewalk: easily, naturally, like it doesn’t require his full attention.
I find that both reassuring and mildly offensive.
“It must be hard to drive in shoes like that.” He glances over to the passenger side floorboard. “But they’re pretty. Forrest told me you’re a high-end fashion designer. Did you design your shoes and that bag in back?”
“No. We only do clothing.” I lift my foot to show him the red bottoms. “These are Louboutins. My travel bag’s a Birkin.”
“Your dress? Is that Celeste?” Saylor asks casually as the engine purrs to life.
I chuckle to myself, looking at my plain black funeral dress. “Target.”
He looks at me, puzzled. “Forty-thousand-dollar bag, forty-dollar dress?”
“Roughly,” I admit, looking ahead because I don’t like the way my stomach flips when we make eye contact.
“Why not wear one of yours?”
It’s a fair question. But it’s too difficult to convey the complexity of emotions. I don’t just have guilt. I have layers of guilt. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
I stare forward at the trashcan I assaulted, at the trash bag half-splayed on the sidewalk and road.
A cornucopia of candy wrappers is visible beneath the veil of plastic.
“Whit was my best friend for twenty years, and I’m just now realizing how much my business and ambitions dominated our conversations.
So today, out of respect, I didn’t want it to be about me.
I don’t want to be Celeste today. Just Lessi. ”
“Lessi?” Saylor asks, his tone dropping to soft and warm, a dangerous pairing with his slight Australian accent.
“Her nickname for me, since our freshman year as roommates.” I smile. “It makes me sound like a mythical lake creature, and I hated it. Except when she used it.”
“Ah. I would’ve thought maybe Cici or something,” Saylor says.
“Cici is my mother. My grandma, my mom, and me—all Celeste. Most people don’t know this but technically my company is named for my grandmother. She’s the one who inspired me to be an entrepreneur.”
“I see. That’s a sweet sentiment.” He pulls up the GPS, punches in the address I give him, and studies the route for a moment. “About two and a half hours with traffic. Could be closer to three. So Whit lived in the Hamptons?”
My throat tightens. “No. She lived in Jersey.”
“So why is the service in the Hamptons?”
Air leaves my lungs in a slow, controlled leak, like I just dislodged a nail from a tire. I reach for the glove box. Inside, nestled in a matte-black presentation case, is the watch. I pull it out and set it on the center console between us.
Saylor looks down at it. Then at me. “What’s this?”
“A Rolex Datejust. Silver dial.” I keep my voice even, businesslike, the voice I use in boardrooms and with fabric suppliers and with anyone I don’t want to see me trembling. “Would you mind putting it on?”
After taking his hands off the wheel, he opens the case carefully.
The watch catches the morning light through the windshield, and I watch his face cycle through several things—surprise, appreciation, the quiet resistance of a man who isn’t accustomed to receiving things that cost this much.
Maybe he’s not used to receiving anything at all.
“Celeste, this is—”
“Necessary.” I stare forward through the windshield, at the brownstones across the street, at someone’s fire escape holding a dead plant that nobody’s bothered to throw away. “I have to warn you, we’re about to walk into the lion’s den.”
I can feel him looking at me. Waiting.