7. Julian #2
She was looking at the river. The morning wind was coming off the water, lifting a dark strand of her hair across her cheek and she did not push it back. The line of her jaw was set. Her gray eyes were on the chop.
I did not push.
We walked.
"Why do you draw buildings?"
I stopped.
She kept walking for two steps, then she stopped too. She turned back to me.
"What?"
"You draw buildings. In your desk drawer. I've seen the edges of the sketches. You close the drawer when I come in, but not always fast enough."
I rubbed the back of my neck.
"You notice things you shouldn't, Claire."
"So do you."
We looked at each other.
A bird went by overhead. The lab and its owner came back the other direction, panting now, the dog's tongue long. Claire's hair lifted and fell against her neck.
I started walking again. She fell in beside me.
"I used to want to be an architect."
She glanced at me. She did not say anything.
"Before the Vanguard. Before finance. I wanted to draw things. Houses, schools, towers… I had three drawers of sketches in my dorm room in college."
"Why didn't you?"
"Life got in the way."
"That's a nonanswer."
"It is."
I stopped walking again. She stopped with me.
"My mother got sick. I needed money, not dreams."
It came out before I could put a grin on it.
I had not said my mother out loud to a woman I was attracted to in three years.
I had not said I needed money in a sentence with anything other than a punchline at the end of it.
Those two things sat in the air between us with no joke in front of them, and I felt the morning shift a quarter-inch on its axis.
Claire looked at me.
She did not say I'm sorry. She did not put her hand on my arm. She did not do any of the things the women I had told this to in the past had done. She looked at me with her gray eyes and her chin a quarter-inch up, and she let the sentence be what it was.
Recognition. That was the closest I could put a word to it.
She was looking at me like she knew the shape of the sentence from the inside.
We started walking again. The path curved up to the railing that ran along the high bend of the river.
She stopped at the railing, put both hands on the top rail, and looked out over the water.
I stopped beside her. Her hip was a foot from my hip.
The wind was off the river, and the loose strand of her hair was across her cheek again.
"You're different out here," I said.
"So are you."
"I like this version."
"You don't know this version."
"I'd like to."
She did not answer. Her gray eyes came up off the water. They went to my mouth. She did not pull them back.
I lifted my right hand.
I tucked the strand of hair behind her ear. Slow. The pad of my thumb ran along the line of her jaw on the way back. My fingers brushed her cheek.
She did not flinch.
She leaned into my hand. A fraction. Her breath caught.
I leaned in.
Slow. The slow was the asking. She had time to stop me. I took half a second between my hand and her mouth and she did not stop me. Her hand came up off the railing and rested flat against my chest. Not pushing. Just there. The warmth of her palm came through my T-shirt.
Our mouths met.
Soft. Just the press. Her lips parted against mine a quarter-inch and gave back. I held there for a second. Long enough for her to pull away if she was going to.
Her fingers curled into my shirt.
She pulled me closer.
The softness burned off.
My right hand slid up from her jaw to the back of her neck, into the heavy weight of her hair where it was still damp at the nape.
My left hand came to her waist. She tasted like salt and like the coffee she must have had this morning before she ran.
Her mouth opened more. I felt her teeth catch my lower lip for half a second before her tongue moved against mine and a sound came out of her throat — small, low, almost not a sound at all.
I felt it through my whole body.
My heart was loud.
Her hand was a fist in my shirt. The other hand had come up off the railing and was at my ribs, pressed flat against my side. She was up on her toes the smallest amount. The railing was at her back. The river was below us. The bird was gone.
I kissed her.
She pulled back.
Her hand was still on my chest. Her breath was on my chin. Her gray eyes opened and came up to mine.
I watched her face change.
The wall came back. Not the way it usually came back — fast, cold, one feature at a time. This time it came back slow, against her will, like she was watching it come back and could not stop it. I had never seen her put it up after kissing me.
"This can't happen."
"It already did."
She dropped her hand off my chest. She stepped back. Her face was Claire's face by the time her foot touched the path again but her gray eyes were not, not yet, not quite.
"I have to go."
"Claire — "
"I have to go, Julian."
She turned and walked away.
She did not look back at me. I stood at the railing with my hand still warm from the back of her neck and watched her get smaller along the path.
She rounded the bend by the bench.
She looked back. Once. For half a second. The wind lifted her hair and her gray eyes met mine across forty yards of running path.
Then she rounded the corner.
She was gone.
I walked home.
I did not register the kid on the tricycle on the way past. I didn’t register Mara behind the glass at the coffee shop, or the woman on the bench with a dog. Was it a dog? I couldn’t remember. I let myself into the building, rode the elevator up and unlocked the door.
Coltrane was still spinning. The needle had hit the runout groove. It was clicking against the inside of the label in a small soft rhythm I had been listening to for who knew how long.
I crossed the room. I lifted the needle. The apartment went quiet.
I stood in the middle of my living room with my keys still in my hand.
I could still taste her. The salt. The coffee. The small low sound she had made at the back of her throat when my hand had moved into her hair.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
Unknown number.
One line.
I know what you found, Julian. We should talk.
The blood went out of my face.
I read it.
I read it again.
I sat down on the arm of the couch because my legs decided to put me there.
I had told two people. Declan and Nolan. The folder on the conference room table on Thursday. The judge's name. The shells. Six months of work I had been keeping in a locked drawer in my office and a folder under my mattress at home.
Declan had not told anyone. Declan would die before he told anyone.
Nolan had not told anyone. Nolan did not tell people things.
The conference room.
The door.
I tried to put the order back together.
Claire stood when the meeting wrapped. She started gathering the materials. I told Declan and Nolan to stay, and Claire's head came up from the folders.
She gathered the last of the folders against her chest.
She walked to the door.
She closed it behind her.
She was not in the room when I opened the folder.
Was she?