16. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
My apartment is seven hundred square feet of nothing Beck Cooper paid for.
Thrift store couch with a questionable stain on the armrest. Table Lucy gave me when she upgraded.
Mattress on the floor because bed frames cost money and I’m saving every dime I make at Prue’s.
The walls are bare except for one photo of Josie and a calendar where I’ve been tracking my new life in blue pen.
Beck is standing just inside the door, and he looks like a man who’s never seen a studio apartment before.
He probably hasn’t. The man grew up in a house with more bathrooms than I have square footage. He’s wearing jeans and a button-down, no tie, and he’s holding his hat in his hands, not sure what to do with himself.
“You can stay,” I say. “But you’re standing.”
He nods like this is reasonable. It isn’t, there’s a couch right there, stain and all, but he doesn’t argue. Just stands with his back to the door, waiting.
“You wanted to talk. So talk.”
“I want one evening a week.” He says it straight, no preamble, no warmup. “With you. Not Josie. Just you.”
“We’re getting divorced, Beck. The papers are sitting on a desk right now waiting for your signature.”
“I know that.”
“Then why would I spend an evening with you?”
He shifts his weight. The floorboards creak under him. This place is old, everything creaks. I watch him choose his words.
“Because I don’t know you,” he says finally.
“I thought I did. I knew how you take your coffee and what side of the bed you sleep on and the sound you make when you’re about to laugh.
But I don’t know what keeps you up at night.
I don’t know what you wanted to be before you met me. I don’t know what you’re afraid of.”
“You never asked.”
“I’m asking now.”
I cross my arms over my chest. The afternoon light is coming through the window behind me, and I can see dust floating in the air, can see every scuff on the hardwood floor, every crack in the ceiling I haven’t gotten around to worrying about yet.
“I have rules,” I say.
“Okay.”
“You ask every time. Every single time. And I can say no for any reason, and you don’t get to argue about it or ask why or try to change my mind.”
“Yes.”
“Cash only.” I watch his face carefully. “Don’t use your credit card. You don’t call a driver. And absolutely no helicopter. If we go somewhere, you pay like a normal person with money you pulled out of an ATM.”
Discomfort flickers in his expression but he nods. “I can do that.”
“Josie stays with Lucy. This isn’t about her. This is about whether I can stand to be in the same room with you for more than an hour without wanting to throw something.”
“Fair.”
“And if you try to buy your way back in with gifts, fancy dinners, any of that Cooper money bullshit, I’m done. We go back to Saturday visits and nothing else. You don’t get a second chance at the second chance.”
“I understand.”
I study him. He looks different from how he did three months ago. Thinner and tired in a way that expensive clothes can’t cover up. But there’s something else, too. Like the ground shifted under him and he’s still figuring out how to stand on it.
“What does Josie call water?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Water. What does she call it? When she wants a drink, what word does she use?”
He opens his mouth. I watch him search for the answer, watch him realize he doesn’t have it. A month ago he would have made something up. Would have bluffed his way through with that easy confidence that used to make me melt.
Now he just stands there with his hat in his hands and says, “I don’t know.”
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
“She calls water ‘gone.’ Because her cup is always empty when she asks for more. She holds it up and says ‘gone, gone, gone’ until someone fills it.” I pause. “That’s the kind of thing you should know.”
“You’re right.” His voice is quiet. “I should.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pen. For a second I think he’s going to write something on a piece of paper, maybe make a note in his phone like a man with a task list.
Instead, he pushes up his sleeve and writes on the back of his hand.
GONE.
The letters are blocky and uneven, blue ink on tan skin. He looks up at me when he’s done.
“So I don’t forget,” he says.
I don’t know what to do with that. It’s such a small thing. Such a stupid, small thing. A single word written on skin that will wash off the next time he showers.
But he didn’t write it in his phone, where an assistant could see it. Didn’t put it in a notes app to be forgotten. He wrote it on his hand, where he’ll see it every time he reaches for something, every time he looks down, every time he tries to do anything at all.
“Wednesday nights,” I hear myself say. “Seven o’clock. You pick me up at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Okay.”
“And Beck?” I wait until he’s looking at me. “Don’t be late.”
He nods once and puts his hat back on. Lets himself out without another word.
I stand in my empty apartment, looking at the closed door, thinking about blue ink on the back of his hand.