Chapter 7 #2
“It’s worked for me so far,” I called from the bathroom, which was as pristine as the rest of his apartment, even if he did have more skin care products than I did. “I don’t do introspection, Dash. I flit through life as light as a butterfly.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw when he had reached the bathroom doorway. “And that makes you happy?”
“It makes me not unhappy,” I said, knowing that if I looked up from the soap I was daubing on his shirt, my eyes would meet his in the mirror and all kinds of disaster would ensue. “That’s good enough for now.”
“For how long?”
“You’re relentless, you know that?” I sputtered out a laugh. “You and Yaz both.”
Dash stepped into the bathroom and leaned against the tiles next to the sink.
“Look, I don’t want to overstep,” he said.
“I know we haven’t known each other all that long and I have no right to demand anything from you, much less a heavy conversation about your emotional life.
I just… I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, and I think you might be.
” I caught a flash of motion in the mirror as he shoved his hair back. “I’ll back off.”
The cold water trickling over my knuckles made me want to splash my face.
“No, I… I appreciate your concern. I’d just rather not dwell on stuff”—I waved a hand in illustration, accidentally flicking droplets at his bare chest—“right now. I gotta move forward, and focus on our videos and…” I took a deep breath.
“I just want it to mean something, you know? Moving all the way here.”
It may not have worked out, but at least I could make one last effort before I had to admit defeat and let Yaz buy me a ticket back to Miami.
“Yeah,” Dash said softly. “I can understand that.”
I forced myself to smile. “I’m like two seconds away from wearing holes into this shirt. Do you have a hair dryer? Or an iron?”
We managed to get his wardrobe back in order without being waylaid by any more emotional detours and without losing the last of the sunlight.
Watching Dash rerecord the speech, as well as a couple of short teasers for social media, I felt myself sinking into the sound of his voice, my earlier irritable panic ebbing slowly.
It wasn’t often that I felt like I’d done something right. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Which just made it all the more important that I didn’t ruin the one good thing in my life—no matter how curious I still was about what it would’ve been like to kiss Dash.
I was on a high when I left Dash’s. Some would argue that I might have been high, because instead of walking home, I decided to draw inspiration from what he had said that day at the bookstore and take myself on a long, twilight walk around the city.
The scent of hot piss and garbage collected together in a—shall we call it interesting?
—bouquet as I wound my way out of Hell’s Kitchen and into the Upper West Side.
A block east would take me into Central Park, but for the moment I was content to stroll among the outdoor tables littering the sidewalk and peek into store windows that were beginning to light up.
I wasn’t wearing a dress that day for once, but a shorts and shirt set that looked like pajamas, with colorful flowers printed on the soft, black, satiny material.
It was light, cool, and allowed for ease of movement—which came in handy when I found myself having to dodge a bike messenger as he almost careened into me.
I yelled something rude at his back, feeling like a real New Yorker.
In the spirit of the occasion, I veered left onto Broadway, intent on treating myself to a hot dog at Gray’s Papaya. And then maybe a dollar slice, because all I’d achieved with all that walking was to work up an appetite.
I was well on my way to feeling like a character in a Nora Ephron movie when my phone started doing its best impression of a demented bumblebee. I lifted it to my ear, feeling my acetate hoops clank against the screen.
“What would you say if I took a couple of days off to go visit you?” Yaz said, with no prelude.
“I’d probably pee my pants from the excitement,” I said promptly. “Or do something equally as gross. Are you really thinking about it?”
“More than thinking, actually—I just booked a flight for late August. That okay with you?”
“Of course!” I exclaimed, then bit my lip.
I was all for a visit, if that was all it was.
But for her to book a flight so last-minute, when she should be focusing on wedding prep…
Did she actually want to see me, or was she coming out of a sense of obligation, to make sure I hadn’t flailed again?
I mean, it would be understandable if she was, given my track record.
It just… didn’t feel great. “You don’t have to come check up on me, you know. I really am doing fine.”
“That’s debatable,” she said wryly. “And highly dependent on your definition of fine, which I don’t think matches mine.”
“In this case, it means doing my gremlin best.”
Yaz ignored me. “But I’m not checking up on you. I just want to see you. I miss your weirdo little face.”
I leaned against the bright yellow column at the entrance to Gray’s. “Okay, good, because I want to see you. I have so many places to show you and only three-quarters of them involve food. Dash took me to a literal secret garden a couple of days ago—”
“Dash?”
“The guy I’m working with on the videos. We recorded one today, and Yaz? I really think we might have something here. He’s…”
Magnetic. Mesmerizing.
“Really talented,” I said into the phone. “Maybe you’ll be able to meet him when you come.”
“I definitely have to, if he’s going to be your—what? Coworker? Business partner?”
I wasn’t all that enthusiastic at Yaz acting like she had to vet Dash, but I tried not to show my irritation. “Let’s call it partner in crime for now,” I said airily. “So hey, I was just about to get dinner. Text me later with your flight info?”
“I already forwarded it all to your email,” Yaz said, because of course she had. “Hope you’re having something other than cookies and a sugary drink.”
“For your information,” I said with great dignity, “I am about to embark on one of Manhattan’s most emblematic gastronomical experiences.”
“Pizza, huh?”
I grinned. “Hot dogs. Call you later!”
Forty minutes later, the taste of sauerkraut still lingering in my mouth, I headed out of Gray’s and into the cobalt-blue twilight. It was only marginally cooler than it had been in the daytime—the perfect evening for wandering around the block with a cone of something sweet and cold and swirly.
I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Broadway was bustling with people bearing frozen treats. I stopped to pet one friendly black Labrador in a forest-green collar who seemed intent on getting in on the action.
“Sorry, buddy,” I told him. “I have a strict policy against sharing food.”
“Kalam, stop!” His mortified owner apologized and tugged him away, though not before his muscular tail gave my calf a hard thump goodbye.
I should have been working on my screenplay.
I knew that, and not just because I’d just glimpsed another text from Yaz saying something to that effect.
The truth was, every time I had tried to make progress on my romcom, all I could do was rehash all the heartbreak from the last few months.
Every word of fiction I had tried to craft had turned into a thinly veiled memoir.
Maybe that was why writing the Duke of Harding’s exploits had been so freeing.
Putting words into his mouth—the kind of words I wished someone would say to me—was not an exercise in memory, but in hope.
Hope that someday the dating app gods would smile on me and produce someone who wouldn’t find it a hardship to wake up next to me two mornings in a row.
Or run errands with me on a busy Saturday morning or spend Sundays lazing in bed with pancakes and a good book.
Hope that someday someone would decide I was worth sticking around for.