Chapter 16
For their first date, Jack took Emily to the Boston Public Library. He showed her the marble lions, their stone pale against the warm tones of the pedestals, their unpolished paws the color of buttermilk. The sky outside was a bright haze—no snow, but the promise of it.
She had been surprised when he proposed visiting the library.
She had expected that he would reserve a table at an upscale restaurant and order stupidly expensive things, though at that time in her life she wouldn’t have been able to name those things.
She didn’t know the word truffles. She didn’t know that oysters were better in winter, or that a glass of Meursault looked like mellow sunlight.
Over the phone, after he had suggested they meet at the library, Emily had said, “Do you like books?” She had had the idea that maybe he collected them and owned rare first editions.
“I hate them,” he had answered cheerfully, which made her like him more.
His frankness surprised her, as did how he expressed his dislike good-naturedly—almost with affection, as though he were fond of his dislike.
Florencia, who hadn’t met him yet, referred to him as “the hot hedge fund bro,” implying that he wasn’t intellectual—and maybe he wasn’t, but he wasn’t simple .
Emily almost asked Jack why he wanted to take her to a place dedicated to something he hated, but she liked not knowing.
They agreed on a date and time, and Emily was surprised again, this time by the early hour.
“A day date?” Florencia said when Emily told her.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to get into your pants. ”
“Oh, he does.” Rory sipped her third cup of coffee. “He’s playing the long game. He wants to prolong his hard-on.”
“Maybe it’s not a game,” said Violet.
“Ha!” scoffed Elizabeth, and Emily agreed with her. She found, however, an appeal to being the object of Jack’s game. She liked being pursued. She liked being perceived as a challenge, something he needed to strategize. It made her feel important.
In the end, there was an elegant meal. After they’d viewed the library’s art and architecture, Jack ushered her into the courtyard tearoom, which was empty except for them and one waiter, who stood near a table heaped with peonies.
“Why are we the only ones here?” Emily whispered to Jack.
“I booked the whole restaurant. Have you ever had high tea?”
“You don’t have to try to impress me.”
“It makes me happy to try to impress you. You should let me.” He brushed a hand down her arm.
She wore a blue alpaca sweater Florencia had loaned her, so Emily didn’t quite feel his hand on her, just the gentle nudge embedded in the gesture, directing her toward the table.
The pressure of Jack’s touch quickened her curiosity.
How would this feel if she wore nothing, and his fingertips slipped down her bare skin?
Emily and Jack were served towers of pretty sandwiches and pastries.
They had Darjeeling and champagne. Jack asked Emily question upon question.
When he learned what Emily studied and asked whether she preferred Greek or Latin, she answered that she couldn’t choose, but had known Greek longer.
Latin had a raw, angular quality. It was a tool less easy to handle, whereas her knowledge of Greek felt like an old wooden spoon, smooth in her grasp.
He asked what she wanted to do after graduation.
She told him that she was prelaw. “Becoming a lawyer isn’t exciting, but it’s well-paid, and I’m interested in how verdicts are delivered based on precedent.
In law, the past accretes selectively: one decision connects to another decision to another. I like that.”
Jack set down his teacup and was silent. The flowers on the table exhaled their rich fragrance. The silence went on long enough that Emily thought she’d said something to offend him. “What are you thinking?” she said.
“That I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“What am I like?”
“Perfect.”
Emily hadn’t known how much she had wanted to hear someone say this. Jack was the first.
The mix of tea and champagne and sweet and savory tastes made Emily relaxed yet alert. She had questions of her own for him.
He had an affinity for numbers but didn’t read books aside from those he paid people to read aloud to him, something he didn’t like.
He could never forget the presence of the reader.
There were audio book CDs, yes, but they embarrassed him.
They made him remember how, as a child, his tutors had recommended books on tape and his parents threw them away, telling him that he didn’t need them, that if he worked harder, if he weren’t so lazy, he would finally be able to finish a book, just one .
That was years before he was diagnosed with dyslexia.
Jack shrugged as he spoke, his gray eyes cool, his mouth curled in a helpless smile that was sad yet wise and slightly far away, managing to convey that he was no longer bothered by his disability and that he was, that he had outgrown a cruel imperative to succeed and kept it close.
Emily felt a tenderness for him. It seeped from her like honey from its comb.
Jack had suggested the library because he liked making moments; he wanted Emily’s time with him to be memorable.
He had noticed her reading at the bar and had thought a library would please her.
His mother would respect her, he said; she would appreciate that Emily attended Harvard.
She had always wanted Jack to go to Princeton, his dad’s alma mater, but it didn’t matter that Jack was a legacy applicant, or that his parents had donated enough money for him to be added to several director’s lists at Ivies.
It didn’t matter that his parents paid tutors to write his application essays.
His poor grades and scores spoke for themselves.
He didn’t get into any elite colleges. He was accepted by some state schools, but his parents refused to let him go.
His attendance at a state school would be more embarrassing for them than no college at all.
“I guess because skipping college looked like a choice, ” said Jack.
“Did you think about going anyway?”
“Sometimes I wish I had, but they would have cut me off financially. I was scared to strike out on my own. They didn’t believe in me, so it was hard to believe in myself.
My father’s hedge fund hired me out of high school.
In the end, I did find something I’m good at: money.
Now I’m not financially dependent on them.
Makes me proud—and honestly, they are, too, at the moment. ”
One day he would make partner. If his parents nursed an old disappointment, they didn’t reveal it. His father’s hedge fund had offices in New York and Boston, so Jack kept apartments in both places. “The commute’s not so bad,” he said, “especially when I think about you.”
Outside, the barometric pressure had dropped and the sky was white, but it hadn’t begun to snow. She could feel the cold pavement through her thin shoes. She said, “Why did you want to meet so early?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not going to laugh.”
“Before, I always saw you at the bar. Late at night. You were so beautiful. I thought, She must be even more beautiful by daylight . It’s true. You are.”
Emily kissed him. He made a sound low in his throat and deepened the kiss, reaching into her coat to draw her hips toward him. He hardened against her. His need for her was so obvious that it made her want him more.
“You have to stop,” he whispered into her mouth.
“Take me back to your place,” she told him, “and make me stop.”
Emily wasn’t very aware of his Back Bay apartment, just of a disorienting sense of spaciousness.
His bed was a vast plain. He kept saying that he wanted to go slow but that was not what she wanted.
She had missed being caressed, had missed being under someone’s weight.
She put her thumb against the head of his taut cock.
It leapt at her touch. She brushed away a milky bead of fluid and ignored his surprise when she brought her thumb to her mouth.
It tasted bitter. He pulled her hand from her mouth and pressed it back into the bed.
She knew, more or less, what to expect after years of talking with her friends, but when he pushed into her, she gasped.
It hurt. She tried to open wider for him and heard him exclaim over how tight she was, but she found it difficult to shift at all underneath him.
She was neatly pinioned and he was heavy.
He was moving too fast and too hard, but she gave in to it. She wanted the pain it gave her.
Afterward, when he pulled out, he groaned into a pillow, his fiery hair striking against its white. He lifted his head, eyes hazy, but quickly squeezed them shut. “That wasn’t how I meant it to be. Do you want water? Let me get you water.”
When he returned from a distant recess of the echoing apartment, he had a towel wrapped around his waist and held two glasses of water that clinked with ice.
Emily pulled the sheet up over her, shy now, knowing that Jack was frustrated.
She hadn’t come—which hadn’t surprised her, although she’d never before had sex without an orgasm.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
“I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Really, it’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t do things halfway,” he insisted. “It’s not my style.”
Emily drank from her glass. The cold water shot down the hot core of her like a steel arrow. “I should have told you something earlier.” She explained about Gen. Jack listened, sitting beside her, his initial surprise growing into bewilderment. “Wait,” he said. “ She broke up with you ?”