Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
B ack in Manhattan, Aria woke up at dawn in a brownstone home she barely recognized.
On her phone was a barrage of text messages from Gina.
It was fascinating to remember that just last night, Aria had gone out with Gina as a last-ditch attempt at not feeling so painfully alone in a city that seemed like it was going to swallow her up.
Now, because of her connection to that bigwig Philip Wagner, it was like Gina couldn’t get enough of her.
It was like she almost thought her connection to Aria would get her places in the world.
She’ll figure out quickly that I’m nobody , Aria thought glumly, scanning through Gina’s texts.
GINA: I have to go to work – ugh! So hard to work when there’s so much going on! But let me know if you need anything from me today.
GINA: And let me know if anyone from Dorothy Wagner’s team reaches out to you with details! I’m dying to know what happens to her massive estate.
GINA: Check socials. People are talking all about her and Philip’s marriage on there. Like, they were THE COUPLE in the nineties. Minus the affairs.
Aria wanted to write back that Dorothy was a wonderful and kindhearted and quick-witted woman. She wanted nothing to do with a life of banking and investments and so on. She wanted beauty and laughter and good food and gossip.
But what did Aria really know about Dorothy? She didn’t want to speak out of turn.
Aria called her mother to check in, then put on her shoes and went for a walk through Greenwich.
Summer in the city brought a sense of life and vitality to everything.
Guitar players busked on the streets, dancers practiced in the parks, and jugglers performed at every intersection.
There were smells of hot dogs and pizza slices and every type of pastry imaginable.
When Aria got hungry, she dipped into a bagel place and bought one with lox and dill cream cheese and ate in the sunshine, sipping her coffee slowly and marveling that her life had changed so much.
A part of her itched to post a photograph of her location on social media.
Maybe in that way, Thaddeus would know how “happy” she was.
He’d see that she was just fine without him.
But she didn’t want to be petty.
Rather than ignore it forever, Aria pulled up social media’s answer to Dorothy Wagner’s death and found fifty-plus accounts mourning the loss of the “once-gorgeous socialite Dorothy Wagner, whose love for Philip Wagner is the stuff of legends.” Aria furrowed her brow.
Based on what Gina had told her and based on what she’d read, Dorothy and Philip’s romance had been crackled and bruised.
Was this really the kind of send-off Dorothy deserved—one that paired her name up with the man who hadn’t respected her at all?
Were they going to be buried side by side?
Or should Dorothy and Philip have had the breakup that Thaddeus and Aria were going through? One that allowed them to grow beyond one another? Or one that reckoned with who they were now and who they’d once been to one another? A proper ending.
Was that the reason Dorothy had sent Aria to Manhattan? To become what Dorothy couldn’t because of her heinous husband?
Suddenly out of her mind with fears and worries about her own life and what it all meant, Aria was on her feet, sweating, on the edge of a panic attack.
But her actions were too volatile, and she accidentally threw herself into the person walking directly in front of her outdoor table, a man who immediately spilled coffee all over both himself and Aria.
Cream cheese smeared on Aria’s cheek, and she cried out in frustration and surprise.
All eyes outside the bagel place were on her, the woman who’d caused a scene. It was not how she’d imagined her first full day in Manhattan going. Why did everything feel jagged, stupid, and out of control right now? Was the chaos coming from within her? Would anything feel normal again?
But then she heard a soft laugh and forced her eyes up and up and up to a pair of cerulean-blue ones, eyes filled with humor and interest. She blinked and brought the entire picture into focus: a six-foot-three man with broad shoulders, wearing a dark linen shirt that dripped with coffee.
He still clutched his bagel and his to-go cup, but his hands were drenched with dark liquid, and his bagel was smashed.
He looked terrible, or as terrible as a man like him possibly could.
He was the most handsome person she’d ever seen.
Aria’s heart felt strained. “I’m so sorry!” she finally cried.
The crowd behind her chuckled again, watching her. She felt like a woman in a rom-com, but the best friend, the one who didn’t get the guy in the end.
“You’re in a rush, I guess?” the man asked, still smiling.
Aria stuttered. “I don’t know what to say.” She reached behind her and scooped up a big wad of napkins and tried in vain to press them against the sleeve of his shirt. The napkins soaked with coffee, but the shirt remained drenched. It was a fool’s mission.
“Don’t worry about it.” He waved his hand.
“Do you have a spare?” Aria asked.
“I don’t.” The guy shook his head. “But I’m sure it’s not the first time a man has entered a business meeting with coffee all over his shirt. Right?”
Aria seized with panic. Remembering her walk-through of the Greenwich Village brownstone, she thought of the closet of clothing in the upstairs bedroom. There had been men’s clothes, if she remembered correctly. Maybe she could save the day.
Before she could stop herself, she suggested it.
“I live around the corner.” Live was a loose word here, but she decided to roll with it.
“I have a few men’s shirts there. They aren’t, um…
” How could she translate that the shirts didn’t belong to a romantic partner of hers, that she was (for the first time in years) single and (maybe) ready to mingle?
Was she? Ready?
“I mean, they don’t belong to anyone I’m dating or anything,” Aria said, her cheeks burning. What was she saying?
The man laughed outright, but not in a cruel way. “Did you steal those men’s shirts?”
Aria’s thoughts swirled. He was playing with her.
“I’m calling the cops,” he said, upping the fake stakes.
Aria waved her hands, which she now saw were covered in cream cheese. “No! Don’t! I swear, I’ll take them back.”
“Back where?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.
“They belong in a museum!” she said, parroting an old film her mother loved.
The guy got it. He barked with laughter, so much so that he had to put his smashed bagel on the table Aria had just vacated.
Aria giggled along with him, feeling out of her mind.
She understood the scene must have looked like two people who’d known each other for years, putting on a show of their ease and friendship.
But they were strangers. Aria had to remember that.
“Well,” he said finally, taking a breath, “I have to admit, this meeting later is pretty important to me. If you have a spare shirt, I can’t refuse it.”
Aria grinned. “Let’s go check it out.”
Back at the brownstone, Aria and the stranger took off their shoes in the foyer and went immediately to the kitchen to wash their hands of cream cheese and assess the damage.
During the five-minute walk, they’d somehow neglected to tell one another their names, and now the weight of that lack of knowledge felt heavier than it needed to be.
“What kind of meeting is it?” Aria asked him, suddenly worried that, like Gina and Philip Wagner, this handsome and charming man was in the business of money.
“It probably sounds really lame,” the guy said, trying to unpeel the paper bag from the smashed bagel.
“I can’t imagine it would,” she said.
He laughed. “How good is your imagination? I’m sure you can stretch it a little and see me, flailing like a caught fish in front of some of these producers. They’re going to skin me alive.”
“Producers?” Aria was intrigued, still dripping wet with coffee while scrubbing cream cheese from her cheek.
“I’m an illustrator,” he said finally, offering his position prior to his name.
“I’ve made a film, and I don’t know if anyone will ever want to give me money for it, let alone show it anywhere.
But I’m a romantic, unfortunately. I have to make my art.
No matter what.” A split second later, his face crumpled, and he groaned.
“I sound so lame! I can’t sound like this in front of those producers. ”
Aria couldn’t resist. She reached out and touched his shoulder. The man didn’t flinch but instead turned his head slowly so that his gaze rested on her hand. He took a breath.
“You don’t sound lame,” Aria said softly, slowly returning her hand to the counter.
There was a long moment of silence. Aria had no idea what he was thinking.
Would he tell her outright that he had a girlfriend and he was out of line for coming here in the first place?
Would he tell her that he’d come for the shirt and only for the shirt and never wanted to see her again?
Could he see that Thaddeus had left her so recently?
Did she wear the heartache like a battle wound?
“By the way,” he said finally, breaking her anxious thought spiral, “my name is Logan.”
Aria had never heard such a striking name paired with such a handsome face. “I’m Aria,” she said.
Logan smiled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Aria managed a very small, “You too.”
Before long, they were upstairs in the bedroom that housed the men’s shirts she’d seen yesterday. Aria could feel Logan’s curiosity mounting.
“This is a great place,” he said. “How did you get it?”
Aria wasn’t sure how to explain the complications that yesterday had brought, so she told a mild lie. “I’m an interior designer. My client back in Nantucket hired me to come here and update the place. I don’t think anyone’s really been using it for a while. Maybe she wants to sell it?”
Logan chuckled. “So you are going to steal a shirt? From your client.”
“I don’t think she’ll miss it.” Aria opened the closet to show an array of what had to be more than one hundred shirts, all of them in a size that suited the broad shoulders of Logan and made of a material that seemed worthy of the wealth Dorothy had always enjoyed.
There was a sharp stabbing pain in Aria’s stomach when she realized that these shirts were probably Philip Wagner’s shirts.
She wondered if she owed Logan an explanation, and if he, like Gina, would be awestruck with the Wagners’ wealth and “royalty status” within Manhattan.
But before she had a chance to say anything, Logan began running his fingers across the fine fabrics, clearly impressed.
“Every single one of these is a better quality than anything I’ve ever owned,” Logan confessed with an ironic laugh. “Are you sure I can borrow one?” He took a beat. “I can dry-clean it afterward and bring it back to you. I don’t want you getting into any scrapes with your employer.”
She’s dead , Aria wanted to say.
But instead she offered him, “Like I said, she never comes to the city. I think it’ll be all right.
” She pressed her lips together, watching as he selected a button-down the color of papyrus and held it up in front of his frame.
It should be illegal to look this good and smell this incredible.
His musk commingled with the smell of coffee, and it was intoxicating.
Aria either needed to get this guy out of here or run out of the brownstone herself.
She opted to say, “I’m going downstairs. Try on as many as you want.”
Logan’s smile was mysterious and charming. “I can’t believe I ran into you of all people today. I mean, I could have run into a woman without a massive supply of designer men’s clothing. Are you a good luck charm?”
“I think I might be really bad luck if you’re not careful,” Aria joked. “Stay vigilant.”
Aria scampered back downstairs and drank a full glass of water standing at the kitchen counter.
Her mind scrambled for understanding. Every creak that came from upstairs reminded her that Logan was still here.
A part of her brain played make-believe, imagining that she and Logan lived at this brownstone, that they had gorgeous and full Manhattan lives with plenty of friends, plus a summer house on Nantucket. She couldn’t stay away forever.
Pull it together, Aria .
When she realized she’d spent too much time doing nothing, imagining a future she couldn’t possibly have, she hurried over to her laptop, sat down, and continued to work on the list she’d begun yesterday, before Dorothy had passed away.
The list outlined her strategy for the brownstone: who needed to be contacted and what needed to be discarded in pursuit of a modernized feel.
It was a foolish task, maybe. But she’d told Logan she was here to work, and she wanted him to see her doing exactly that.
Logan had been upstairs for twenty minutes when Aria heard the sharp metal-on-metal sound of a key in the door.
Aria’s heart seized. She threw her laptop to the other side of the sofa and scrambled to the foyer, just as the door burst wide open to reveal a woman she’d never seen before.
The woman was in her late fifties, with beautiful dark red hair, a perfect dark red lip, and a figure that had obviously been sculpted through years of Pilates and a meticulous diet.
Behind her massive sunglasses, Aria couldn’t see the woman’s eyes, but there was an aura to her that spoke of tremendous anger and pain. Aria couldn’t breathe.
For ten seconds, maybe, Aria and the woman stared at one another in surprise. It was like a face-off, each waiting for the other to speak first.
That was when Logan came down the stairs, wearing the very first button-down he’d picked up, the papyrus-colored one that made his tan pop.
Because he hadn’t yet noticed the woman at the door, he talked jovially, saying, “Aria, I really think this is the one, but you have to give your opinion. I’m an illustrator, but I have absolutely no artistic eye when it comes to my own body. I can take honesty, I swear.”
When he walked into the foyer to find Aria, he stopped short and flashed his gorgeous smile. “Hello?” he said because he was ever-charming, ever able to take over a room.
But the woman was not keen to let herself be manipulated. Her face twisted up with rage. And then she cried out, “What on earth are you doing in my mother’s house? I’m calling the police!”