25. Elyse
Elyse
“It feels like we’re running away together,” Sinclair tells me, glancing over at me with a grin so conspiratorial that I can’t help but smile back at him. Beautiful man. Sigh.
“I wish,” I say. I’m only half joking. But, honestly, two nights away with him, alone, is such an amazing prospect that I wouldn’t have thought until I stepped into Dad’s garage that it was even possible.
I know it’ll be over far too soon, but that’s Sunday Night Elyse’s problem.
Right now, it all stretches ahead of us like a beautiful movie in my mind—a movie I’ve allowed myself to replay on a constant loop since Uncle R.
and Auntie Glo hatched their plan to step in and rescue me.
To Sinclair’s displeasure, I declined his offer of having his driver come pick me up and made my way to his place on the PATH with my overnight bag.
God only knows what you wear for a weekend at Fairwater.
My only consolation is that no one else will be around to see me—and I suspect Sinclair will be happy if I’m wearing as little as possible, most of the time.
Anyway, I met him at his apartment at three o’clock and off we drove together in his shiny black Range Rover, over the Queensboro and crawling through Queens as the Friday afternoon traffic built.
I like watching him drive. He’s cranked the heat up in the car and rolled up his shirt sleeves, exposing those still-tan, muscular forearms I adore so much.
He’s a good driver, I think—competent and careful.
I like that he’s not flashy. After the expressway comes a strip mall that could belong in Jersey, with a Chase branch and even a Stop it’s not as though the Ward family anecdotes can compete with Voss mega-lore.
I mean, actual books have been written about Fairwater by people who’ve never set foot here. How crazy is that?
(Not as crazy as the fact that Elyse Ward of Bayonne, New Jersey, is about to do just that.)
“That sounds like a sign to me,” he says, his eyes twinkling softly as he takes in my face.
My heart does a little thump-dance thing.
“Lindens are very beloved in France. Lime blossom tea is a big deal—it’s called tilleul, and it’s like an herbal infusion.
Mom used to make us tilleul on a Sunday night to help us sleep before we went back to school.
” I’m babbling, but he keeps looking over at me as if he’s hungry for more.
“Go on.” He’s slowed the car right down as if he wants to focus on what I’m saying.
“Well, she got hooked on it in Paris, apparently. She trained there from the age of eighteen to twenty, before she emigrated here. She used to tell us about all the tilleuls in bloom in the parks in Paris when she was a totally broke trainee dancer.”
“It made her happy to share her past with you,” he says softly.
“Yeah. She felt it was important, you know?” I shrug, feeling a little exposed.
Mom always seemed happy to share her stories, but I couldn’t help but sense the sadness behind her tales.
By eighteen, she was already years too late for the Paris system.
She was never going to make it there. Mom was a victim of a system that judged her body way too harshly…
and it looks like I’ve gotten myself into the exact same jam with modeling, doesn’t it?
“Sharing these traditions is the most important thing there is,” he says somberly. “Otherwise, they’re lost forever. And what is this country but a million different traditions from a million different cultures?”
“Exactly,” I say more brightly. “Anyway, tilleuls are delicious. My sister and I make one for my niece every Sunday night, but she’s not sold yet. She always wants a lot of honey with it. She thinks it’s too bitter, but she’s only five. She’ll get there.”
“You live with your sister?” he asks, sounding sharply surprised.
“Yeah. It’s a long story.” I look out of the window.
“Well,” he says in the upbeat tone that suggests a deliberate change of subject, “I’m ashamed to say I’ve never tried it.
I will remedy that as soon as I can. And I’m even more ashamed to say that the lindens in front of my house are in a sorry state.
They’ve lost all their leaves now—they’re one of the first to go.
My brother’s beech is looking disgustingly good, though. ”
I giggle, and he reaches over and squeezes my hand in my lap.
“Let’s go see, shall we?”
Yes. Let’s go see, indeed.
I am in a fever dream, the beauty of which I’ll never get over.
Sinclair’s home is the most perfect gem of a place I’ve ever seen—though the word gem implies smallness, which absolutely is not the case.
We hit a high hedge at the end of the driveway, which he told me shielded the back of the main house and the pool area from sight.
(Apparently, having your pool on full display is a little déclassé—his word.
Who knew?) He takes us down a turnoff to the left, which opens up onto a gravel area banked with more trees and the prettiest house I’ve ever seen.
I jump down from the car before he has a chance to grab my door.
To one side sits a bank of grass leading to the water, while the main entrance stands in front of me.
It’s so adorable, it’s like candy for the eye: a dark gray roof, and lighter gray siding, charcoal shutters, and the prettiest details, especially the little white wooden balcony that stands over the main porch.
I can smell earth and salt and goodness, and I sniff hard.
Let’s say the Kill van Kull back home does not smell this good.
“It’s so beautiful!” I say, turning on the spot to take it all in. This must be what love at first sight feels like. I want to encase my feet in concrete and never, ever leave.
Sinclair closes the passenger door for me and takes my hand. “Welcome to The Lindens,” he says, a look on his face that feels a little self-conscious. “Let me give you a tour. I’ll grab the bags later.”
He unlocks the front door and leads us into a large, square hallway whose central table bears a giant blue-and-white china vase filled with flowers.
The first thing that hits me is how fresh the air smells, even in here.
It’s probably the flowers, but this isn’t a house that’s shuttered up and left to fester for weeks on end. I guess he has staff to air it out.
“Kitchen,” he says, gesturing to our left.
I catch sight of off-white cupboards and copper pendant lights: the Long Island version of Sinclair’s kitchen porn.
But he tugs me through some big white double doors to our right, and wow.
We’re in a palatial great room that looks straight onto the water.
Its colors are pale, muted: robin’s-egg-blue walls and white woodwork and comfortable-looking beige couches.
I guess we’re facing west, because the late afternoon sunlight streams in through the huge bay window and sparkles on the water beyond.
“Wow.”
I may just spend the entire weekend saying Wow, but I have no other words.
It’s simply beautiful. Outside, the view to the body of water is unbroken except for a peek of a bare tree that I guess is one of Sinclair’s lindens.
I walk over to the window as though I’m under a spell, which I kind of am, and gaze out at the beauty beyond.
It’s majestic and serene all at the same time.
Sinclair follows, standing behind me and wrapping his arms around me.
I feel his entire body sag in this giant exhale as he rests his chin on my head.
“Remind me why you live in Manhattan?” I ask him, reveling in the warmth of his vise.
“Sometimes, I have no clue,” he mutters, his words reverberating softly through my skull. “The only answer I’ve come up with is that you need the pace of the city to appreciate the pace of being out of it, you know? If I were here twenty-four seven I’d probably grow bored.”
“Yeah, but I bet it would take a while,” I counter, and he chuckles softly, dipping his mouth to my ear.
“It would with you around. I bet I could hole up with you here for weeks and weeks and never have a second of anything approaching boredom,” he says huskily.
My heart fills with something that feels like warm molasses, because Yeah.
What he said. A million percent. I reach up and cover his hands with mine, squeezing as hard as I can.
“Would we have food?”
“So much food. I’d get my housekeeper to leave it all at the door, because, you know, we’d be naked the whole time. So it wouldn’t be proper to let the staff see us.”
“Of course,” I agree, while in my head, another movie montage starts up: a Sinclair-coded take on The Notebook, after Allie and Noah have finally had sex in his beautiful shingle home.
We’d fuck, and eat, and sleep, and fuck some more, with only log fires and cozy plaid blankets and each other’s skin to keep us warm.
God, I can see it all so clearly, even if, in this scenario, I’m definitely Noah, the cute but penniless, blue-collar part of the equation, and Sinclair is Allie Hamilton on steroids.
It appears that coming here with him may just have been the most reckless thing I’ve ever done.
I thought taking his money and letting him lock me in a room for an hour was dangerous.
I had no freaking clue—and, it seems, no survival instinct.