Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ella
“I think if you’re fourteen you should be legally required to read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. ‘Okay? Okay.’ shaped a generation.”
—Julie’s Staff Pick
I’d learned a lot about Henry over the past few months.
He always kept Altoids on him, often silently holding the tin out to me while working in Leo’s office.
He liked Sweetgreen but refused to pay more than twelve dollars for a salad, so he never went there.
He preferred IPAs to lagers. Almost all of it was completely irrelevant, but I collected those shards of him for a stained glass window that I knew would be beautiful.
And now I knew that Henry Martin was the world’s best kisser.
Sometimes the idea of kissing him appealed to me more than wanting to actually kiss him. Because what if it was underwhelming in real life and I couldn’t walk around with the fantasy of what could’ve been?
Last night, when I was drunk (and a bit turned on because alcohol will do that), I wanted him to kiss me. On the street, in the hallway of Leo’s apartment building, on the couch, everywhere.
I knew we were too drunk (namely I was) and that Henry was too good a man to kiss me while I was drunk, even if I wanted him to.
Maybe it was serendipity that the glass slipped out of my hand and he was there on that couch. And that Leo’s bathroom was too small.
There was no need to wonder what could’ve been. Now I knew that a kiss from Henry tilted the world off its axis. I wanted nothing more than to walk back into the bathroom, hop onto the counter, place his hands back in my hair, and pull him between my thighs.
But my wants and needs didn’t make it the right decision.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my hand coming up to touch my lips, as if I could still feel the way he tugged on them with his teeth. “I-I shouldn’t have done that.”
There was only the slightest dip in Henry’s eyebrows as his face remained impassive.
“Not that it was a bad kiss,” I rushed. “Not at all. Trust me, I would know bad kisses. I went to Le Bain when I was in college and made out with this guy who like sucked my tongue in his mouth and scraped it with his teeth.” I shuddered. “That was a bad kiss. This was—”
“Ella,” Henry interrupted, gently. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. Just a heat of the moment thing that I misread—”
I stepped forward. “That’s not what I’m saying. I kissed you.”
Henry’s mouth quirked, his expression amused. “I know.”
“It wasn’t a heat of the moment thing. Not for me,” I said, frowning. “This was premeditated, Henry.” I paused, feeling risky. It wasn’t often that I had feelings for someone. And anytime I did, it was fleeting. An insta-love at the register or a faceless hookup in the dark.
I thought about Henry a lot. If he’d like a book or would laugh at a customer with me.
“I like you,” I confessed quietly.
Henry’s face opened up like a sun no longer covered by the clouds. “I like you, too. A lot, Carmella.”
There it was again. My full name. I preened at the sound of it, my heart beating faster, hanging on to the hope that he might say it again.
I looked down, smiling. “Oh.”
“It shouldn’t be a surprise.” He squinted at me. “I can’t believe you’re not with someone already, honestly.”
I bit my lip, hoping my smile didn’t get bigger. “I’m abrasive.”
He choked out a laugh at this. “You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met. Even when you hated me, you were still nice to me.”
“I didn’t hate you at all,” I said firmly. “I was jealous of you. I still am.”
Henry ignored this. “Do you mean it? That we shouldn’t have kissed?”
“Henry,” I whispered. “It’s far too complicated. There’s more at stake than just our feelings here, and I don’t want it to get in the way of everything we’re working for. What if our book fair doesn’t work? Don’t you think we would blame ourselves forever and chalk it up to being distracted?”
Henry sighed, then nodded. His arm stretched up to scratch the back of his neck and my eyes tracked the way his shirt rode up, revealing tanned, hard skin.
“I know.” He glanced at me from under his eyelashes. “I hope this doesn’t change things between us, Ella. Because if we can’t be more than friends, I’d still like to be friends. I’ve lost a lot; I don’t want you to be something I lose, too.”
“We’re still friends. I love being your friend,” I said honestly. “I know by then you’ll be packing up to leave, but … I don’t know, maybe we can revisit this in August?”
Relief rippled across his face. “I won’t let that be the last time I kiss you. After the book fair,” he said decidedly.
“This won’t change anything, though. This doesn’t change how I feel.”
“It’d take a whole lot to do that for me, honey.”
We went back into the kitchen to check if all the glass had been cleaned up. Henry ordered me to stay away from the site of the crash, so I watched with my arms crossed as he inspected the kitchen floor.
Henry’s eyes lingered on my bare legs when he stood.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I got too hot and rummaged through Henry’s clothes and slipped on the first T-shirt I found.
I wouldn’t have ever worn it in front of Henry, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the way he looked at me. Hungry and wanting.
Now that we were up and wide awake, there was no need to go back to bed. We decided it’d be best to head to the bookstore early to start planning for the book fair.
Henry lent me a towel for a shower, but I had nothing clean to change into.
“Maybe Leo has some old clothes you could borrow?” Henry asked.
“I doubt it. It’s okay. I’m not closing today anyway, so I don’t mind wearing this for most of the morning. I’ll just go home a little after lunch.”
When it was Henry’s turn to shower, I sat on Leo’s couch, flipping the pages of a book a little too harshly.
The words were meaningless on the page. I was too distracted by the idea of water cascading down Henry’s back and arms. Or even the way he had gripped my face, pressing on my cheek, forcing my mouth open so he’d have better access.
When the door opened, I snapped the book shut, as if my thoughts had translated onto the page.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said shortly. Never in my life did I think I’d be turned on in this apartment.
Leo used to love his walk to work. This was the first time I could put myself in his shoes with Henry at my side.
New York City was full of vignettes. You could walk from one street to another and enter a completely different world. I’d spent most of my life going back and forth from the West Village to Queens, so I would know.
This early in the morning, the neighborhood was quiet.
Supermoms dressed in their Lululemon were jogging, their babies blissfully unaware in strollers.
Couples passed us, power walking with their dog leash in one hand and an iced coffee in the other.
And sometimes a family would pass us, a little girl on her scooter giving her parents a heart attack whenever a car passed.
The streets were wide, sometimes cobblestone, and quiet.
Flowers bloomed in earnest as May ended, the promise of summer coming.
Henry and I walked side by side and I wondered if we looked like a couple that fit into the West Village clique. Every accidental brush of his hand against mine made the memory of this morning burst into my mind in Technicolor.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked, hoping to distract myself. “How come you didn’t sleep in Leo’s room last night?”
Henry stiffened. “I was hoping you’d be a little too drunk to notice.”
“I notice everything,” I said proudly. “Well, except for a business failing and all that.” Henry suppressed a smile. I followed up quickly with, “You don’t have to tell me, if it’s too personal.”
He didn’t answer for a second, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket.
“Because that’s Leo’s room,” he said finally. “Once The Last Page is all settled and okay, I’ll start cleaning up his room. I know it won’t be his for forever, but for now, it oughta stay that way.”
I blinked back tears at this. Grief was weird.
I could stay in his apartment, breathe in the scent of his candles, and see his sweater still hanging off the back of his kitchen chair and be okay.
But something as simple as Leo’s space remaining his, while we were in danger of losing the store, meant a lot more than I thought it would.
“I think that’s really beautiful,” I said, my voice tight. “He would really love that.”
“I’m not ready to say goodbye,” Henry said.
“I don’t think you have to,” I replied gently. “Leo’s everywhere to me. The books I read, the flowers blooming in the West Village. In your eyes.”
As we approached a crosswalk, Henry looked down at me, his eyes watery. He lifted his glasses, wiping away a tear. “He’s part of you, too, Ella. I think you’re right. He couldn’t leave us if he tried.”
I nodded. “And he’d never try.”
The store was busy today. Weekends would always be busy, but one Monday could be dead and the next one could be full of shoppers.
I was hoping I could hide away in the basement but I had no choice but to help out on the main floor.
And I knew what that meant.
The line was backed up at registers so I decided to hop on one with the other booksellers. It didn’t even take them two minutes.
“Didn’t you wear that yesterday?” Noah asked immediately.
“She did,” Mabel said without even looking up. “That god-awful red, sweetheart, it’s just not her color.”
“Oh, I like Ella in red!” Ameerah protested.
“Did you have a one-night stand?” Noah pressed.
The customer I was checking out looked up, catching my gaze as my cheeks flamed.
“We’re at work,” I said through clenched teeth. “That’s not an appropriate question.”
Noah held his hands up. “Sounds like someone didn’t have a successful one-night stand. Don’t get snappy with me, take it up with your lover.”