Chapter 16
16
My heels click on the travertine marble floor as I step into the ground-floor lobby. I wave and say “Happy Monday” to Dave the security guard as I head out in the heat to pick up Susie’s lunch from the upmarket Asian-fusion restaurant around the corner. I don’t particularly enjoy going there, as it reminds me of all the times Bancroft and I used to order takeout during our late nights working together in the office last year.
“If you believe in Fate so much, you should act on whatever the fortune cookie decrees,” Bancroft announced one winter’s evening after two pints of miso soup and a mountain of dumplings.
“Of course,” I agreed. “I would never disrespect cookie law,” I said, cracking open the sugar-coated parcel and pulling out the white paper ribbon.
I held it up to read it in the dimmed office light: “‘The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.’”
Bancroft nodded and stroked his chin. “You know what, I’ve always said that.”
I laughed. “What does it mean, then?”
“I think it means...” He took an old plastic water-cooler cup from my desk and topped it with a measure of the room temperature vodka, which at this point had become a staple for our after-hours meetings. “... you have to clear this cup.”
I chugged the contents, shivering from the aftertaste as though a ghost had just paced straight through me, then I placed the cup upside down like a paper crown on my head. “Your turn.”
He cracked open his cookie and cleared his throat. “‘Follow what calls to you.’”
“Very deep. Pray tell: What calls to you currently?” I leaned forward like a producer interviewing someone for a heart-wrenching documentary.
His eyes twinkled as he considered, smiling to himself as he matched my position. Our faces’ proximity made me hesitate but not move away.
“Right now?” he asked, his voice slightly lower than usual.
I held steady, blinking away the flashing vision of him taking my face in his hands and pulling me closer. Did I want that?
With hooded eyes he pointed to the pile of crispy wontons littering my desk. “Mostly those.”
I pushed myself back into my chair, letting out a fractured laugh before coming to my senses and shaking off the electric feeling lingering on my skin. Stop being an idiot.
“Do you think someone actually writes these?” he asked, mouth half-full of crunchy shrimp.
“I like the idea that there is an old woman in the fortune-cookie factory bestowing the wisdom of her life on humanity,” I said wistfully.
“Writing her memoir one vague mass-appealing sentence at a time?” He smirked.
I clicked my fingers at him. “Exactly! Like a commercial Confucius. If we collect every single one, we can line them up and we’ll have a new literary classic on our hands.”
“Sounds like we’d be doing the world a favor,” he agreed.
After that challenge, this became our go-to late-night takeout spot, though we never followed through on collecting the strips of advice from the cookies.
My phone buzzes, pulling me out of the fond memory. I’ve been avoiding looking at my phone since I finally responded to William’s admission when I got home from the gallery:
I don’t think meeting up right now is a good idea.
“Grace!” A voice echoes across the space. My head whips around to see a tall, stunning girl leaning by the glass door entrance and waving frantically in my direction. Iris.
Shit, she’s most likely here to meet her brother. I haven’t prepared myself to see Bancroft so soon after our conversation at Calico. Things felt different after the tour ended. Not bad, but like by becoming more familiar with each other’s lives, we were stepping into unfamiliar territory. Glancing at the door as if it’s the emergency exit of a plane that’s about to start plummeting, my palms begin to sweat.
“Hi, Iris!” I grin involuntarily as she gets closer.
Her ethereal smile is so contagious, I can see why people are obsessed with following her every movement online. She is like a magical party fairy dressed in a deliberately oversize hot pink jumpsuit that looks so good on her stick-thin frame and has blue and green glitter clips in her shiny chestnut hair. Walking over, she embraces me in a tight hug you reserve for loved ones you haven’t spoken to in years but are so happy to see. Her warmth is welcoming and invigorating at the same time, like a fire pit at a party everyone unconsciously gravitates toward throughout the night. A stark difference from the helpless girl collapsed across a table at Matilda’s.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
She glances down at her boots for a split second then back up to me. “I’m OK.” Her electric smile dulls slightly. “I feel bad dragging you guys into my...” She waves her hand around flippantly. “... stuff.”
“That’s OK,” I assure her, squeezing her arm lightly. “I don’t want to sound like a guidance counselor, but you never have to feel bad about needing help.”
“I think I just need to start looking for better friends.” Her smile lifts. “Like how Eric has you.”
I sputter, trying to find the right words: “We’re not friends, not exactly, we’re colleagues.”
“Well, I’ve never been introduced to any of his friends or... ‘colleagues.’” She uses her long purple nails to put quotes around the word.
My phone begins to ring in my hand. Even though it’s likely Susie asking why her food hasn’t magically appeared on her desk by now, I relish the opportunity to get out of this topic of conversation. But when I go to press accept, the name says William .
“You can take that if you want, I don’t mind.” Iris smiles politely, fully intending to carry on this conversation after I’m done.
I let out a nervous laugh, feeling the heat rise to my face. “It’s fine.” I press reject on the call. “It’s just my ex.”
Iris’s gasp echoes across the marble as I instantly regret my words. Iris has a way of making you feel like the most interesting person in the world, immediately making me loose-lipped.
“No, it’s not like that,” I clarify. “He just wants to talk.”
Iris’s already massive saucer eyes widen further. “Oh my God, so exciting!” Passersby in the lobby look over as her reverberating squeal reaches them. “Will you be getting back together?”
“No—I don’t know. It’s not exciting!” I splutter and shake my head. “It’s just texts. It’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing?” asks a smooth, low voice behind me.
Ice enters my bloodstream.
“Grace’s texting with her ex,” Iris immediately confirms over my shoulder to the looming figure. I close my eyes and run my tongue over my teeth, trying my hardest to keep my mouth shut. Rolling back my shoulders I turn around, steeling myself before I acknowledge him.
His hair looks disheveled compared to its usual effortless bounce, but his eyes are still that unnatural blue that laser through my own.
“Helloooo!” I say in a singsong voice that I immediately regret when I see the confused twitch of his eyebrow.
Bancroft’s eyes move to my red lips, then flick up to my gaze as he gives me a devastating look of disappointment and asks his sister if she’s ready to go. As if he couldn’t bear to interact with me at all.
“Yep, bye, Grace!” Iris beams, oblivious to the shovel she just passed to me to dig myself further into a hole. She kisses me on both cheeks. “So lovely to see you. We should grab a coffee soon.”
My heart tugs at her genuine sincerity.
Bancroft breezes past me without a second glance and I watch them walk away, reminding me of how different things had become since the first time I saw them together. An ice-cold poker slams through my stomach at the thought of Bancroft and me being thrown back into how we were before the Ditto project began. I wait a cursory thirty seconds before leaving the building, hoping to avoid the pain of a classic goodbye-but-we-need-to-go-in-the-same-direction moment. But I didn’t need to worry. As I step out onto the scalding pavement and wander down to the depths of hell to catch a tube, I watch Bancroft open the door of a town car for Iris and close it behind them.