Chapter 18
KEATS
Sosie tilts her head back to take in the full scope of the building. Peeking over at me, she grins as if she’s caught me in a lie I never told. Raising her eyebrow, she grins. “You’ve done well for yourself, Poet.”
The name strikes chords in my heart that haven’t been played in years.
They might be out of tune, but the familiarity ignites blurry memories.
I shrug, trying to act like I’m unaffected.
I am. I missed hearing it, but I yearned to hear her voice even more—the tone that dances between the girl who had the world in the palm of her hand and the woman who’s fought battles to be where she is.
“I’ve done okay,” I reply casually as if spending time with her is nothing more than lunch on a Thursday.
It’s so much fucking more. To me, anyhow.
And I’ve done more than okay, but since I blabbed about the book deal, it feels strange to be vocal about money when it’s always been a silent enemy between us.
Our worlds used to be divided by miles, Central Park, and society.
I was just a kid from a part of a borough where it wasn’t safe to walk at night.
I’ve been beaten to the point I couldn’t see out of either of my eyes, had more concussions than doctor’s visits, and raised myself on pasta and slices of white bread.
I walked to school with the stench of alcohol under my feet and played basketball with randoms who showed up at the courts and were rich enough to own a ball.
In this part of the city, I’m a borough and a train ride away from my past. It’s also a long way from the mansion where Sosie grew up.
But what it isn’t is anyone else’s. This apartment is the payoff for the work I’ve put in, the late nights, the early mornings, making the right decisions in the stock market, and keeping pasta stocked in my cabinet when I start getting too full of myself.
Nothing like plain pasta to remind you of a time when salt and pepper and butter were too expensive.
Something Sosie and I have in common is that we don’t need fancy food. Pizza will do.
Holding up the box, I spin it on my fingers. “The pizza is getting cold.”
As much as people love to brag about having a doorman, I didn’t need one to feel important. I enter the code and pull the door open for her, watching her slip under my arm into the warm lobby. “How long have you lived here?”
I can’t stop noting how comfortable I feel with her as we walk to the elevator.
We’ve picked up like there wasn’t a sea of change and past pain between us.
It still needs to be addressed, but is it wrong to just want to eat some pizza first?
“Around four years. I rented near here after graduation. When I got recruited, I took advantage of the bonus to get out of that shitty studio where I was living.”
Stepping onto the elevator, she moves to the back corner, resting her hands on the rails and watching as I punch the button for the twentieth floor. When I lean against the opposite wall, she says, “I remember that apartment.”
“What do you remember about it?” I remember our night together and her the next day.
I remember seeing her ghost around the place like her spirit couldn’t let go.
It was all in my head, a byproduct of burning through late nights working to wrap up my final project and classes filling my days.
I got no rest, and the ghost of her loved to taunt me.
I couldn’t fucking wait to move out of that place.
“It felt . . .” Her eyes go to the ceiling as if the answer will be found there. When her eyes lower to me again, she replies, “Warm—”
There’s still heat between us, flowing too freely like there’s a chance to pick up where we left off. I glance up at the lit number for the floor we’re passing to tamp down the thought. “I don’t think it was working well that night?”
“I meant you, as in who you are as a person. It felt warm like you.”
Staring at her, I’m not sure what to say, my thoughts conflicting with her recollection.
I was warm but apparently not worthy of her returning to me.
I try to get out of my head. It’s pizza and hanging out, not an interrogation.
At this rate, I’m not sure we’ll make it past a few slices before I say what I need to get off my chest. What am I supposed to do?
Sit across from her, this woman who broke my heart in two, and pretend we don’t have a mountain’s worth of baggage between us? Impossible.
The elevator stops, and when the doors open, I follow her. She only walks a few feet before looking back at me. “Which apartment?”
“Last door on the left.”
I study the back of her while we walk down the corridor.
The change in her hair is obvious, which was the first thing I noticed outside the pub.
I like it, but I’m not sure it fits her.
The coat is cinched at the waist, highlighting her slimmer body and reaching her face.
Her features are more refined, and even though it’s Manhattan, I think it’s all natural.
Trailing my gaze to the heels that give her some solid height, I’m reminded of the combat boots she once wore. I wonder if she still chooses her footwear to please herself, or if she buys it to please everyone else. I really hope it’s because she loves them and they’re not for that asshole Gregory.
Fuck him.
I wish I had said more, done more. Though almost kissing Sosie in that hallway wasn’t because of Gregory.
Should I have gotten close to his fiancée, ex-fiancée?
Probably not. But if I know one thing about myself, it’s that Sosie Stansbury is my Achilles’ heel.
And apparently always will be. The hurt I felt hasn’t been washed away, but I sure as shit forget how she made me feel at one time, which isn’t helpful.
I would have thought things had changed.
They haven’t, not in the way I would have predicted.
The chemistry between us hasn’t tempered.
It’s only magnified. So I’m positive that if the pain I endured before didn’t fuck up the attraction, I’m stuck dealing with it for life.
It’s incredible how one unplanned night has led to . . . Oh shit. Are we repeating history?
I open the door and walk into the dark apartment first so she doesn’t run into anything.
I flip on the hall light and glance back as I hang my coat on a hook.
“Old habits die hard.” When she doesn’t react, I add, “Keeps the bills down.” I flick on another light in the living room, nothing bright or harsh, giving our eyes time to adjust. This one is positioned to spotlight a painting I bought last year.
After closing the door, her eyes flick to me and beyond. “It’s not what I expected.”
“No?” I set the pizza box on the kitchen counter.
She hangs her coat on a hook next to mine and makes her way into the living room, looking around.
“I was still imagining you in the old place with a blue rug and green loveseat.” Dragging her fingers along the back of the leather couch, she walks to the windows anchoring the other side of the apartment.
I try not to stare, but it’s hard to take my eyes off her, my emotions suspended in disbelief and feeling raw.
I’m not even sure how we ended up this way, here in my apartment, like this is normal.
Nothing about this is typical for me. I can only imagine she feels the same since she’s caught in this whirlwind with me.
I busy myself by getting plates and paper towels and stacking them on the box.
Sosie looks out one window, then strolls to the other as if the view will be different. With her back to me, she says, “I went to your other apartment.”
“Why?” I carry the box into the living room and set it on the coffee table. Sitting down, I try to remember a time when she might have stopped by. My neighbors were nosy as fuck and would have told me. “I had probably already moved unless it was—”
“A woman answered. Pretty, around our age.” She turns around, and it might be the first time I’ve seen hurt shape her expression.
Her smile can’t fight the internal dialogue playing out in her eyes.
“I thought she was your . . .” Her posture stiffens like an offense was taken before she exhales a heavy breath that drags down her shoulders. “I thought she had moved in with you.”
“Would it have mattered?”
She scoffs but tries to hide behind humor by smiling.
It’s fake, like the one she’s honed her skills on for others.
I don’t appreciate it being used on me. Raising her chin, she says, “It sure did at the time.” Her jealousy or whatever else she’s confessing is familiar.
I felt it tonight, though I kept it in check.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on her that she can’t. I’d rather see the real her through a myriad of emotions than have her true thoughts be shielded from me. So I give her grace for the instant reaction that she couldn’t hide.
“What about now?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She sits next to me on the couch, only quickly glancing at me before fixating on the pizza box.
“The timelines don’t match. She wasn’t your—” She bites her bottom lip, struggling to say the word that would usually follow that line of thinking.
She’s done it twice now. Sitting back, she tucks one foot under her other leg, taking up space not only on my couch but in my life again.
I should probably mind it more than I do.
“She wasn’t my girlfriend.” I help her out since I’m sensing she needs it. “You must have visited after I had moved.”
With the gentlest of nods, she seems to breathe easier. “Must have been.” Sliding off the couch onto her knees, she rips the paper towels off the roll and doles them out before opening the box and handing me a plate with a large slice. She resettles on the floor and takes a bite of her own piece.
We eat in silence, making me think I should turn on the TV for background noise. I resist that urge, wanting to talk instead. With the crust remaining, I say, “You gave the ring back, but are you still engaged?”
She laughs, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. When she swallows, she angles to face me from the floor. “Am I engaged?” She’s already shaking her head. “No. I never was.”
“That’s not what that ring on your finger suggested, and since I was there, I don’t think the asshole knows you’re not.”
“The truth?”
“We’re nothing without it.”
The outer corners of her eyes soften as she picks at a piece of pepperoni. “I was ambushed in front of a hundred or more people shortly before I saw you.” Placing the meat in her mouth, she looks at me again.
I was purposely putting off going to the party. My gut tightens when I realize I could have saved the embarrassment if I had only shown up on time. If I had been there—fuck. Timing? That’s what fucked with us? Just like the last time. It’s always at play. Maybe one day it will work in our favor.
“Why were you wearing the ring if it wasn’t real?”
“Do you have a girlfriend, Keats?”
My head jerks back from the question she’s lobbed my way. It’s a soft ball since the answer isn’t something I wouldn’t share. “No.”
Resting her arm on the cushion beside me, she says, “I don’t have a fiancé.
I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t have a significant other or a partner.
I was wearing the ring because I’m not someone who wants to humiliate anyone.
I had an agreement with Gregory to attend events together—nothing more and nothing less than it seems. I’ve never kissed him.
I’ve never been with him in any way that would have given him the impression of wanting to date him, much less marry him.
” She fidgets where the seams come together and then looks me straight in the eyes like she has nothing left to hide. “It’s just me, like it’s always been.”
Sosie has never made me nervous even though I felt she was out of my league. She made me feel bigger than myself, like I mattered to someone in this world. She gave me what I needed to hear. I’ll do the same in return. “I’ve not had a girlfriend, not since I met you.”
“Why is that?” she whispers.
“I didn’t make time. I didn’t prioritize my personal life. Anyone I met wasn’t you.”
I don’t know how I expect her to react, but it’s not with the smile tugging the left side of her mouth up. When she slips her hand onto my leg, the electricity still exists like a live wire between us. “Is it wrong to be glad I wasn’t suffering alone?”
Chuckling, I reply, “Probably, but I know what you mean, so I won’t hold it against you.”
“Thank God.” She pushes up off the floor with a laugh and pads into the kitchen. “Water?”
“Sure.” I set my plate on the table. “There are glasses in the cabinet and a pitcher in the fridge.”
“No bottles?” she calls.
“Nope.”
She chuckles as she opens cabinets in her search. “Why does that seem so fitting?”
“Because I’m cheap?”
“That’s not what I meant. Holy macaroni. Why do you have so much pasta in this cabinet?”
“Another habit I’ll never get over.” The cabinet door closes, and the fridge opens. “Hey, Sosie?”
“Yeah?” The sound of water filling the glasses is heard before I look back.
I ask, “What happened to us?”
She pauses with the pitcher in hand, looking at me from across the room. Without more than two seconds passing, she says, “We were running on a timer neither of us knew existed.”
“Timing is everything.” I frown, wanting to ask more, but I’m hesitant to ruin the ease that has trickled between us.
I can ask more later, but I hate that I don’t seem to have a say when it comes to my relationship with her.
Neither does she. We’re just victims of karma, fate, and the universe toying with our lives.
Looking like she belongs here, she returns to sit next to me and hands me a glass of water. “I don’t know if you believe me or not, but I feel the need to tell you that I never said yes to him.” Her eyes always tell the truth, and there isn’t a lie in sight. “I didn’t say anything at all.”
I stare at her, finally admitting to myself that I’ve loved her without reason for so long that it was hard to separate fantasy from reality sometimes. But now I see. Now I know. I’ve always known the reason. It just wasn’t clear before.
We’re not meant for anyone else.