Chapter 35
Sloane
The art institute was bustling when I arrived, but people have begun to trickle out.
Amber yellow splays through the window on the farthest end of the hall, a continuous reminder of the impending dusk.
This side of town is foreign to me, and my stomach lining feels thin from the meager granola bar I found in the bottom of my bag, and it took forty minutes to get here in the first place, all the way from Astor.
A pang of regret drops through my gut, but I breathe through it.
It’s not the competition; it’s not the place; it’s not the hunger.
It’s him—and I realize Jean was right when he told me it wasn’t nothing.
He’s still pacing the hall, his gaze slicing through the work that’s been left here in preparation for the show in only a few days’ time.
Doesn’t seem fair that a judge would get so much lead time before the others arrive, but then, he’s never been concerned with what’s right or fair.
My gaze falls down to where my phone rests, the screen dark.
Lifting it isn’t the magic I hope it will be: still no text from Andy.
The last thing he’d said was that he’d be working tonight, the last shift he’ll be able to get in before the big conference game next weekend.
I scroll back to the message he sent me a couple nights ago, because it’s now my favorite thing. He’d said:
ANDY
Just got back. Contemplating climbing through your bedroom window, but I know you’re sleeping and that your brother might murder me.
And we have time. But I missed you.
Thought you should know.
So I keep telling myself that we have time, and it soothes the angst wrapping itself around my chest every time I wonder why he’s been so busy. I adjust the lamp to the left of my piece again, highlighting the center that feels like an abyss to me. It’s still not right. And it’s been over an hour.
Elliot Walker’s god damned footsteps sound behind me and it’s a heavy effort not to ask him to leave.
A little petulant, don’t you think? I know he’d say that.
The corner of his mouth tugging upwards, a glint in his eye that could make you forgive the condescension, believe that it’s just an evolved sort of endearment.
“Maybe try—” Elliot reaches around me and tilts the lamp. His voice is just the same: soft, perceptive, laced with quiet humor, like he knows something you don’t. Makes you want to ask him or stay close enough to find out. “There. See?”
The light now falls across the fine glitter layered into the silhouette of the cliff so that it glints. An obvious choice. Not very thoughtful at all. Laughter climbs up my throat, breaks through in a surprising scoff that has him snapping his head away from the painting and toward me.
“Sorry,” I apologize, because he’s a judge.
Not because I am. I look at him like he’s new, but really it’s the familiarity that allows me to notice all the ways he’s actually so small.
Towering over me, handsomely aged—barely gray at his temple, creases at his eyes.
Stubble across his jaw. Full mouth, strong hands, but: insecurity, lodged in the back of his gaze.
At that age, I almost laugh again, but remember.
I want to win this. “I do love the way it makes the cliff shift into focus.”
Some level of surety returns to his eyes when I appease him.
And did I always do that, without a second thought?
Probably. Definitely. It’s uncertain ground for him.
There’s a level of authority he’s taken for granted, that he’s assumed bleeds into every domain of his narrow little life, and I just fell into it. Swam in it like I couldn’t drown.
He smiles at me, and I press my lips together because they start to shake. “Hello, Sloane.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes as I force a polite smile of my own. A flash of him handing me my shit plays across my vision before zapping away, and I realize the room’s empty.
I remember that the room was often empty.
“Mr. Walker,” I say, fighting the urge to fidget under his attention.
“Oh,” he says, his brows furrowing as he smirks. “Is that where we are now?” He searches my face, amused as he shifts so that we’re shoulder to shoulder. “Last names?”
“Probably should’ve always been last names. Don’t ya think?” I feel him look at me as I look ahead, can sense his chest rising and falling in irritation.
“I always thought you were more mature than this,” he chides, cocking his head back toward my piece.
Fuck him.
I want to rip it off the wall, but instead I pay him the attention he’s desperate to steal. “Your mistake,” I tell him, gazing up at him with none of the admiration that once came so easy, so hot, so fast.
Something shifts in him, in the room. When he walks away, and the urge to follow, to get a reaction, claws at me—so I do, because that can’t be it. I want to exact a judgment against him the way he has on me, in a million small ways, even in his absence.
I want to tell him I don’t even know what’s good anymore because of him. I need to see him be a shell and then rip something dear from his corpse, because it would be the catharsis I think I need.
Elliot stops at a portrait of a woman looking in the mirror, done with oils just like mine. It looms, larger than the both of us, her doe–like features overwhelming this close up.
“What do you think of this?” he asks me, but his mind’s already made up.
“The envy feels heavy handed—the green, I mean.” He hums, nodding. “And whoever did this was impatient. The colors muddle here, and I don’t think it’s intentional.”
“I told her the same thing.” His hand finds my lower back and I step away instantly.
Gaze narrowed, he assesses me, jaw clenched.
“My student’s piece. She’s enormously talented, more than she knows what to do with.
” He inspects the piece again but it’s half-assed because he’s paying attention to me.
Waiting for jealousy to leap on me like a cat.
I’m not jealous, at all. Concern is the thing I feel—concern and unease.
The manipulation feels so overt, I start to question if I’ve ever seen things clearly a day in my life.
Even now, I don’t know if my estimation of matters is rational.
Did Elliot take advantage of me, or does stupidity just wear the same mask?
Is the sick feeling roiling in my gut my own making or his?
I walk away, back to my piece, and gather my stuff. He watches me, like a hawk, and his quickened steps echo in the deserted hall, the heel of his loafers sharp against the wooden floor.
“Let’s grab a drink. I’m sure you know all the best spots around town,” he starts to laugh before I look up at him from where I’m crouched.
“Why would I know that?” Instinct has my skin prickling with alarm, and his blinking is a sad attempt at soothing me as I stand up.
“You’re young,” he chuckles, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “If you’re staying around here we could sit at the hotel bar. Or mine,” he shrugs, and I’m spun. Desperate to leave.
“I can’t. I’m meetin’ my boyfriend,” I tell him, swallowing hard as I pull my phone out and dial Andy. Who doesn’t answer. Again.
Dread sheathes itself between my breastbone, right next to the worry. I’ll go to the comedy club, because maybe his phone is dead, and then I’ll feel like I own my mind again, because Andy makes everything make sense.
“Boyfriend?” Elliot’s unhappiness is evident as I wipe dust from my hands on the front of my jeans.
There was once a time where his happiness was paramount to me, where he’d conned me into being concerned about his contentment.
I’d crunch my bones together to make space for him and his feelings, and I’m still shaking myself out from that, I realize as I let his disdain fall off the cliff of me.
“Just feels quick. And not quite your thing,” he sort of laughs, and I flick my gaze to the ground before staring him right in the eyes.
“Maybe you just didn’t know me like you thought you did.” I start to move toward the door, only for him to roughly catch my wrist.
“You know that’s a lie. I remember you telling me that you loved how well I knew everything about you,” he says, sly and overconfident. I shake him off.
“No one tells you no, do they?” I look at him in disbelief, pulling in a breath.
“You don’t even know what it’s like to not have your way.
” Deep in the recesses of his gaze, I think I’ll find whatever humanity of his used to appeal to me.
But it’s all rotten insecurity, shallow control as he scoffs and steps back.
“I should’ve known you’d talk to that reporter. Especially after the abortion.” Annoyance—that’s what I see in his eyes when he mentions it, and I feel sick. “It made you so irrational.”
“What a horrible thing to say,” I whisper, willing the hot, angry tears to stay hidden. “I didn’t talk to that reporter. But maybe I should.” Confusion flares across me, an unwanted heat, and I just need to see Andy. Tell him everything that’s happened so he can help me piece it back together.
“Sloane,” Elliot shouts from behind the threshold, and I stop, wincing. “You know I didn’t mean that. You know what you do to me.”
They’re the kinds of words he’d always used with me because he knew I’d drink them in. And even now, the lack of apology feels irrelevant in the face of his weak, manipulative praise.
Coat pulled tight around me, I wade into the packed bar while a woman holds her own hair back, miming vomiting in the toilet to the sound of raucous laughter. My eyes fly to the billboard, where a WOMEN HAVE THE LAST LAUGH poster is plastered with today’s date.
Andy’s broad back flexes behind the counter with the way his arms must be crossed in front of him, a towel over his shoulder as they shake with quiet amusement.
He’s resting against the bar, unaware that I’m here, so I just watch him.
The warmth already washes over me, just at the sight of him, and every dark feeling that Elliot pulled to the surface recedes.
Finally, I lean against the deserted bar counter and clear my throat.
He turns, slowly, before startling with shock. “Sloane,” he says, sort of breathlessly, and a nervous scoff leaves me.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” I say, raking my teeth over my lip as I fight the urge to launch myself into his arms. He doesn’t move, though; instead, he looks tense, like energy held too tightly, to the point of pain. “What’s wrong?”
He blinks, his throat bobbing before his posture loosens. “Nothing. I just…wasn’t expecting you, is all.” He wears a tired smile and it’s just that—worn, like he’s practicing putting it on.
“I called. Did your phone stop workin’?” I smirk, hoping it disarms him, because this is weird. This is not a figment of my imagination.
He glances around the bar, accounting for the lack of customers, and rounds it, throwing the towel down, gently grasping my arms before tugging me to the back corridor of the club.
Only steps away are the stage wings, but here, we’re washed in barely lit darkness.
A few feet away is the bathroom door I once found by feeling my way down the wall while Andy fended off a group of out of towners during happy hour.
“Andy. What the hell is happenin’ to you?
” I chuckle, still nervous but relieved by the closeness.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pull him close, desperate to have him through all my senses.
He’ll ground me—I know he will. “Why are we hidin’?
” I smile against his lips before I feel him press me against the wall, steal the breath from me with his kiss.
With one hand on the nape of my neck, his thumb bracing against my jaw, he holds me in place, the familiar slide of his tongue and feel of his lips cracking me open the way they always do. And then, suddenly, he stops, his forehead falling against mine as we catch our breath.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so busy.” The words feel heavier than they should, said on an outtake of breath as they are, and I lock the night I had away, the dread from earlier slowly filtering away the longer Andy’s hands are on me.
“That’s okay,” I tell him, shaking my head as I run a hand down the side of his beautiful face. And he really is beautiful—a story of a person, one you could never tire of, whose eyes I could float in forever. Whose being is quite literally the place I go to return to myself, like I am right now.
Does he know that? That he’s where I go to be okay?
“I understand. I’m not mad,” I huff a laugh. “I just missed you. Wanted to see your face.”
His amber gaze falls from mine before he manages to lift it, the self-chastisement hard to watch.
It’s a look I’d sometimes spy when I didn’t know him yet.
When he thought no one was watching. Like he’d done something so awful, and he was turning the rot of it over and over in his mind. That feels so long ago, but I remember.
I start to ask him what’s on his mind, just as he takes my hands in his, holding them in the small space between us.
“I’m glad I got to see you,” his voice rumbles, low and promising, and I fight a smile.
“I’ll come over. After you finish up.”
“I’ll let you know, okay?” I can see the tick of his jaw, even back here, and my head tilts in disappointment.
“Give me a few days to get caught up on things. I haven’t cracked open a book in weeks,” he laughs, and the sound softens me.
Reminds me to breathe. “How was setting up?” Alarm strikes in his eyes, like he can’t believe he almost forgot, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t satisfy something in me, even if it reminds me of seeing Elliot.
“Fine,” I lie. I won’t tell him now, won’t ruin the little bubble of relief I’ve blown for myself with him, in the dark of the club. Later. When he feels better and I’m not reeling from the shit Elliot said to me.
“Good. Good,” he says, the words disappearing as he nods, something unspoken in the back of his gaze.
“Okay, well. Text me,” I say, rolling my lips together as I walk away. His hand lingers on mine, his fingers brushing across the back of my palm as the distance grows and he says nothing in return, until finally, he’s not touching me at all.