Chapter Seven
Sebastian
Mornings were my favorite time of day. My mind was fresh, my body rested, and the promise of fresh coffee was enough to get me out of bed.
Monday morning I woke up before the alarm, as I did most days. I opened the windows to another hot, sunny morning, then padded into the kitchen. I programmed the coffee machine before I went to shower.
Ten minutes later I was clean, shaved, and ready to tackle the day.
After I poured some coffee, I took eggs out of the fridge.
I never skipped breakfast. It wasn’t just about making food to nourish my body.
Cooking was my grounding ritual, my hobby, a passion that soothed me and challenged me.
My friends joked that I only liked cooking because it made me more attractive to women.
That was a bonus, yes, but not the main reason.
Cooking was my art, and sometimes watching recipes and reading about cooking tips was the best therapy for me.
My sister Janine had taught me to cook soon after our parents’ death, when the world as we knew it had crashed and burned along with them in our family car.
Cooking was a necessity. Her own cooking had sucked at first, but gradually we’d both learned.
And as she worked long hours to support us both, one of the few things I could do for her was to wait for her with a hot, delicious dinner. Her smile of gratitude was my fuel.
I sautéed a couple of mushrooms, then cracked three eggs in a bowl and whisked them with salt, pepper and milk.
When the mushrooms were done I poured the eggs, then sealed the omelet with some grated mozzarella cheese.
I ate it along with a few tomato slices, spacing out the rich taste with sips of sweet, creamy coffee.
After I was done, I prepared a mega turkey and avocado sandwich to take to work for lunch.
I brushed my teeth, then opened the closet door.
Ironing was another thing I’d learned to do in order to help my sister.
Most women were shocked to learn I could—and did—iron my own clothes.
I suppose doing things like cooking and ironing made me seem like great husband material. How foolish appearances can be.
I walked out in time to see the door next to mine open and an attractive brunette step out of Sue’s apartment.
“Oh, hi.” She gave me a quick smile.
“Hi. Lily, right?”
I realized I knew her by sight as one of Jesse’s and Sue’s friends. I’d also seen her at the wedding on Saturday.
She nodded. “Yep. I’m your new neighbor.”
“Really? You rented Sue’s apartment?”
“I did. It’s closer to work.” She locked her door and slipped the keys in her oversized bag.
“Welcome to the neighborhood, Lily. I’m Sebastian.”
“I know.” She gave me a long smile I didn’t know how to read. Then she pointed to the stairs. “Shall we?”
“After you.”
It wasn’t easy to make conversation while descending narrow stairs, but I tried anyway.
“So, what do you do, Lily?”
“I’m a psychologist.”
“Oh.”
I must have sounded put off, because she laughed lightly. At the foot of the stairs, she turned to me.
“Do you have anything against psychotherapy?” she asked.
I returned her smile. “Nothing in particular.”
My instincts turned alert. I wasn’t too fond of psychologists.
After our parents passed away, Janine had made me see a counselor, but I could never connect with the guy.
He was only a few years older than me, and had clearly never experienced a major loss in his life.
He struck me as a privileged, spoiled brat who knew shit about human suffering.
The things he said to me were ridiculously banal, and after a couple sessions I’d refused to go back.
“Well, we’re not all bad,” Lily joked.
“I’m sure of that.”
I welcomed her to the neighborhood again, then we parted ways in front of the building.
The subway wasn’t crowded yet, which was rare. I sat in my usual corner seat, headphones on but no music playing—just enough to keep people from starting conversations I didn’t want.
The early city buzz had bloomed into full-on weekday chaos.
Taxis honked, cyclists weaved like maniacs, and some poor college kid dropped his iced latte right at the crosswalk.
I cut across Broadway, heading for Columbia’s main gates, then walked past the red-brick sprawl of campus buildings toward the low, unassuming structure that housed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
It was the same building as Tom’s Restaurant from Seinfeld, which somehow never stopped being ironic.
I swiped my badge. The elevator took its sweet time, as usual.
Upstairs, I nodded at the security guy, stepped into the glassy open workspace, and dumped my bag beside my terminal. My dual monitors blinked to life, humming a low welcome.
Someone had left a stale cinnamon roll on the kitchenette counter.
Or at least, what I assumed had once aspired to be a cinnamon roll.
I winced at the sad, calcified pastry spiral, picturing the real thing—dough layered with butter and cinnamon, baked until golden, then glazed while still warm so the icing melted into every crevice.
My cinnamon rolls could get women out of their underwear faster than it took the glaze to set.
This wasn’t a cinnamon roll. This was a crime against pastry.
I sat at my desk and put on my eyeglasses. I was too vain to wear them all the time, but I couldn’t work without them.
“Morning, team,” I said into the Slack huddle.
A few sleepy faces blinked back at me, floating against virtual Mars backgrounds and coffee-stained screens.
“Hey, Sebastian,” one of the interns said—Miles, maybe. “We lost one of the ET feeds from the Colorado satellite overnight. Looks like a bad handshake with the cloud API.”
I sighed. “I did say the word of the year was ‘challenging.’”
“Please pick another word next year,” someone else groaned.
“Not just another word—a better word,” Miles begged.
“Like I haven’t heard that request a million times already.” I cracked my knuckles and started typing.
The next few hours were a blur of code, caffeine, and a chat box full of sarcastic memes. By the time I patched the handshake error and tested a stable recovery loop, I’d forgotten to blink.
I pushed back from the desk and rubbed my eyes, realizing it was past lunchtime.
My gaze landed on the photo of Janine I kept on my desk.
We shared the same dark brown hair and brown eyes, but my sister’s skin was paler than mine.
She looked so much like our mother that my heart twisted sometimes with the pain of remembrance.
She was the only family I had left. I owed her everything I was.
Outside, the sun had clawed its way through Manhattan’s smoggy ceiling. I walked two blocks to a quiet spot in Riverside Park, and found my usual bench beneath a chestnut tree—a rare pocket of stillness amidst the city chaos.
Overhead, the leaves trembled in a breeze that smelled faintly of cut grass, distant hot dog carts, and the brackish hint of the Hudson. Somewhere to my left, a dog barked half-heartedly.
I sat down, unwrapped my sandwich, and took a bite. The sandwich was top notch—sourdough bread, thick-cut turkey that I’d roasted myself over the weekend, sliced avocado, and Dijon mustard. It tasted amazing, reaching the perfect balance between protein and carbs.
For ten minutes, it was just me, my sandwich, and the rare illusion that maybe the world wasn’t as screwed up as I heard every day in the news.
And then the squirrel arrived. Not just any squirrel, but the same bold little bastard who’d been tailing me all summer as though I owed him child support and he had the receipts to prove it. He strutted across the grass with the menace of a mob enforcer and the fluffiest tail this side of Pixar.
I locked eyes with him.
He paused, tilting his head.
I took another bite of my sandwich—slowly, deliberately.
He inched closer.
I arched a brow. “Don’t even think about it.”
He sat up on his haunches, tiny paws pressed together in the universal rodent gesture of mock-innocence. His beady little eyes flicked from my sandwich to my face and back again, as if trying to calculate how fast he’d have to be to snatch it and live.
“Don’t try me today, buddy,” I muttered. “I’m tired and hangry.”
Unfazed, he crept closer.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single unsalted cashew from a stash I kept precisely for this unholy alliance. I tossed it gently onto the grass.
He froze, only his nostrils moving. He looked at me one last time—no doubt to assure me this wasn’t over—then scooped it up and darted off behind a tree, victorious.
I let out a sigh and shook my head. “Jesse would’ve rooted for you.”
My thoughts circled back to her. They did that a lot lately.
I’d handled things like an idiot the other day.
I just couldn’t say no to a woman—well, not unless we were talking serious commitment.
But it was good that I’d let Candi come over and fixed that situation.
Now I was officially unattached, and maybe one day I would reverse Jesse’s bad opinion of me.
I took my phone out of my pocket and stared down at it.
For a moment, I wondered if I should text Jesse.
I had her phone number from her website, but had never called her or texted her before.
I hadn’t felt welcome. I still didn’t. What would I say?
If I’d been quick enough to snatch a photo of the squirrel, maybe it would have been a good ice breaker, but the little bastard was long gone.
I thought about yesterday, replayed our conversation in my head, and an idea flickered in my mind. I knew a guy who worked at a gallery. Maybe I could help Jesse out and earn some points with her.
Excited, I opened Facebook and looked up Malcom Heffner.
I knew Malcom from the chess team back in high school.
He was an exceptional player, but I knew back then he didn’t belong in Stuyvesant.
Math and science were not his gig, yet his parents had forced him into both.
I was happy to see he’d made his life his own eventually.
I scrolled a bit through his profile, smiling at dozens of pics of his adoptive daughter and her new puppy.
A recent post stopped me in my tracks. It was a post from Narcissus Gallery, the place where Malcom worked as a curator.
The gallery was searching for new and upcoming artists to showcase for a six-month long art event.
How lucky was that?
I immediately started typing a message to Malcom, but after a couple sentences I stopped. Instead of asking him to do me a favor and contact Jesse, I reconsidered. I genuinely believed in Jesse’s art. I knew she would make it on her own.
Was I trying to help her just to get into her pants?
The firm answer was no.
While I very much wanted to get into her pants, I respected her as a woman and as an artist. I didn’t want to use a favor from Malcom as a bargaining chip to gain something from Jesse.
Actually, I didn’t even want her to know I’d helped in any way.
All Malcom needed was to see her art, and he would know her value.
I deleted what I’d written and started typing again.
Hey Malcom,
It’s been a while. How are you doing, man?
I saw that you’re looking for contemporary artists to showcase in the Narcissus Gallery, and I wanted to ask if you’ve invited Jesse Nielsen yet. I don’t know if you know her work, but it’s frigging amazing. I’ll leave you her website here.
I’ve no doubt you’ll love her work as much as I do. Just wasn’t sure you were aware we had such a talented contemporary artist around here.
Anyway, let me know what you think. Say hi to Nicole and Rick for me.
Cheers,
Sebastian Wright
Satisfied with the text, I pressed Send, feeling a little like a superhero who does good from the shadows.
And I wanted to stay in the shadows, for reasons that weren’t clear to me right now.
It was a new feeling. I usually took praise shamelessly for any little thing I’d done for a woman.
This time it was different. She was different.
I just hoped I was good enough for her.