“Hi.”
“I kind of have a thing for Rembrandt,” she says, tipping her forehead to the self-portrait the Dutch artist painted.
“It’s hard not to. He pretty much rocked the paintbrush.”
“He did amazing things with light.”
“And with dark,” I add, and we’re right back in it. Talking, chatting, bantering. We always had the gift of gab. That hasn’t gone away, even despite the missing years.
“Look at us. Like we’re a couple of art critics,” she says with a wry laugh, the nerves falling to the wayside the more we talk. I tell her I’m going to NYU, and she tells me she’s heading to Columbia to study art. Every word, every sentence is easy. It’s not like a slide back to the past. It’s more of a simple step into the comfort of the present.
Even when she says, “I’ve been following you.”
“You have?” I say, and now the familiar worry rears its head again. Maybe the banter was just a farce.
She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut so tight it’s like they’re sewn together. She opens them. “I wanted to reconnect. But I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. And then I saw you and that hot guy taping up letters near my house one day. I followed you more, and I started putting two and two together, especially after one showed up in the mail for my mom. And that’s when I started sending them back to you. Just to get your attention,” she says, biting her lip as she finishes her confession, the expression on her face telling me she’s not sure how I’ll react.
Honestly, I’m not sure how to react either. But that’s okay. I’m learning to live with not knowing. “Oh, it got my attention all right. Why didn’t you just call or e-mail if you wanted to reconnect?”
She shrugs, then whispers, her voice wobbly. “Probably because I still felt like crap that I never talked to you again after what happened with our parents.”
“Me too,” I say in a small voice.
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to handle any of it,” she says, and the honesty in her voice hits me hard, a reminder that so few of us know what we’re doing. That figuring out how to handle something so big at such a young age is a monumental task.
“Are yours still together?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Yours?” she asks, her tone laced with the slightest bit of anger toward her parents. An emotion I know too well.
I shake my head. “Divorced three years.”
She blinks once, twice, as if holding back her emotions, but she pushes on and gestures to a Vermeer on the wall, to the details on the folds of the woman’s blue skirt. “We should stay in touch. Especially if we’re both studying art. We can help each other, you know?”
I nod. “Definitely.” I don’t think we’re talking about art anymore.
“Do you want to get a coffee? Do you still drink the froufrou drinks?” she asks, her eyes lighting up. The sadness that was in them is erased.
I smile broadly. I can’t contain it. I want nothing more than to get a coffee with an old friend who’s now a new friend. “I am hard core all the way. I can drink anyone under the table in a caffeine consumption contest.”
“You’re on.”
We walk up the stairs, then down a long hallway. “My friend Amanda is waiting outside for me.”
“In case I turned out to be a psycho stalker?” she asks, arching an eyebrow playfully.
“Yep. But I suppose she wouldn’t have been terribly useful outside. And speaking of stalking—”
“—I’ll call or e-mail from here on out,” she says, with a laugh.
I laugh too. It’s so good to see her again.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Noah
Matthew and Jane try to pay the lunch bill, but I insist. I can already see the pity in their eyes; I don’t need them paying for lunch because they think I’m a sad sack.
“I got this,” I say, laying a few bills on the table at a Korean restaurant Jane likes. On the way out, she drops a hand on my arm.
“Are you doing okay?”
I flash a smile. It’s completely fake. “I’m all good. Don’t worry about me,” I say, drawing on my best phony confidence. But somehow it fools her.
The midday June sun blares at me as we reach Sixth Avenue. I grab my shades to block it out.
“Seriously, mate. You okay with everything?” Matthew asks, weighing in.
“I told you all, I’m fine,” I say, emphasizing the last word. I will be fine. Eventually. Maybe even someday soon. For now, the loneliness is like a cloak I can’t shed, even as I surround myself with work, and events, and scripts, and shows, and people. I have buried myself in the client hunt, Jewel’s exodus a reminder that you always have to keep swimming in this business. Fins up. “Besides, David Tremaine is coming by this afternoon to sign the agency papers. You lose some, and you win some,” I say, trying to look on the bright side. Jewel is gone, but I’ve landed another top-tier writer.
Matthew sighs heavily, then shoots me a rueful smile. “We weren’t really asking about work,” he says. “But I’m glad it’s keeping you busy.”
Jane gives me a hug, pulling me close. “Hey. I know you miss her like crazy. But there will be others. I promise. There always are.”
I scoff, even though it gives me away. “I’m sure,” I say, and after Jane takes off for an appointment, Matthew and I return to our building. Inside my office I do my best to drown in a sea of work. It’s barely been a week, but I’ve already given up hope that there will be a text, a picture, a message from her. This time it’s for good, and hell, I’m sure it’s for the best. She wasn’t ready, I was, and that’s that; that’s the great divide.