17
“Do you have an easy way home from here?” Wyatt asks once dinner is over and we’re back out on the curb, loaded up with more than our fair share of leftovers (including the remaining grape juice).
I make a face. “I mean…sort of. I can take the G to the 7 to the N.” Wyatt raises his eyebrows at me. “On second thought, I might call an Uber.”
Although now that I’ve said it, this tiny voice in the back of my brain keeps wondering if this was Wyatt’s way of offering to escort me home. Only that can’t be right. Because that would be, in his universe, inappropriate. People only take other people home when they wanna…you know…take them home.
For somebody who’s only drunk off grape juice, I sure am getting ahead of myself.
Wyatt shifts his load of Tupperware in his arms. “How much of this do you want?” he asks. “I’m happy to split it fifty-fifty. Or I can take it all, but…”
“But you’d devour all five boxes in one sitting. Yeah, I bet.” From the sheer volume of brisket Wyatt consumed at dinner, it seems like he is a bottomless pit. “I have no idea where you put it.”
“Excuse you,” he says. “I am very bulky and manly.”
“You’re like a culinary Mount Doom. Or the ghost character in Spirited Away who eats the entire bathhouse worth of baked goods. It violates the laws of thermodynamics.”
“His name is No-Face, and the laws of thermodynamics are overrated. Besides, that’s why I became an artist, not a physicist.”
“The laws of physics don’t apply to artists?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? That’s the point!” He winks at me—freaking winks—and I dig out my phone so I can stare at the Uber app while I call a car instead of letting him see the way my cheeks go pink.
I’m still hyperconscious of him standing next to me. I wish I could shut off the part of my brain that seems to be custom tuned to the presence of Wyatt Cole.
This is one of those moments where you’d usually start waiting for one of you to offer to take the other person home. And then you’d have the whole scene lingering on the sidewalk outside until do you want to come in and the inevitable cascade of touches that follows.
I could spark that flame, if I wanted. Or I could at least try. I could reach out and drag my fingertips along the line of his hipbone and tell him it was too late to go back to Queens. That he’d better take me to his place instead.
“Hey,” Wyatt says, and I look up, maybe a little too abruptly. Some weird, paranoid part of my brain immediately worries he can somehow psychically tell that I was obsessing over the smell of his laundry detergent.
He’s standing so close, near enough that I could draw constellations in the scattering of faint freckles across the bridge of his nose. His gaze is dark and soft where it meets mine. The way he’s looking at me feels like someone squeezing both hands on my shoulders, massaging out the tension.
“You did really good in there,” he says. “I know it wasn’t easy.”
Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t a compliment. “Oh. Thank you. I thought…well. I felt like I was a little awkward.” Then I laugh, which is definitely awkward.
“Not at all. And you were the perfect candid photographer. You kept everything discreet—you let the photographs become part of the background noise. You were part of the night, not an intrusion. That’s the kind of skill that takes years to perfect.” One corner of his mouth quirks up. “But I have a feeling you have always been good at that. You make it very easy for people to be around you.”
No one has ever told me anything like that before. Or at least not in that tone of voice, low and wrapped in the warmth of sincerity.
“I’m good at blending into the background,” I say, a bit dryly, but he immediately shakes his head.
“That’s not what I meant. You could never blend in.”
I can’t rip my gaze away from his. I feel like his eyes are searing into my skin, tearing past all the onion-paper layers I’ve constructed between the outside world and my soft and vulnerable underbelly.
“You’re blushing,” he murmurs, and god, that only makes it worse. I stand still, so still, hardly dare to breathe as he lifts one hand and grazes the crest of my burning cheek with the backs of his fingers.
He draws closer, the pair of us listing in toward one another as if we’re caught in some sordid magnetism. The humid New York City summer has nothing on what simmers in that negative space between us. Or the heat that’s bloomed between my thighs.
In that split second, my heart hammering in my chest and his lips parting, slightly damp from the outward flicker of his tongue, I almost think—
But then he pulls his hand away and roughly drags it through his hair, his gaze dropping to the asphalt. “Sorry. Um. I shouldn’t— Anyway. I’ll let you…Your car is probably almost here, right?”
“Right,” I say, before I’ve even glanced back at my phone. Suddenly the only thing I want in the entire universe is to become Kitty Pryde from the X-Men and develop the mutant ability to sink down into the ground and out of sight.
Wyatt gives this brittle laugh, still not quite looking at me, and says, “Right. Okay. I’ll…I’m just taking the subway, so…I’ll see you back on campus. Bye then.”
Of course, once he’s gone—once I’m sitting in the dark back seat of the Uber driver’s Toyota Corolla and trying not to get sick as we lurch from light to light—all I can think about is how stupid it was for me to let him go.
Because in that moment, I think…if I’d been brave enough…if I’d kissed him, he wouldn’t have stopped me.
Stop thinking like that, I snap at myself. He’s trying so fucking hard to be respectful, and I need to try at least half as hard to respect him back. Especially in a professional environment. Which this was. He came with me to Shabbos as my mentor because I was psychologically incapable of going alone. The last thing I owe him, after all that, is bulldozing his very fucking clearly communicated boundaries.
But telling myself that doesn’t do much to stem the tide of anxiety that wells up in my gut alongside the carsickness-related acid reflux.
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone tonight in the first place. Maybe all of this was a mistake. I got good photos, I think—editing will reveal all—but was it worth it? Michal and her friends are perfectly nice people. Generous. Hospitable. That’s not the problem.
The problem, as usual, is me. Because I’m pathologically incapable of not overthinking things, and it fucks me over every time.
Right now, less than ten miles away in Crown Heights, my family might still be having their own Shabbos dinner. My father singing, pounding the table with his fist in an imaginary rhythm, several wines in. My brother Gedaliah is boring everyone to tears asking for another retelling of the story about Yaakov and Esau. Gedaliah’s twin, Sholom Ber, will have figured out a way to sneak undiluted Bartenura while no one is watching—although our oldest sister, Malka, got wise to that around the time I left. My mother will have put the youngest children to bed—only, god, Levi Yitzchok must be ten now, old enough to stay up. Did my parents have more kids since I left? Do I have siblings I’ve never even met?
I wonder if my sisters are there or if they’re having their own dinners at their own houses with new families.
Dvora must be married now. She must have at least two kids—it’s been long enough. Possibly more.
I suck in a shaky breath, and shit, I’m about to cry in this cab. Which is worse than crying on the subway, because at least on the subway no one gives a shit about you. I can’t cry in front of Sergey the Uber driver.
I fumble with my phone, flipping to the Messenger app, and text Wyatt.
Me: Let me know when you get home safe okay?
The ellipsis shows up almost immediately. I stare at the screen waiting for his reply to appear, like a freak. Luckily it doesn’t take long.
Wyatt: Almost back. What about you?
Me: Ten more minutes. Or at least it better be. I’m getting carsick.
He sends the wastebasket emoji as a response. At least I can count on Wyatt to make me smile, even when I feel like trash.
There’s music playing when I make it back to the apartment. I can hear it from the landing below our floor, which means either my roommates are hosting a party I wasn’t invited to or Diego is having another emo breakdown. (The last breakdown was because he rewatched Sailor Moon R and was driven to the edge by the tragedy of Tuxedo Mask’s star-crossed love with that alien who was being mind controlled by an evil flower.)
But when I open the front door, it’s not to a rager or to Diego crying on the sofa.
Ophelia and Diego are both standing on the furniture, Ophelia with a bottle of champagne in hand and Diego’s glass sloshing over and spilling wine all over the rug as they screech out the lyrics to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
“That’s why they call me Mr. Fahren-hay-yaaaa— Ely, you’re home!” Ophelia jumps off the sofa and hurtles toward me like an incoming missile. She collides with me hard enough that I rock back on my heels, both arms lifting to wrap around her reflexively.
“Wow, I feel special,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“Ophelia has good news,” Diego says with an eyebrow waggle.
“Really good news,” Ophelia says, and she finally breaks the hug to look me in the eye. She’s smiling so wide it looks like her face might crack in half. I haven’t seen her like this in…well, ever. Her happiness is like a lantern illuminating her from the inside out. She looks even more beautiful than before.
“Okay,” I say, “well, don’t keep me in suspense—”
“They liked it!” Ophelia exclaims, answered by a whoop from Diego. “The gin people! They liked it! They actually liked my shitty sample pictures!”
Her joy is contagious. I find myself grinning just as wide as she is, and before I can stop myself I’ve flung my arms around her again, squeezing tight. “That’s the best news,” I tell her. “I’m so freaking happy for you. Oh my god!”
“Thank you,” she says, her fingers digging into my shoulders briefly before we separate again. “I seriously didn’t think it was going to happen. I thought they’d take one look and be like, Ugh, this shit, but they really— I’m going to be in stores. People are gonna have my art in their houses!”
“You deserve it,” I say. “More than anyone. You’ve earned this.”
She laughs and wipes the heel of one hand over her cheek—there’s glittery eye shadow streaked down her face, presumably from crying. “Thanks. I can’t believe it. I keep waiting for them to email and take it back.”
“Absolutely not. They would never. They know what a good thing they’ve got.”
Diego bounces on the sofa again, waving the champagne bottle in the air. “Okay, you two, stop crying and come celebrate! This is a party, dammit!”
“Did you just tell us to stop crying?” Ophelia says, but she goes and I trail after her, dumping my camera bag on one of the armchairs.
Diego scrounges up an empty water glass and dumps a solid eight ounces of champagne in there, then shoves it into my hand. “Bottoms up,” he says. “We’re toasting the next Banksy here!”
Ophelia’s gaze catches mine before I can even start thinking of a response. I can see the worry in her eyes—like she thinks I’d throw my sobriety away on a whim.
The thing is…The thing is, I’ve been clean for four years. That’s a long time. That’s two black chips in a row. And the goal isn’t always abstinence; sometimes the goal is to approach normalcy. It’s moderation.
Maybe it’s been long enough. Maybe I should let myself breathe a little.
One sip won’t hurt me.
I hesitate, my palm gone damp against the glass. But Ophelia has already looked away, practically wriggling out of her skin with excitement, and Diego’s eyes are big and glassy with pride, and I’m not gonna be that person. I’m not gonna be an asshole.
I’m gonna be normal.
So I drink.