CHAPTER 25
LIYAH twiddles her thumbs as they wait for their appetizers, trying not to look at her phone. The snow on the ground was expected this time, and the roads are plowed to perfection. Well, not quite to perfection, but to usable standards. Jeff granted her request for two coat check attendants. She has no reason to expect that her night will end anywhere but her own warm bed, except that none of the other events have gone as planned.
“I need you to take a deep breath,” Daniel says.
“There’s nothing wrong with my breathing,” Liyah replies.
“Oh, is your chest moving rapidly because your heart is beating out of it? My bad.”
“Why are you looking at my chest, Rosenberg? Is it your first time seeing breasts in the wild?”
The waiter comes with their samosas then, looking like he’s ready to burst with laughter. It’s the last of the events in their proposal (meaning the last event before Jeff makes up his mind on her promotion) and they decided to make a night of it and grab dinner at a bougie London-style Indian joint whose reviews promise tastes straight out of Southall. Liyah shoves a bite of samosa in her mouth the moment the waiter leaves, hoping to avoid the rest of the conversation.
She sighs, closing her eyes, forgetting the reason she’d taken the bite in the first place. Liyah has never been to Southall, but if it tastes like this, she will happily lick every surface of the neighborhood.
When she opens her eyes, Daniel is studying her, that unreadable look he sometimes gets overtaking his face. He clears his throat. “I know you’re nervous, but it’s going to be great. If attendance straddles the gap in rates for membership purchases from the holiday party and sleep-in, we’ll surpass our original projections. The influx of revenue is already better than expected.”
Liyah leans over the table, placing her hand over Daniel’s. “Influx of revenue,” she purrs. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
He matches her posture, his lips right up against her ear. “Wait until you hear me say furcula.”
Liyah laughs and pulls away, warmth pooling in her abdomen.
After fifteen minutes of people watching at the Field (which goes about the same as the last wine night: Daniel reclining against a pillar and Liyah white-knuckling a plastic cup), Daniel convinces her to try participating instead of panicking on the sidelines.
They go from exhibition to exhibition, adding sloshes of wine and hunks of cheese to their already full bellies. It’s not long before they’re wine drunk and giddy, carefully reading the tasting notes as though they hadn’t written them together a few months prior, ad-libbing some new ones on the spot.
“It has a large bouquet. But mostly baby’s breath,” Liyah says of a sauvignon blanc.
Daniel swirls a Bordeaux under his nose. “Notes of … gasoline. And patchouli.”
Liyah knocks back a pinot grigio. “Honestly? Couldn’t taste a thing,” and they both erupt in laughter.
On their way to the L, Liyah checks the newsletter sign-up stats from her phone. There are 634 people from tonight alone, all of whom will receive a nudge about this year’s membership benefits from Siobhan come Monday. Nothing’s guaranteed, but she can’t help but feel some of Daniel’s infectious optimism. She shows the phone to him, and he wraps her up in a hug tight enough to lift her clear off the ground, spinning her around and nearly tripping over himself in the snow.
“Easy there, cowboy.”
“Sorry, got a little excited.” As he puts her down, Liyah raises her eyebrows. “Don’t say it,” Daniel says, shooting a glare that in milliseconds becomes a rosy-cheeked, crooked smile.
“You know,” Liyah says, kicking a chunk of packed snow. “Tonight would’ve been a really good date, if I did that kind of thing. Or, y’know, if anybody ever wanted to do that kind of thing with me.” She looks to her side, where Daniel has gone completely rigid. “No, no. Not like that.” Her arms are out-of-sync windshield wipers trying to take back her words. “I know this is a work thing. I’m not saying … I mean, it’s romantic, no? Dinner at a dimly lit restaurant, wine-tasting in a museum, sobering up enough on the ride home for fantastic sex. If you took a girl you liked out like this, she’d wake up the next morning completely smitten.”
She watches Daniel swallow, blink slowly. “Liyah—” he starts, voice syrupy thick.
Liyah puts her hand on Daniel’s shoulder, wanting to mollify but unsure how. He relaxes slightly under her touch, and her panic eases. “I’m sorry, I made it weird. I was trying to say what a nice time I’ve had tonight, and I had to go and say that someone could fall in love with you off this night alone. I need to learn how to give you a normal compliment.”
“You think?” Daniel says.
“Yeah, I know, I’ll work on it.”
“No, I mean you think someone would fall—would be smitten with me off this night alone?” He’s giving her that look again, the same one as when she was eating the samosa.
Liyah drops her hand. “I mean, if I was on a date with you and it went like it did tonight, I’d want you naked the second my apartment door closed.”
Daniel laughs now. “That could be arranged.”
Liyah laughs, too. Mostly in relief.
IT’S NOT QUITE the second her apartment door closes, but it’s not much longer than that. They wash up and climb into bed, bone-tired. Daniel finds himself reaching for her once more, the words fall in love with you off this night alone ringing in his ears as he slides into her. They drift off to sleep sweaty and completely spent, Daniel resolving to tell Liyah how he feels in the morning.
A few hours of sleep and a mostly demolished plate of scrambled eggs and veggie sausages later, Liyah is scrolling through her phone, legs draped across Daniel’s lap. He traces circles on her knee, convincing himself that he can’t put it off anymore. Liyah, I think I should tell you that I have feelings for you. Or maybe, In the interest of honesty, I want you to know that I like you as more than a fuck buddy. Even just, Hey, Liyah, I like you.
Liyah mutters an expletive under her breath.
“What happened?” Daniel asks, unable to mask his concern.
Liyah waves her hand. “Oh no, nothing bad. I forgot that my mom is visiting next weekend. I’m gonna text the group chat and let everyone know I can’t be at Survival Club on Friday.”
Daniel’s shoulders relax. “Ah, okay. You should invite her,” he jokes.
“Ha. Never. SSC must remain a parent-free zone at all costs. Otherwise, they’ll take the fact that none of us are well-adjusted adults as a personal affront.”
Daniel plucks one of her curls and watches it spring back into place. Liyah side-eyes him. “Speak for yourself. I’m very well-adjusted. Siobhan, too. Not sure about Jordan. What time does your mother go to sleep?”
“She’ll be back in her hotel by nine thirty, why?”
“Why don’t you come by after? It’s not like you’ve ever showed up on time before.”
Liyah groans. “We always do sleepovers in her hotel room when she visits—please don’t laugh at me, the tradition started when she sat down on my mattress in college and said it felt like cardboard and it just never stopped—and I don’t want to have to explain every detail of where I was.”
“What, you embarrassed of the club? On behalf of all of us, I’m wounded.”
She shakes her head. “Nah, it’s just that she’d ask who I was with, how I know them, etcetera. My mom can read me in an instant so there would be no hiding anything.”
“She’d poke around your sex life too much for your liking?”
Her face puckers in disgust. “Worse, she’d find out who you are and immediately pick out the glass for you to break at our wedding.”
The thud in his stomach is quick and painful, which is probably why the next words race out before he can think better of them: “And why is that so bad?”
Liyah pauses, eyes wide. “Why would I not want my mom marrying us off and trying to force us to pop out grandchildren? Let me check my notes.” Daniel’s frown doesn’t waver. “You’re being weird. Why are you being weird?”
“I’m not being weird. It just sounds like you’re embarrassed to be sleeping with me,” he mumbles. Nice save, dumbass.
“No, Daniel, nothing like that. You’re an absolute catch, and when you eventually fall in love, you’ll make someone an excellent husband. I just don’t want my overzealous mother to ruin our friendship.”
Fuck friendship, Liyah! I don’t want to be your friend. I want to wake up next to you every morning. Is that not the most obvious thing in the world? He bites his tongue and scowls. What a disaster, he thinks. And then, Maybe Kayla is right, I should’ve done this sooner. But what could he possibly say now?
Liyah’s hand finds his knee and squeezes. That look of worry he wishes he’d never had reason to become so familiar with is etched into her features. “Hey, I’m sorry. That came off super harsh, but I promise I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not always great at thinking before I speak, and I feel terrible that I offended you.”
Daniel forces a wry smile. “I thought you didn’t care about offending me?”
LIYAH HAS OFFICIALLY put her foot in it twice in under twelve hours. Possibly a personal record. “I care about it in this way. I really am sorry,” she says.
“We’re good, Liyah. I’m sorry for being weird. I’ve been stressed about work stuff,” he says, but something still seems off.
She nods. “Well, I’d invite you to go shopping with us to make up for it, but that would be a nightmare for absolutely everyone involved.”
“Right,” Daniel says.
Liyah furrows her brow, confused. Why can’t she smooth this over with humor? It’s almost as though he wants to go with her and Jackie and witness the ease with which they weave from affectionate to bickering and back again.
Maybe it’s that she’s met his family, and he hasn’t met hers. But that’s completely different; Minji and Kayla were here before they started sleeping together. And, technically, Liyah had already met Kayla.
“I feel like I’m making this worse, but I’m grasping at straws, here.”
“I told you, it’s work stuff.”
“Oh,” she says. “Is something wrong with the CTA account?”
“No, they liked the campaign.”
“Something I don’t know about the Field? Do the numbers look bad, and you’re afraid to tell me?” She feels her heart begin to race.
“No, Liyah. It’s not that. Different account.” Daniel’s eyes are pointed in her direction, but Liyah gets the sense that he’s looking straight through her.
“Okay, well. In case it was something I said, I’ll pick up a new mind-mouth filter at the store today.” The corner of his mouth only just turns upward. Liyah sighs. “Can we start the last ten minutes from the top?”
Daniel nods, his smile a little more certain. “Sure.”
“Okay,” she says, holding up three fingers. “Three, two, one: go!”