“You don’t have to apologize,” I said, nodding toward the note still in the wineglass. “I would have been annoyed, too.”
He stepped to the side and held the door open for me and I walked in. He closed the door quietly behind me. I turned to look at him and I must have seemed skittish.
“You want me to leave it open?” he said, concern wrinkling his brow.
“No,” I said with a small laugh.
“I’ll just pour the wine,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Where my apartment looked out on the back of the building, his looked out onto First Avenue. The street noise was not much diminished by the thin windows, and a cold draft made the sills freezing to the touch. He had the heat on high but the room was still uncomfortably cool. He had the same bleached wood floors as I did but that’s where the similarities ended. In my place, I strove for absolute luxury and comfort. Four-hundred-count cotton sheets, down pillows and comforters, plush area rugs, warm blankets. I liked bright colors, fresh flowers, scented candles. Not in a girlie way, but in a way that indulged the senses.
Jake’s place looked like a prison cell, albeit in an urban-industrial cool way. A sheet-metal sculpture, with jagged geometric shapes overlapping one another, dominated one wall. A glass-and-brushed-chrome table was surrounded by six elaborate wrought-iron chairs. A futon and a few scattered wooden Eames chairs provided an unwelcoming sitting area. In the corner a laptop glowed on a spare black table. There were no photographs, not one object of any personal nature, not even a scrap of paper out of place. I glanced over at the door that I imagined led to his bedroom and wondered if a peek inside would reveal a bed of nails beneath the glare of an interrogation lamp.
“It’s a bit spartan, I know,” he said, coming out with the wine.
“Just a bit,” I said.
“I find I don’t need that much,” he said.
He handed me a glass and raised his to mine. The tone that sounded when they touched together told me that they were crystal.
“To getting off to a better start,” he said.
We looked at each other for a moment and I felt that electricity again. It brought heat to my cheeks. There was a silence between us but it was comfortable. The lighting was low; a few pillar candles were burning and the overhead light was turned down to little more than a glow.
“So where did you move from?”
“Uptown,” he said. “I had a cheap place up by Columbia. But the neighborhood was getting so bad that I felt like I was living in a war zone. The gunfire was literally keeping me up at night.”
“So you moved to the safety of the East Village?”
“I like a little grit in my neighborhood. I’m not into posh,” he said, and that shy smile came back. My heart did a little rumba.
“What do you do?” I asked him, even though I hate the question.
“Do you want to sit down?” he said, leading me by the arm over to the futon. He sat beside me at a polite distance, but still close. I could smell just the lightest scent of his cologne. If I reached out my hand just an inch, I could touch his thigh.
“Was that a stall?” I asked, and he laughed. It was a nice laugh, deep and resonant.
“Maybe. It’s just that when I tell people what I do, it seems to dominate the conversation for a while. And it’s really not as cool as it sounds.”
“What are you…a cabaret dancer?”
“I’m a sculptor,” he said, pointing to the piece I’d noticed on the wall.
I took a sip of my wine. “That
“You make your living that way?”
“That and the furniture,” he said, nodding toward the table. “And a few other things here and there. It’s not easy to make a living off your art.”
I nodded. I understood that.
You know that feeling you get when you step into someone’s aura and you feel as though you’ve known that person all your life, as if their energy is as familiar to you as the sound your refrigerator makes? I didn’t have that feeling with Jake. Everything about him felt new and electric. He was utterly unfamiliar, a stranger who intrigued me like a mind-bender. With Zack every new moment was like a memory of a life I’d lived already—I could predict exactly what would happen between us and most of it was pretty nice. But I didn’t want my life to be like a riddle to which I already had the answer. Some people find that kind of predictability comforting. I don’t.
The conversation flowed easily as we chatted about my work, some about Zack, the usual getting-to-know- you stuff. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Now that I think back on it, it seems as if I told him a whole lot more than he told me. He kept pouring wine and I kept feeling warmer, more relaxed. We had somehow shifted closer to each other. He’d laid his arm across the back of the couch, and if he’d lowered it, it would have been resting on my shoulders. I could feel the heat of his skin, see the stubble on his jaw. Did I say sexy didn’t impress me? Well, maybe a little.
“So you had a pretty big week last week,” he said, pouring some more wine.
“Are we still on that first bottle?” I asked. He’d gotten up a couple times to refill my glass and I’d lost track of how much I’d had to drink.
“No,” he said. “Not by a long shot.” I could see that his skin was flushed. And there was a looseness to him that I found appealing. It made me realize that he had been nervous as well when I first arrived. And I liked that. It made him real. It meant he wasn’t arrogant.
“You heard about that?”
“Who didn’t? It was all over the papers.”
“Yeah…” I said. The mention of it brought me crashing back down to earth, remembering the picture, my parents. It must have been all over my face. I’m not so great at hiding my feelings.
“Hey,” he said, touching my shoulder. “What did I say?”
He leaned into me and I could see the concern on his face. I looked away from him because somehow his compassion made me want to cry.
“Ridley, I’m sorry,” he said, putting his wineglass down. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
But it was too late. He’d opened the floodgates and the whole story came rushing out in a tumble, everything from leaving my apartment that Monday morning to seeing my parents earlier tonight. I hadn’t told anyone except my parents about the picture. He was perfectly present, listening, making all the right affirming noises. He was totally focused on me.
“Wow,” he said when I was done.
“I bet you’re sorry you asked,” I answered with a little laugh.
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
He touched my hair lightly, pushing it away from my eyes. It was a gentle gesture, intimate. He held my gaze.
“So you believe your parents. You’ll just leave it at that?”
“What’s not to believe?” I answered weakly, not really convinced myself. “The whole thing is ridiculous. I know who I am.”
He nodded, looking at me with those eyes, seeing something in me that I was distantly aware of but neglecting.
“Still,” he said after a moment. “You’re not even curious enough to call?”
It’s funny when you meet someone who you think is so different from you and then they manage to connect you to a part of yourself you ignore. The curiosity was a flame inside me, one that had flickered in my parents’ assurances but which burned still. Jake breathed butane on it.
“I don’t think so,” I said, standing up.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rising with me. “I didn’t mean to scare you off.”
I smiled. “I don’t scare that easily.”
He nodded, looked uncertain. I was glad he didn’t try to convince me not to leave because it would have been
