She smiles and her cheeks go a bit pink. “Sorry. Old habits.”
I give her a sympathetic nod. Poor Steph. When she was young she had a younger brother with some autoimmune disease. She rarely talks about it, in fact it kind of surprises me that she hinted at it right now, but what I know is that he was the shining star of her family, a boy genius, but only got sicker over the years. He died from pneumonia when she was eighteen and he was fourteen. I guess she’d spent a lot of time taking care of him.
I let go of her hand, aware that I have been holding it longer than I should. “Sit down, that’s an order.”
“You know, maybe your mail order nurse is my birthday present to you.”
I cock a brow. “Then where’s the uniform?”
She sighs but relents, sitting down at the end of the couch by my feet. A strand of bronze hair falls across her cheekbone and I watch it for a few moments, wondering if she’ll brush it away. I don’t like how it obscures her face but she does that a lot, hiding behind her hair sometimes. Her face is so expressive, it makes her easy to read.
“What do you want to do?” I ask her, placing my calves and feet across her lap.
She stares down at them in mock disdain. “I’m not rubbing your feet if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything. What do you want to watch? TV? I’ve got Simpsons on DVD, all seasons, American Horror Story, some weird shit staring Clive Owen.”
Steph turns her head to look at me and gives me a curious glance. It’s only then that I realize that she knows exactly what I have – she’s been to my flat a million times before and we’ve had many DVD marathon sessions. It’s just James isn’t here now and I guess I’m babbling on like a fool.
I immediately reach for the tea in an attempt to busy myself. If the bottle of Nyquil was out here, I’d probably do another shot.
“Let’s see what’s on TV,” she says, picking up the remote and going through the channels. I stare at her hands, small and soft, her dark green iridescent nail polish applied with such precision. She’s such a chameleon with her hair, I wonder if she’s ever had it that color. Who knows what colors it was before I met her. Even though I’ve known her for years, there so much I don’t know yet about her and so much that I want to discover.
After a few moments I ask, “So have you found a building yet?”
She tears her eyes off a flashy infomercial. “Building?”
“For your store.”
She blinks a few times. “Oh. No.”
“Steph…” I begin.
“What?”
“Let me help you.”
Her brow furrows delicately. “Help me?”
I sigh and sit up. “Yes, help you. What’s holding you back from this? Time, money? I can help you with both of those.”
She lets out a small, acidic laugh. “No, you can’t. And even if you could, it’s not the problem.”
“Then what is the problem?”
She looks back at the TV, turning the remote over and over in her hands. “I don’t know. But I know I’m supposed to figure it out on my own.” She rubs her lips together and finally pushes that strand of hair behind her ears. “Why is it out of everyone I know, you’re the only one who asks me about this?”
I cock my head. “Am I?”
She nods. “Yeah. My parents still think it’s some wild dream, everyone else just nods politely when I tell them I want to open my own business. But you’re the only who keeps asking about it, keeps pushing me to do it.”
“Well I guess we all need that person in our life, to remind us what we can do,” I tell her honestly. “I think you’re better than managing some clothing store that sells outfits that only some androgynous character on SNL would wear. You should have your own store. You care about clothes, you’re great with people, even with the ones you hate. You have great style, taste…” I pause. “I think it would make you happy. You deserve to be happy.”
She swallows and stares at me for a long beat. I hope my eyes are conveying everything that I just said, because I believe it. Stephanie is ambitious, strong and smart – she can go far. She just needs the right push and for someone to push her.
I want to be that someone.
It’s kind of amazing though that I’m the only one she has for that. It’s part flattering, part aggravating. What about James? When they were together, didn’t he encourage her to go for her dreams? After all, he ended up a small business owner himself. What about her other boyfriends, or friends? Didn’t they care, didn’t they see her potential?
She turns her attention back to the television without saying anything else. After a few minutes she settles on the Disney movie Up. It’s clear that she hasn’t seen it before, so I don’t tell her that I have and that it’s not exactly light-hearted fun.
It’s not long before the terribly tragic montage scene at the start of film is pulling at my heart strings and making me ache for the characters. Look, I can be a macho man and all, but that poor, old cartoon man always does a number on me. I’m surprised though to hear a sniff and look over at Steph to see tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh my god, you’re crying,” I point out. I know it’s kind of an obnoxious thing to say, but I’ve only seen her cry once and that was right after she and James broke up and she was drowning in guilt.
She turns her face away from me and frantically starts wiping away the tears with the heel of her palm. “I’m not.”
“You so are.” I can’t help but grin. “You are so fucking cute,” I exclaim and reach over, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her down on top of me.
“Stop it,” she says, half laughing, half crying as she props herself up on my chest. I find myself wiping away the remaining tears, both my thumbs gliding softly across her cheeks. “That was sad,” she mumbles, afraid to meet my eyes. She’s both embarrassed and shy, around me of all people.
I don’t say anything to that. I only stare at her. She looks so damn vulnerable, it’s doing something to my chest now, not just my dick.
“Well it was,” she goes on, frowning slightly as if she’s not quite sure why I’m still staring at her. “The little old man lost his wife and now he has nothing.”
“Aye,” I say but it barely comes out more than a whisper. I’m not thinking about the movie at all.
Her eyes are so blue and wide, like the morning sky, her mouth so perfectly full. I contemplate running my thumb over her lips before I kiss the salt off of them.
I should just do it. I should just fucking do it.
I swallow hard, my throat feeling closed up but I know it’s not from my cold. It’s from want and it’s from fear.
“What are you staring at?” she asks me and her voice warbles slightly.
Just fucking kiss her.
“I’m seeing double,” I whisper. It destroys the spell.
She almost looks relieved. “Oh,” she says. “You’re high as a kite.”
I give her a disappointed smile. “Nyquil.”
She straightens up and gets off of me, settling back on the end of the couch. “Well, if you pass out, I’ll leave you be.”
I’d rather you didn’t, but I don’t voice that to her. I lean back into the pillows as the movie plays on at a happier note. Soon she’s giggling and it’s doing more things to my heart. I wish I had more drugs to bury these feelings but it’s not long before I find myself dozing off anyway.
Two more years.
But a lot can change in two years.
CHAPTER FOUR
29
STEPHANIE
I did it. I finally did it.
Fog & Cloth is finally alive.
It’s literally taken me a week to come to terms with the fact that the doors have been opened, people have come in, and they have bought stuff, fucking bought stuff. From me!
I actually fucking did it. I own and operate my own god damn clothing store.
And it was done just in time.
At least,
that’s what it felt like. I somehow timed the opening to coincide with my twenty-ninth birthday, albeit a week before it. For the last year it’s like I had a fire up under my ass and I was finally putting things in motion. If it hadn’t been for Linden’s badgering, I don’t know if it would have happened or not.
I think part of the push was the fact that he kept offering money to help me out with the business. Money wasn’t the entire problem. I had saved a lot over the years and my father had given me a large chunk when I finished high school, thinking I would go onto an expensive college degree. Instead I went to art school for only a year and put the rest away.
But Linden’s offers were extremely sincere and heartfelt. At times it was like he was the only one who reminded me to chase my dreams, I guess because he chased his dreams so hard. It was nice to have someone you wanted to make proud. My family had different dreams for me, the ones that they had wanted for my brother. They seem to forget sometimes that those were his dreams and his dreams alone, and they died with him.
A clothing store was never part of that agenda. But it’s what I wanted, even if they didn’t. And ever since Linden started harping on me about it, I decided to go at it full-on, tits out, and all that jazz. I wanted to show him that I could do it, without his money but with his support.
I wanted to show my parents that I was still alive, still here, and doing something worthwhile.
And I did. It was hard. I worked full-time at All Saints as I usually did and my evenings were filled with research and planning and saving. I rarely went out. I became an anti-social hermit most nights and when I wasn’t, I was schmoozing with people in the industry – buyers, designers, merchandisers, fabricators, models. I was filling every spare minute of my life with things and people that could be of service in the end.
Somehow though, the days of hard work turned into weeks of hard work turned into months of hard work.
And then it was here.
I had never been so afraid as I was on opening day. Afraid that no one would show up, that no one would care. That the clothes on the racks wouldn’t move, that my cash register would stay closed, that the finger foods and champagne I had put out wouldn’t even attract random people walking past.
I felt like all that work, all those dreams, were resting on that single day. Of course, it’s more than that. The day went fine – people showed up, they drank my cups of champagne and cheap appetizers. Clothes were bought. My window displays were admired. I was congratulated. It wasn’t the opening day of my dreams but it was the opening day of the start of my dreams.
That was something.
Linden and James had come of course. Linden brought his girlfriend.
Yeah. Girlfriend.
Nadine Collingwood.
I still don’t really believe it, despite meeting her already. She’s lovely, which surprised me, and seemingly normal. The line-up of ladies Linden has had over the years all seemed to be the same – tall, achingly thin with long, lean limbs, shampoo-commercial worthy blonde hair, fake smiles full of veneers. The opposite of me, really.
And Nadine is nothing like that either. She’s average height and while she’s thin, she’s also athletic, with straight red hair and a smattering of freckles on her milk-colored skin. She dresses in jeans and flannel shirts, nothing very fun but it suits her tomboy style.
She looks Scottish when you think about it. Maybe Linden misses his home country. He’d only moved over to the states in high school when his father got a job at the United Nations in New York.
He seems happy though. I’m happy for him. Really, I swear I am. And she’s nice too, which means she’s going to treat him well. I guess now that we’re getting older he’s starting to see the appeal of settling down, you know, with someone who isn’t me.
Maybe that pact of ours won’t be needed after all. Maybe it’ll just be me, single at the finish line while Linden and Nadine go on to have an extravagant wedding and mini Gerard Butlers.
A knock at the store window brings me out of the disgustingly sweet wedding taking place in my head. I look over and see James waving at me from the other side. He holds up a large tote bag full of stuff and smiles sheepishly.
I walk over to the door, curious. I was supposed to go home an hour ago and get ready for the night – James supposedly had something planned at The Burgundy Lion – but time had slipped through my fingers. It was doing that a lot lately. Sometimes I never even left the store until ten o’clock at night.
I unlock the door and am met with a cool breeze off of Sutter. The fog is starting to roll in and the tops of the buildings across the street are disappearing in its wash.
James smiles brightly as he peers down at me. “I thought you’d still be here.”
I’m a bit surprised still to see him but I open the door wider and gesture him to come inside. “I know, I’m sorry. One day I’ll get the hang of closing. Or I’ll just get successful enough to hire employees to do it for me.”
He comes inside. He smells like rain and his shoulder-length black hair is wet, sticking to his neck and the collar of his denim jacket.
“Raining up top?” I ask. He lives in the Haight, near Golden Gate Park, where the weather is always a bit different than down below.
He nods and strides across the room with his long legs before he sets the bag down on the counter, right on top of all my paperwork.
“So what’s all of this?” I ask him, folding my arms.
He reaches into the bag and pulls out a bottle of red wine, the expensive French kind with all the fake dust on it, a plaid blanket and a few small plastic take-out boxes. “This is your birthday.”
I frown. “I don’t understand.”
“Linden is with Nadine. They aren’t coming,” he says and then eyes me carefully.
“What?” I say, feeling a stab of hurt in my gut.
He raises his brow at my reaction. “She might have appendicitis. They’re at an urgent care clinic getting it checked out.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling the hurt turn to guilt. “God, that sucks. Is she okay?”
He shrugs. “Probably not but I’m sure if it’s a problem, they’ll just take it out. So it’s just you and me. I thought this might be a lot more fun than being at the Lion.”
I eye what seems to be the workings of a romantic picnic. Never in our dating had James ever done something as nice as this for me. I have to wonder what’s going on now to change all of this.
Also I’m not really sure if being alone with him is more fun that being at the Lion.
“Don’t look so suspicious,” he admonishes and looks away, troubled. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? I can do something nice for you.”
Ah, yes. Now this seems more like the James I know. Moody and easily bruised.
“Of course you can,” I tell him. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I don’t remember the last time the two of us did something, just you and me.”
“I know. That’s why I thought it would be cool.” He takes the blanket out and lays it on the floor beneath the counter, right between a display rack of jewelry I had spent months foraging for and a tray of impulse buy items, like Band-Aids with mustaches on them and leopard print hair scrunchies that are somehow having a moment again.
He sets out the wine and brings out two glasses and opens the lids to the boxes. He points at the blanket. “You can sit, you know.”
I do so and eye the spread. One box has chocolate-covered strawberries, the other has a bunch of cheese and compote. Bacon-wrapped scallops are in another. All my favorites.
“Wow,” I say. “I’m impressed.”
“It’s the last year of your twenties. You should go out with a bang.”
I give him a quick smile, not used to him being so thoughtful. Obviously James and I have had a very different relationship since we broke up. “Well, thanks.”
“No problem. That’s what friends are for right? Here, let me,” he says and pours me a glass of wine, then places a small fork in m
y hand and nudges the box of scallops toward me.
“Did you make this?” I ask, staring down at the elegant arrangement.
He shakes his head, looking sheepish instead. “No, I picked it up from Whole Foods.”
I have to say I’m kind of relieved. I’m sure James is a good cook and all, but the idea of him cooking something specifically for me, even as just a friend, doesn’t really seem right in the little mould we’re in.
I have one of the scallops and delight in the balsamic glaze. “It’s tasty.”
He beams. “Good.”
I sip the wine and tell him it’s good too. Is it just me or is it getting a little awkward in here? No matter. There’s nothing wrong with two friends just celebrating a birthday together. That’s all this is, even if it is a bit weird.
And soon it gets easier. Maybe it’s the glasses of wine or just talking to James about business qualms, but it starts to feel like old times. After we finish the scallops and move onto the cheese, the subject switches from music to something a little more personal.
“You weren’t really serious about that pact you’d made with Linden, were you?” he asks in an off-hand way. But when I look at him, his jaw is set in a determined line.
“Serious? No. Not really.” Not more than I would admit to him, anyway.
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Oh, you know. I just didn’t want to see you get hurt, you know, in case you actually put some stock into it.”
“Why would I get hurt?”
He shrugs. “Linden is a player, you know that. He likes you Steph, but as a friend. I wouldn’t want you to start, I don’t know, thinking of him in some other way and ruin what you guys have, just because he likes to flirt and pretend all the time. He was never serious about that pact, you know that. Nadine, though, he’s serious about her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are married even before thirty hits.”
I feel like all the air has been pulled out of me. I rub my lips together and catch my breath, shocked at how this all makes me feel. “That would be moving pretty fast for Linden. They’ve only been together about a month.”