bitter.
After paying, I walked over to the window and sat down at the six-foot long marble topped bar surrounded by high wooden stools.
Usually Dean & Deluca was crowed, but that afternoon there was only one other person there: a young woman wearing a paint- stained shirt who was sipping a tall iced tea and eating a brownie in tiny, tiny bites as if she was trying to make it last forever.
Taking the top off my paper cup of coffee, the steam escaped, and I took the first sip, inhaling the dark, aromatic scent.
The woman smiled at me. There were rings of paint around her cuticles and more splattered on her hands. I liked seeing her there. SoHo had become so gentrified that artists were now greatly outnumbered by business people and tourists.
Cole – my anger with him, my disappointment with him, my embarrassment that I had been fooled by him – was like a splinter. I felt him there.
For years, too many times, I’d taken the needle and tried to fish out the remaining sliver of him that seemed lodged forever under my skin but I hadn’t been able to exfoliate him. I had to figure out a way to clean him out of my system. Finally.
“You were pretty damn rude the other day to walk out on me, after I did everything but kiss your hand to make it better.”
Once again, I didn’t see his face first, but his hands as he put a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a cup of espresso on the table beside me.
Then, pulling out the stool, he sat down.
I didn’t want to be interrupted. Didn’t want anyone to intrude on my self-pitying anger at my stepbrother. Didn’t want to be polite to a potential client and didn’t know how to extricate myself from a stranger who had made me feel undressed in my own office.
“Why did you do that? Is that how you treat all your potential clients?”
That he had used the exact same phrase I’d been thinking startled me. Logically, “potential client” wasn’t that unusual a term for it to be odd we’d both used it, but I still felt as if he knew more about me than I wanted him to or understood how he could.
Meanwhile, he was looking at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. I fumbled for a reason, something that wouldn’t be personal but that would satisfy him and prevent him from asking me any more questions.
“I didn’t walk out on you.”
“What would you call it?” He’d swung form sarcastic kindly banter to a moment of sincere anger. Looking at it from his point of view, it was not undeserved. I had left him sitting there.
He took a gulp of his coffee and then waited for me to say something. I didn’t. Not right away.
Gideon was wearing blue jeans again. And a sweater with thin ribbons of blue, indigo, green, and white stripes. His hair had the same tousled look it had before, and when he reached up and brushed his hand through it I knew why. His habit of running his fingers through the dark curls and pushing the forelock off his forehead gave him a perpetually breezy look. That, with the slightly insolent slant of his cheekbones and the sparkling but hard to read eyes - unusual eyes that were like fine Italian marble, verdant green with threads of black swirling through them - engaged my curiosity. Despite myself.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” I said sincerely.
“What happened then?”
I knew I probably owed him an explanation but what could I say that would make sense?
Always try for some version of the truth, my dad had taught me. He’s an ethics professor at a New England college but none of his theoretical arguments were behind the advice. I am simply a lousy liar, he says. My face always gives me away.
“I never heard anyone read one of my letters out loud before. It was like standing there and being undressed by a total stranger.”
He didn’t respond to that except to push his plate of cookies closer toward me. “Have one,” he said, implying how good they were. How did he do that? I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone who conveyed so much in so
After paying, I walked over to the window and sat down at the six-foot long marble topped bar surrounded by high wooden stools.
Usually Dean & Deluca was crowed, but that afternoon there was only one other person there: a young woman wearing a paint- stained shirt who was sipping a tall iced tea and eating a brownie in tiny, tiny bites as if she was trying to make it last forever.
Taking the top off my paper cup of coffee, the steam escaped, and I took the first sip, inhaling the dark, aromatic scent.
The woman smiled at me. There were rings of paint around her cuticles and more splattered on her hands. I liked seeing her there. SoHo had become so gentrified that artists were now greatly outnumbered by business people and tourists.
Cole – my anger with him, my disappointment with him, my embarrassment that I had been fooled by him – was like a splinter. I felt him there.
For years, too many times, I’d taken the needle and tried to fish out the remaining sliver of him that seemed lodged forever under my skin but I hadn’t been able to exfoliate him. I had to figure out a way to clean him out of my system. Finally.
“You were pretty damn rude the other day to walk out on me, after I did everything but kiss your hand to make it better.”
Once again, I didn’t see his face first, but his hands as he put a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a cup of espresso on the table beside me.
Then, pulling out the stool, he sat down.
I didn’t want to be interrupted. Didn’t want anyone to intrude on my self-pitying anger at my stepbrother. Didn’t want to be polite to a potential client and didn’t know how to extricate myself from a stranger who had made me feel undressed in my own office.
“Why did you do that? Is that how you treat all your potential clients?”
That he had used the exact same phrase I’d been thinking startled me. Logically, “potential client” wasn’t that unusual a term for it to be odd we’d both used it, but I still felt as if he knew more about me than I wanted him to or understood how he could.
Meanwhile, he was looking at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. I fumbled for a reason, something that wouldn’t be personal but that would satisfy him and prevent him from asking me any more questions.
“I didn’t walk out on you.”
“What would you call it?” He’d swung form sarcastic kindly banter to a moment of sincere anger. Looking at it from his point of view, it was not undeserved. I had left him sitting there.
He took a gulp of his coffee and then waited for me to say something. I didn’t. Not right away.
Gideon was wearing blue jeans again. And a sweater with thin ribbons of blue, indigo, green, and white stripes. His hair had the same tousled look it had before, and when he reached up and brushed his hand through it I knew why. His habit of running his fingers through the dark curls and pushing the forelock off his forehead gave him a perpetually breezy look. That, with the slightly insolent slant of his cheekbones and the sparkling but hard to read eyes - unusual eyes that were like fine Italian marble, verdant green with threads of black swirling through them - engaged my curiosity. Despite myself.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” I said sincerely.
“What happened then?”
I knew I probably owed him an explanation but what could I say that would make sense?
Always try for some version of the truth, my dad had taught me. He’s an ethics professor at a New England college but none of his theoretical arguments were behind the advice. I am simply a lousy liar, he says. My face always gives me away.
“I never heard anyone read one of my letters out loud before. It was like standing there and being undressed by a total stranger.”
He didn’t respond to that except to push his plate of cookies closer toward me. “Have one,” he said, implying how good they were. How did he do that? I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone who conveyed so much in so
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