Chapter 20

chapter 20

I return to the main bar,flitting through the crowd, excitement unraveling down my spine. I shrug off my coat and then extract my arms from the lumpy sweatshirt, throw it over my head as my skin prickles to gooseflesh. Everything off except the black silk camisole.

I swing my eyes left, then right, enjoying the smearing in my vision. Now, I tell myself, I’m fascinated by everyone.

Next to a girl with glasses pulling on a vape, I see him. He smiles easily.

I make my way over, smiling stupidly at the ground, tilting my head up at the very last minute.

“Graduated, applied to design school, grew my hair long, moved to New York, met up with you,” I tell him as a greeting. I’m giddy with relief that he’s not in costume. “That’s what I’ve been up to in the last ten years.”

Patrick smiles wide and opens his arms for a hug. I sense an unlatching in my chest as I fall into them. It feels like fate that he picked up immediately when I called.

“It’s good to see you.” I sigh into his cashmere-clad sternum, my disguise of someone carefree and confident slipping ever so slightly.

“You too,” he says from above. He holds me longer than I’d expected him to. I leech everything I can out of the hug. Bleed it.

I pull away and look up. His cheekbones are positively architectural. His teeth, impossibly white. His sweater is a heathered gray that brings out his creamy skin. “Hi,” I say, attempting to be a normal, appropriate adult person. “So, we live in New York.”

“We sure do,” he says, taking me in. Then he laughs, looking around. “And of all the places in New York, we’ve chosen to be here. On literal Halloween.”

“It’s the worst.” I smile back at him. “I love it.”

His eyes alight from mine, and I wonder for a split second if he sees someone he knows. But instead of turning away, he touches my shoulder gently to let the person pass. “Do you want a drink?”

We’re standing right in front of the bar. “Vodka soda,” I whisper into his neck. His wallet is slender and expensive.

When he hands me a glass, I take a sip and notice it isn’t the kerosene I’ve been drinking. We toast each other.

Then he grabs my hand with his free one and guides me to a quieter part of the bar. My palm throbs when he lets go.

He rummages in his pocket and pulls out a single-dose pack of antacid and offers it to me. “Pepcid gang,” he says. A beat. “Don’t you get redface when you drink?”

I shake my head.

“Outlier,” he says, downing it.

“Is that a thing?”

“Yeah,” he says. “A lot of East Asians can’t break down the toxins in alcohol. It’s us and Ashkenazi Jews that won that particular genetic lottery.”

I’m embarrassed what I don’t know about us.

“It’s good to see you, Jayne,” he says, and my cheeks flush for altogether different reasons. I love hearing Patrick say my name. And that he knows how it’s spelled. And that every time he speaks, he leans in close to be heard. “I honestly wasn’t sure you were going to text back. I’m fucking horrible at texting.”

He shakes his head.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Almost a year,” he says. “But I’ve been visiting since forever.”

“Two and a half for me.”

“Right, you’re at school.”

“And you went to Yale,” I tell him, sidestepping the inevitable question of where I go. “I can’t believe I didn’t hear it from the church ladies.”

“I don’t think art school counts,” he says, chuckling.

I smile into my drink. He’s right.

“Where do you go?”

“Not Yale.” I say it in a disgustingly goofy way. “June went to Columbia, though. Full ride.”

“It’s so nice that you’re both here.”

“Yeah, totally.”

“We should all hang out sometime, get food.”

“Yeah, totally.” I feel instantly clumsy and inarticulate.

He watches me in a way I remember from when I was a kid. With intensity. Almost as if he’s recording me with his eyes. It’s the opposite of everyone in my life who is constantly looking past me. I don’t have to vie for his attention. It’s mine to lose.

“What about Kirsten?”

“Kiki’s in London,” he says of his sister. She had a blunt bob when we were younger. It made her seem sophisticated. “Or she was. She’s in the Peace Corps now. Panama.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” He smiles the good-natured smile of a younger kid with an impressive older sibling.

“But you, creative director. That’s awesome.”

He runs his hand through his hair. “Yeah.” He clears his throat, nodding a few times.

“Is it fucked up that I have no idea what that means?”

He laughs. “No.” He shakes off the cocktail stirrer from his drink and, absent a place to put it, shoves it in his pocket. It’s exactly what I would do. “Most creative directors are carpetbagging dilettantes who think they’re brands. Generally, I’m overpaid to answer questions about a company’s point of view. Or I guess I’ve been overpaid a couple of times. I only just got out of school.”

“How does that work? Do you work at an agency or…?”

I studied up from his website but couldn’t tell. Flash sites make me crazy.

“I’m freelance,” he says. “Which means I’m either panicking about starvation or I have a weird amount of money sitting in my checking account.”

“So, you work for yourself?”

He nods. “For now.”

I can’t believe he’s only twenty-four.

I search for clues as to whether this means he’s homeless. Nails: clean. Clothes: freshly laundered. His hair: not only washed but fiddled with long enough that a light, a mirror, and some privacy were required. Then again, I’ve heard of a girl who used her SoHo house membership to scam dates and roomies for the night. See also: Jeremy.

“That’s amazing.”

“We’ll see,” he admits. “Mostly, I have a truly despicable advantage…” Patrick glances around and leans in. “I don’t pay rent.”

“You’re squatting?”

“Yes,” he deadpans.

When my eyes widen, he shakes his head, smiling. “My mom went to NYU in the nineties and kept her apartment downtown.”

I take a half step back. “Where downtown?”

“East Village.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughs. “See.”

“So, it’s rent-controlled?”

“No.” Then he cringes.

I love that I feel completely comfortable grilling him like this. “God, she owns it, doesn’t she?” I steel myself against the tidal jealousy.

“She does.”

“My dude…” I jerk my head back from him.

“I know.” He looks a little like the gnashed-teeth emoji. “I’ve told no one. I feel like if fucking Bane came to my apartment in the middle of the night and killed me just to level the playing field it would be fair.”

“So it’s not that amazing that you work for yourself.”

“Way less amazing.”

“Fuck.” I shake my head, cutting my eyes at him. “Wait, are y’all rich?”

He pauses. “I was going to say we’re comfortable, but that’s literally…”

I finish his sentence. “What every rich kid says. Wow. I’m torn between admiration and rage. You’re so lucky.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” he says. “It’s not fair. It’s not a testament to anything that I can afford to be freelance.”

“Maybe you’re talented.”

“I’m okay,” he says. “But I don’t not know that a huge reason I even have a career is that my crew from art school blew up. I shot Danny Song for a GQ cover when I was twenty-one because he requested me.”

I feel special. Like he’s confiding in me because of our history.

We smile at each other.

Someone’s put on Lil Peep, so all the white girls treat the bar to shouted karaoke.

“You picked the place,” he reminds me.

I search the bar around me, hoping for a more acoustically amenable area just as a booth frees up. I grab his arm and lead. We slide in facing each other across the table.

A lanky Black dude up-nods as soon as we’re seated. “Just the two of you?” he hollers. He and his friend have matching septum piercings, and they’re both wearing bleach-spattered sweatshirts.

I nod helplessly, but just before they can squeeze in with us, Patrick slides next to me. “Executive decision,” he whispers in my ear. “Is this okay?” he asks. “We could also stand if I’m crowding you.”

I smile. “This is good.”

The boys sit opposite us and start making out athletically. We grin into our glasses.

He slings his arm around the back of our seat. My ears heat up.

“So, you were saying,” I remind him. “About work.” I don’t ask what Danny Song smells like, even though Danny Song was my celebrity husband before he became the Internet’s boyfriend. I couldn’t even tell if I wanted to be with him or be him. Just that when I fantasized about him bowing deep to my mom, greeting her in the honorific when they met, I’d feel warmth spread in my chest. All the horrible, shameful mistakes I’d made with other boys would be wiped clean. I know it’s somehow defective that I’ve never dated anyone Korean before. Asian even. But marrying someone like Danny Song would fix all that. Marrying Patrick, too, for that matter. I’m flustered at the thought.

“Um, as I was saying”—he clears his throat; his thigh is pressed against mine—“I don’t know. I have all these ideals that are probably going to bite me in the ass. Everything’s so fucked. Billionaires don’t pay taxes. Idiot racists rule the world. I’m trying not to work for evil people, even peripherally. I’ll probably starve, but I’m okay for now.” He glances down at his hands.

I clear my throat. Stare at the ring of wet on the black tabletop. Sincerity always throws me.

“What about you?” he asks finally.

“What about me?” I croak, shrinking a little under his gaze. “I didn’t know there was going to be a speech portion.”

I wish he’d turn his eyes down a little.

“But what are you studying? New York’s incredible for creative people. What do you want to do once you’re all good and learned up?”

“Well…”

The truth is, I know all the socialist talking points, but if anyone threatened to pay me enough for a cute apartment and a forever sofa, I might happily be stuck on marketing calls all day for a company specializing in murdering honeybees.

“Well, I wasn’t done talking about you,” I demur. “The job suits you.”

“How’d you figure?”

“You’ve always been into details,” I say, wondering if he agrees. “Keenly observant.”

At least that’s how it felt. Back then. When four years really did feel like such a long time. I was still in grade school when he started high school. I somehow felt invisible and conspicuously ungainly at the same time. I had awful hair and awful skin. Chipmunk cheeks with an explosion of pimples sprinkling my chin.

This was before I knew how to be seen. How to hide, too.