Tear You Apart Read online

  Will has given me art.

  Chapter Ten

  A handwritten thank-you card seems old-fashioned and intimate and therefore an appropriate response to Will’s gift, but I settle for an email instead. Making my reply casual yet polite, pixels and bytes instead of the intimacy of my fingers clutching a pen and moving it along paper. Without leaving an indelible mark, something permanent in the world.

  His response pings my in-box only a minute or so after I’ve sent the message, and though my heart leaps at the sight of his name, I don’t open it right away. I minimize the email window and concentrate on researching a specific fabric Naveen wants for the gallery. Gauzy, pale yellow, embroidered here and there with red and orange roses. Green vines. He wants it for one of the back rooms he plans to rent out for parties, to hide the unfinished beams. It’s hard to find it by the bolt, and though I’ve come up with several alternatives, he’s insistent on this particular one.

  Other than business, Naveen hasn’t spoken to me since the day in his office. It’s been a week. He’s waiting for me to come to him, to apologize, and I haven’t yet been able to make myself do it.

  Finally, when I’ve checked off five of the ten tasks I’d planned for the morning, I give myself permission to look at Will’s message.

  You’re welcome. There wasn’t anyone else I could think of who’d appreciate it more.

  My fingers type. I could stop myself, but I don’t want to. You shouldn’t have. It wasn’t necessary.

  His response is almost immediate. I wanted you to have it.

  I have no reply for that but another thank-you, and that should be the end of it. But another message comes through in a few minutes. It’s an invitation to a gallery show, not Naveen’s, in two days. Will’s listed as one of the artists.

  I don’t answer, but I don’t delete it, either. The message should get lost in my in-box, but every time I look it’s still there as bold and bright as a neon sign. The next message comes in a few minutes before I’m getting ready to leave for the day.

  Please come.

  To this I have no ready response except the leap of my heart, the pulse and throb of my blood in soft and tender places. My fingers move, typing a reply I’d never be able to voice aloud.

  I’ll be there.

  Chapter Eleven

  Unlike Naveen’s, this gallery features only photography, mostly in black-and-white, prints of all sizes framed in identical glass bricks and staggered around a room with black walls. The door frames and windowsills are painted red, and the lighting is harsh and bright. I like it better than the gauzy fabric and fairy lighting of Naveen’s gallery, though I’d never tell him so. Even if he ever does start talking to me again.

  I see Will’s work right away. Among the other shots of buildings and trees, all the same subject matter, his still stand out to me. I study the photos, remembering the way his hands hold a camera.

  I don’t have to turn around to know he’s there.

  We stand shoulder to shoulder, not enough distance between us to make this casual. My dress is sleeveless, and his denim jacket brushes my skin. I don’t look at him.

  “I like that one.” I point out a framed series of three nearly identical shots, different only in their distance from the subject.

  Will doesn’t answer. I shift a little away from him to look at the next piece, a black-and-white shot of what looks like bamboo. There’s nothing at all special about that one, and I tell him so.

  Finally, he laughs. From the corner of my eye, I see him hang his head. He shrugs, glancing at me sideways.

  “Yeah. I know. I only had them put it up here because I was missing a piece.”

  “What happened to the one you were going to show?”

  We turn toward each other at the same instant, eyes meeting. The hem of my dress swirls around my shins, and I imagine the whisper of it against his jeans. It sounds like roses smell.

  “I gave it away,” Will says.

  “Take me somewhere” is what I say back, and though I’m convinced he will smile and shake his head, change the subject, refuse....

  He doesn’t.

  Chapter Twelve

  Another diner, more coffee. We both order pie—he likes pecan. I pick cherry. We walked the few blocks from the gallery, and we talked about the weather.

  It might be April outside, but in here it’s February. I warm my hands on the mug the waitress has filled with hot liquid. “Can I have a couple—”

  Will’s already pushing two sugar packets across the table toward me. He watches me tear the paper and pour sugar into the coffee. Before I even lift the mug to my mouth, he hands me one more packet. It makes the coffee tolerable at last.

  “Thanks for coming to the show.”

  “I barely stayed long enough for it to count,” I say.

  “But you came.”

  I study him. The brush of his sandy hair over his forehead, tufting in front of his ears. The bristle of stubble around his mouth, not quite a goatee. Dark circles press the flesh below his eyes, a little more prominent on the right than the left. He looks tired.

  I wait until he looks at me. “What are you doing?”

  He could make any kind of answer. Eating pie. Drinking coffee. Talking about the weather.

  “I don’t know,” Will says. “Whatever it is, I shouldn’t be.”

  “No. You probably shouldn’t. But I could’ve just said no.”

  He smiles. “You could’ve.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  Again, we’re staring at each other across a table, but this time it feels better. Not quite so awkward, and definitely far more ripe with promise. When he looks at me with that sideways grin, I don’t return it. I’m trying to be good.

  “You wanna get out of here?” Will gives the diner a roundabout look as he hunches his shoulders, lowers his voice, as if he’s trying to keep our escape a secret.

  I look around, too. We’re nearly the only customers in here. I’m the one who asked him to take me somewhere, but I’m not so eager now to let him do it.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  He shrugs. “It’s New York City. You think we can’t find something to do?”

  I make a show of looking at the clock, but the truth is, Ross is out of town again, and even if he wasn’t, the night is too young for me to have to excuse myself with the lateness of the hour. “You don’t want to just sit here and drink shitty coffee?”

  “The coffee I could deal with. The pie is crap, too.” Will grins.

  Slowly I return the smile, reluctant only because I don’t want to seem too eager. I stab my pie with my fork, leaving it standing upright in the pool of cherries that spreads like blood across the stained porcelain plate. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  Outside, we walk in silence at first, having already exhausted the weather as our topic of conversation. New York is never dark, of course, but it does look different at night, painted in the white and yellow of streetlights. In this neighborhood tall brownstones tower over us, most of their windows alight with gold.

  “I like to look in windows,” I admit, slowing as we pass one particularly pretty house. Some of the others have been made into apartments, but this one is still a single residence. You can tell because of the matching window boxes and the glimpses of furnishings in bedrooms on the second and third floors. There are bars on the windows, but I can still see what looks like a nursery complete with blue-painted walls and— “Oh, look! Stars!”

  Will pauses to stare upward, across the narrow, one-way street. “Where?”

  “In there.” I point toward the house, the window of the nursery lined with twinkling white lights. I realize, too late, the stars I saw were from the lights and not anything he might be able to