Page 3 of The Thinnest Air
GREER
Day Two
“Harris.” I pound on his door until my knuckles grow numb, inspecting the bloom of red on my skin that nearly matches my chipped manicure. It’s 7:00 a.m. on a January morning, the sun still hiding behind the horizon and a thicket of shiny Manhattan high-rises. The wind is relentless, the cold unforgiving. I’m sure he’s still nestled warm in his bed, but my flight leaves in three hours and common courtesy is a luxury I don’t have. “Answer the damn door. I know you’re home.”
This would be a hell of a lot easier if I still had a key, but last year I decided we needed to set boundaries so we could move on emotionally, which meant I had to move out. It isn’t normal for two people who’ve been broken up for years to still live together, to still sleep in the same bed like some sexless married couple and attend their friends’ weddings as each other’s plus-ones.
But aside from everything that’s happened over the past decade, Harris is still my best friend, my confidant, and one of the few people I actually like on this narcissistic, egocentric excuse for a planet.
And maybe a part of me still loves him more than I’m willing to admit out loud.
A muffled voice sounds on the other side of the door, and within seconds, it’s flung open. Harris’s tortoiseshell glasses are crooked on his face, and he smells like stale bedsheets and a hard sleep.
“What? What is it?” He squints at me, dragging his palm along his barely there five-o’clock shadow. Creases from his pillow mark his cheek and forehead.
“You didn’t answer your phone.” The tiniest part of me is irrationally insulted by his unavailability.
“I was sleeping. It was off.”
“There’s been an emergency. I’m leaving for Utah.” My matter-of-fact delivery is a ruse that he’ll probably see through, but it’s all I can do to keep from falling apart on the outside.
Showing emotion isn’t my forte. I’d rather suffer through a thousand pelvic exams than shed a single tear in front of another person. Besides, tears aren’t going to find my sister.
His sleepy gaze comes into focus as he drags his hand through his messy onyx hair. “Utah? What, is it Meredith?”
“Yes.” My arms fold. “Meredith is missing.” Saying those words out loud for the first time almost knocks the wind from my lungs. To think them is one thing. To say them makes them real.
She’s been here for everything, always.
The highs and the lows.
My biggest cheerleader.
And now she’s not.
“What happened?” Harris lifts a brow, then squints, as if he’s about to watch a train wreck unfold.
“She was supposed to pick up Andrew’s kids from school,” I say, gaze focused on his bare feet. “Never showed. Her car was found in the parking lot of a grocery store, the driver’s door open and her purse and phone on the passenger seat. No sign of a struggle. She just ... disappeared.”
“Shit.” He tucks his chin against his chest, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Anyway, I was just coming to tell you I don’t know how long I’m going to be away, so you’ll have to take over the shops for a while.” I hate to put this on him when our business is in dire straits, but we don’t have a choice.
A decade ago, Harris and I were fresh out of grad school, up to our noses in debt and finding it nearly impossible to land jobs in the face of the Great Recession, so we maxed out every credit card we had and opened a tiny coffee shop in Brooklyn. Two years later, we opened another in Chelsea. Then one in the East Village. Today we have five altogether. It was insane and exhilarating and stressful and still somehow blissfully wonderful because we were doing it all together. The two of us. Side by side.
But times are tough.
Competition is stiffer than ever, with new coffee shops popping up all over the place, run by social media-savvy millennials and started up with bottomless loans from their well-heeled parents.
This past Christmas, some new place called the Coffee Bar opened just around the corner. The owner invented a whole special menu of holiday movie–themed drinks inspired by films likeHome AloneandNational Lampoon’sChristmas Vacation. BuzzFeed ran an article on them, and it went viral practically overnight, with people lining up for blocks just to try a “Keep the Change, Ya Filthy Animal” latte, which was nothing more than a glorified pumpkin spice latte with salted caramel. Or a “Cousin Eddie’s Full Shitter,” which was an iced mocha with an extra shot of Turkish espresso. None of the drinks were inventive by any stretch of the imagination, but we couldn’t compete with a viral sensation.
Our December profits sank by 40 percent, and they continue to fall with each passing day. We were looking at shutting down at least three stores over the coming months until Meredith offered me a loan.
I didn’t want to accept the help.
But I also didn’t want to lose my livelihood.
Or Harris, whose current expression resembles that of an eyewitness to a fatal car accident.
