Page 23 of Silver Linings
“Ooooh, age gap.Nice.” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively, and heat creeps up my neck. She notices the flush spreading over my skin and smiles like the cat who got the cream. I think she likes making me flustered.
“Do you usually say everything that comes to your mind?” I think I like that about her. People tend to hold everything close to their chest, like the slightest bit of vulnerability is equal to embarrassment or shame, myself included. My father taught me well. Since my brother’s accident, I don’t open up at all. Whatright would I have, seeking comfort or absolution after what I did?
Most people in this world wouldn’t open up to you unless you gave them something in return. Not Silver. She seems to be an open book, unaware or unaffected by people’s perception of her.
It’s refreshing, like the first dip into the ocean after lying in the sun all day.
“Almost always.” She looks extremely pleased with herself, smiling over at me while she sits on her kitchen counter, swinging her feet back and forth. The sight is so cute, my mouth involuntarily twitches up, which is exactly a thought I do not need to be entertaining. “So, was I right?” I must look confused, because she clarifies a second later. “Were you jilted, and that’s why you’re back in New York?”
I clear my throat, throwing up my guard. “No.”
This is veering towards territory I donotwant to talk about or expand on. I start fumbling around her in the tiny kitchen, desperate to avoid this topic and her stare. I set my cleared plate in the sink after rinsing it off and look everywhere but her earnest eyes, knowing somehow, it will be hard to look in them and have to lie. There are things I can’t talk about, things I haven’t been able to broach for two years now. So, I do what I’ve learned is the easiest course of action when uncomfortable. I run.
“I’m going to tarp your ceiling so nothing will fall on you while everything dries up.”
Silver looks like she wants to say something, but I turn on my heels and walk back toward her bedroom, finish today’s work, and high tail it out of there without so much as a backward glance.
seven
. . .
“Why doyou have zucchini in your basket? Are you feeling alright?” Kena searches my eyes, putting his stupidly soft hands on my forehead, checking for a fever.
“Stop being so dramatic.” I swat him away.
He looks affronted. “Oh, I’m the dramatic one? Silver, I have not seen you touch a vegetable since the time you mistook an artichoke for a paperweight.”
“Well, who the hell uses vegetables as decor!”
“It was astagedautumn-themed cornucopia for a Thanksgiving table spread! It was for Home & Garden, for fuck’s sake.”
Looking around, I notice a few people have stopped to stare at us, so I smile, loop my arm through Kena’s and steer him towards the snack aisle of the grocery store.
“Seriously Sil, what’s up with the zucchini?”
I pause and look at him, trying to decide if I’m really about to admit this out loud.
“I thought it was a cucumber,” I frown. “I was going to try to make my own pickles.” All the talk with Nan about pickleball gave me a weird craving for the food.
He just stares at me before he bursts out laughing. “Oh thank God, I thought it was for something salacious.”
Now it’s my turn to be offended. “Excuse me! I do not need produce forthat, thank you very much.”
“Well, I never know what you’re into nowadays.”
“Okay, well, let me assure you, it is not now, nor will it ever be, phallic produce.”
We loop around the store for around twenty more minutes, grabbing random things we both need for the week. This is a ritual of ours that we do at least twice a month when we have the time. With his new position at Maison Atelier and me deciding to lean into the delusion that led me to buy a bookstore, we’ve had less time than normal to see each other.
“What is going on in your romantic life? You haven’t mentioned anything lately.”
“Ew, don’t call it myromanticlife. You know how commitment gives me a stress rash.”
“Stop deflecting. What’s going on with your hot maintenance guy?”
I groan. Absolutely nothing is going on with Hendrix, and I would very much like it to be. I’m not really sure where I went wrong when we were eating lunch together a few days ago, but the mood shifted, fast. I must have said something wrong, or pried too much and upset him. I’m usually good at reading signals, and I thought we were getting to know each other. I was attempting some light charm, and I thought it was going well…until it wasn’t. I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
I can’t place what it is, but I can’t stop thinking abouthim,and it’s freaking me out. Is it the thrill of the chase? I’ll admit, that’s a bit of a novelty for me. Men are…simple creatures, after all. But something about Hendrix has me stumped.
