Page 55 of Drawn Together
“Darcy, then?”
“Blame it on the books, sure.” He stretches his arms out beside him, dipping a little lower in the water. “What about you?”
“I think in this world I’m more of a werewolf girl. I’d rather have the fur and not be cold all the ti—”
“I meant work. How is it going with the, uh, author guy?”
“Oh.” I scoop up some bubbles in my hand and blow them into the wind, they all pop before they get up. “Not too bad. He’s been...” I certainly wouldn’t use the words kind, sweet, or friendly to describe our recent conversations. His one to two sentence responses to my five paragraphs are usually mild, at best. Which, granted, is at least ten steps above where we were, so I think I have to take it.
“Better.”
“Better?”
“He’s not a complete jerk anymore, but he’s not exactly nice either? I think his wife asked him to stop torturing young artists.”
Fletcher snorts. “You think?”
“Yeah. That or his little blue pills have started kicking in, and his mood is far better.”
“Maybe.”
Fletcher moves right along. Meanwhile, my city-wide view is turning into a bit of a haze as a jet pokes me in the back.
“Sloane’s fall break is soon, right?”
I smile. It’s kind of nice how he remembers everything. I bet he would make an excellent receptionist for a man like Cedric.
“Two more weeks. I think we’re gonna spend the entire day shopping. She got a part time job at a local pharmacy a couple months ago and has been saving all her money just for this trip, so I have a feeling my closet—”
“Or lack thereof?”
“Precisely—will be heavily scrutinized. Last Christmas, she gave me a certificate for a ‘free fashion consult,’ in which she grilled my style for about an hour.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It certainly was for her.”
I don’t know how long we stayed like this—it could have been an hour, it could have been five minutes—while Fletcher tells me about Stephan’s newest dream of wanting to start a podcast with him called ‘Hey, We’re Talking Here!’ and Fletcher said the thought makes him want to vomit. I tell him about my recent attempts of getting out of the apartment more: stopping by little shops on the way to work, researching different, affordable eating options and other bookstores to compare to Nook and Cranny. That I have switched out my closest pharmacy, a Walgreens one block away, to a more local one called ‘Darren's Drugs.’ Where I, to my surprise, found out the owner’s name is not Darren.
The soft light of the afternoon sun has fallen away, and the night sky cloaks us, making everything feel closer—tighter. Fletcher's foot has tapped mine at least three times—each of which he hisses a quick ‘sorry,’ and pulls his leg back as close as possible to his side—and each time makes me laugh a little.
His phone lights up on a nearby table and he, with zero consideration for New York's frigid wind, steps right out and goes to collect it.
“Come on, they’ve got pizza downstairs.”
He shakes his legs like a dog and slips his pants on, avoiding eye contact with me.
I scrunch down in the water just up to my lips, the heat taking over every tense muscle. I force my eyes to lock on the city skyline’s bountiful lights and try to not listen to the sound of his zipping his pants.
“Ready?”
My nose twitches. “Can we stay a little longer?”
“I would say yes, but I think your blood pressure is dropping.”
“If this is what low blood pressure feels like, then I never want it to rise again.”
“You are going to get delirious soon, and I am not fishing your limp body out. Now, come on.”
