He texted me around lunchtime—see you soon—and I clutched my phone to my chest, chewing on my lip. Andy. Here. In a couple of hours.
We hadn't seen each other since that awkward Christmas party four months ago. We'd bumped into each other in the hallway while I was carrying a plate of crudités out to the living room—because apparently once you've been a waitress for long enough, you can never get it out of your system again. He'd just looked at me for a second, a smile softening his mouth. But all he'd said was: You look different.
He was the one who'd looked different, not me. Not his clothes or his hair or the gauges in his ears or the dark tattoos covering his arms, but his expressions, his eyes, were different.
"Grab a drink, Kaye?"
I looked up from my desk, confused, to see my co-worker, Genevieve, leaning against the half-wall of my cubicle. She grinned at my bewildered expression. "Got time before your friends get here, or no?"
I tried to shake off thoughts of Andy at Christmas. But that just left with me with the thought of Andy here, in Boston. In—Jesus—half an hour. How did that happen? I jumped to my feet, sweeping a hand across my hair. "I should go, sorry. He's on his way."
"I thought you had a whole group of friends coming?"
"I did, but then my friend Alice sprained her ankle. And so...I'm not sure why this is, but now Violet isn't coming, either." Vi did what she wanted; there wasn't really any arguing with her, or even understanding her reasons. "So it's just my friend Andy."
Staying with me, in my apartment, just the two of us. All weekend.
Genevieve raised her eyebrows. "We still on for brunch tomorrow, then? Or will you two want to be alone?"
I ducked my head, blushing. "It's not like that, Gen. We're just friends."
"All I know is you talk about this Andy character a lot. But suit yourself, Care Bear. None of my business." She waved to someone on the other side of the office and walked off before I could correct her. I didn't talk about him that much—it was just impossible to mention home without mentioning him. We'd been friends for years and housemates for two. I'd grown closer to Andy than I was to Alice, or even Vi.
I slung my camera bag over my shoulder and hurried out of the building. The whole time I was on the train, I thought about texting him. Finding out how much time I had before he got here. But I'd been texting him since I'd moved to Boston in September, and he'd hardly ever responded. Once Vi had cancelled on me, I'd been wondering all week if Andy would cancel on me, too.
At Park Street Station, I jogged up the stairs into the Boston Commons and looped around the Public Gardens to my neighborhood. As soon as I reached my block, I saw it. His truck. A bright red splash of country among all the chic black Maseratis and Audis.
Andy.
The door of his truck slammed shut—you had to slam it, or it wouldn't quite close. My throat constricted.
He turned towards me with a slight, hesitant smile. I hadn't forgotten how handsome he was, but after four months, it was like turning on a lamp in the middle of the night, and I had to blink, a few times, adjusting to the sight of his warm brown eyes and olive skin. He was a little taller even than me, which is saying something, and his parka—as red and as country as his truck—hugged his athletic, graceful shoulders.
I closed the last few feet separating us and started to reach for him, as if we were going to hug. But at the last moment, I stopped myself and stuffed my hands into the pockets of my down vest, my heart racing.
He touched my elbow, very lightly, companionably. "Hey," he said softly.
"Hey back," I said, breathless. "You made it."
"It was easy. Though the drive got a little more exciting once I got into the city."
"Boston drivers are assholes," I said apologetically.
"It was fine." He smiled. "How've you been?" And even though he'd been ignoring my texts and messages for months, his dark eyes were as interested and compassionate as they'd always been, as if nothing had changed between us at all.
I bit my lip. "Sometimes I'm still kind of freaked out. But I think that comes with the job." I drew a lungful of air and tried to get a grip. "Want to come in and put your stuff down? And then we'll get dinner?"
"Sounds great." He shouldered his duffel, and I led him down my narrow, twisting stone staircase, hoping I'd remembered to put my bra in the laundry hamper last night.
"It's kind of a hobbit hole," I said apologetically, as I opened the front door. "At best. Watch your head."
We made it inside, and he straightened up, glancing curiously around at my apartment. "This is really nice."
Pale sunlight peeked through the half-windows along the top of the far wall, but did very little to dispel the calm, cool darkness in the living room and galley kitchen. I did like my apartment—I liked the funky cast iron radiator that clunked and cranked like an old steam engine, and I liked the perennial slight sweet woodsy scent. But the apartment was tiny, especially with someone else standing here beside me. My bed was an awkward presence in the alcove to our right, partially hidden by the burgundy curtain I'd forgotten to draw all the way closed.
At least I'd put all of my unmentionables away.
"It's not as nice as our house was," I said. We'd rented an elderly Colonial with a seemingly endless amount of bedrooms and a huge backyard. I could have fit my entire apartment into its kitchen.
"They're different. That's all."
"I guess." I tried not to get stuck on the word different. I knew it was different. The only thing downtown Boston and an island off the Maine coast had in common was the Atlantic Ocean.
Andy set his duffle on the floor by his feet and stretched his arms over his head. It was as if we'd teleported back to Maine and were just finishing up a run. I broke into a smile. "What did you overdo this time?"
"Everything." He grinned and leaned into the stretch. "That triathlon a couple weeks ago kicked my ass. I'm still not back up to form."
"Getting soft in your old age, Carrillo?"
"Probably more to do with the Tough Mudder I did the week before it." He shrugged, still grinning. "How about you? Still running, right?"
"Still running. I joined a club here. We jog around the Commons really early in the morning."
"So I've been replaced already," he said, with a mock grab at his heart.
"Get real, Andy. As if anybody could replace you." Good Lord, Kaye, I thought. "Training with you. You know what I mean."
He raised his pierced eyebrow but didn't speak. A moment later, he shook his head. "So what's for dinner in the big city?"
"I made reservations at a sushi place," I said. "But we could cancel and try somewhere else if you want."
"Sushi, huh?"
"Miranda actually introduced me to it." Our friend Miranda Lewis had lived with us briefly after our housemate Rusty Soloman had moved out. During that short time, she'd torn our entire island apart and stitched it back together.
"Sushi sounds fun," Andy said. "Am I...okay like this?" He gestured at his parka and jeans. "It's not fancy or anything?"
"The restaurant? You could dress up, I guess. But you don't have to."
"I just have a T-shirt on underneath, but I have some other stuff with me that I could—"
"It's okay. Seriously." Even the most diehard city fashionista would have been proud to be on Andy's arm, no matter what he was wearing. He was beautiful.
"You look really nice," he said. "That's all."
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. He'd told me I'd looked nice before, once or twice. Everybody looked nice occasionally, no matter how much of a hot mess they usually were. It didn't mean anything.
"I like your sweater," he added. "It's new, right?"
It was just a yellow cardigan, but I felt like sunshine when I wore it, no matter how cold and rainy the city was. "My work friends picked it out. You'll meet them tomorrow at brunch. If you still want to do that."
"Of course." He smiled half-heartedly, and once again, I was at a loss for what to say. What was wrong with us? We'd been friends for more than half our lives. For two years, we'd worked together, lived together, spent all our time together. We'd talked, effortlessly, every single day. Until I'd moved away in September, and he'd cut me loose.
"Dinner?" I said desperately.
He agreed, and we left the hobbit hole. Night was already starting to fall. Streetlights popped to life, orange-gold against a periwinkle sky. Instead of solitary commuters, people thronged across my street in groups, talking and laughing together.
"We can cut through here." I led Andy to the wrought-iron fence surrounding the Public Gardens and one of the paths that wound through overflowing tulip beds. "I come here to take photos a lot," I added, touching my camera bag, which I always kept with me.
"Good place for it." He glanced up at the city skyline towering over the willow trees. "Bet you've got a lot of new photos now."
"Yeah." We dodged a group of tourists and I snuck a glance at him, my pulse thready. "It's pretty here, right?"
"Definitely."
"As pretty as home?"
He shrugged. "Yeah, in its own way."
I wondered if I missed the island's eerie beauty, or if I just missed Andy. We had jogged along the island's austere cliffs almost every morning; sometimes, the dawn light would glance off the sea and cast itself at him as if it had been dying to touch him, gilding the curves of his lips and his jaw, sparking on his piercing.
That same piercing was muted and silvery right now, like moonlight.
We left the Public Gardens and I brought him to an unassuming door in a stone building. He opened it for me, and I couldn't help catching his clean, subtle scent as I passed him. It brought back the memory of living with him with a sudden, painful sharpness: from making oatmeal with him in the morning to watching a movie with him on the couch late at night.
Shaking it off, I worked my way through the buzzing crowd at the front entrance to the hostess stand and smiled politely at the harassed-looking hostess. "I have reservations for two. McDowell?"
She frowned at her array of charts and grids as if she were landing an aircraft. Andy, meanwhile, scanned the crowd the way only a bartender could: curious, interested, but standoffish, too.
"This way, please," said a second girl. She was wearing a tight black dress and enormous shoes. I glanced at Andy again, wondering if he'd be looking at her, but he was still scoping out the restaurant.
The waitress sat us an a tiny, intimate table in half-darkness and lit the candle in the center. We were, I realized suddenly, totally surrounded by couples. What had I been thinking? Why hadn't I realized this was a date spot?
Because I always got take-out, that was why. Really high-end takeout to eat alone in my apartment while I pored over the photos I'd taken during the week.
"I promise this place is good," I blurted out. I promise I didn't trick you into a date.
"Smells good," he said amiably. He unzipped his parka and shrugged it off, revealing a T-shirt that clung to his shoulders and chest. He stood up to sling the parka over the back of his chair. The side of his arm caught his shirt, dragging it up around the waistband of his jeans ever so slightly, revealing a narrow strip of olive skin rippling over muscle. And—a dark curl of ink, grazing the hard line of his hip bone.
"Wait," I blurted out. "What is that?"
Fixing his shirt absently, he sat back down. Candlelight flickered across his jawline and throat. "What?"
"Do you have a new tattoo? Or—have you had it for a while? I guess I wouldn't... I mean..." All these years we'd known each other, I'd never seen Andy with his shirt off. Even when we'd been going swimming all the time to train for triathlons, he'd always worn a T-shirt or a rash guard with his swim trunks. And he'd never been the kind of housemate who walked around in a towel, unlike, unluckily for me, our housemate Rusty.
Andy could have tattoos all over his chest and back and I'd have no idea.
He glanced down the table, biting his lip. "It's pretty new. Just a few months."
"Wow. What is it?" Can I see it? "Who did it for you?" He was so shy about his looks, I couldn't imagine him sitting shirtless all afternoon, getting inked.
"Just Doug."
Doug, a grizzled fisherman with a tattoo parlor side business and a serious ZZ Top beard, had now seen more of Andy's body than I had. Life was unfair.
"And what is it?" I insisted. "More patterns?" His sleeves were mostly abstractions, evoking stone and ropes and the sea, with some Celtic or Nordic influences in the shapes. He'd worked on them for years, starting when we'd just finished high school. Every time I'd come back to the island on a break from college in Portland, Andy had dropped more weight, added more muscle, drawn more dark ink up his arms. After college, not long after I'd moved back to the island, I'd gone with him to watch Doug fill in the last free space, the inside of Andy's upper arm, with swirling lines suggesting a sword held up against the ocean.
"It's a similar style," Andy said. "Sort of like...a dragon and a castle. It's dorky."
"It sounds awesome." My desire to see it was overpowering. I took a shivery sip of water. Friends, I reminded myself sternly. We're just friends. "What else is new with you? I mean, new tattoo, that's a pretty big deal." A big thing not to tell me. If I'd still been on the island, would he have asked me to go with him?
He folded and re-folded his cloth napkin. "Just the usual races." He glanced up at me, his eyebrows knitting together. "They're not as fun without you, though."
"Yeah," I said at once, without thinking. "Same." Nothing was as fun without him.
In the silence that followed, the waitress came back and took our drink orders: an IPA for Andy, a kolsch for me. I'd missed talking craft brews with him and had meant to bring it up during his visit, but words were failing me again. All I could think to say was: are you seeing anyone?
Andy cleared his throat. "So, this place... You come here a lot? With friends, or...whoever?"
"Just by myself, usually. I work a lot."
"Right, of course."
Silence fell between us again.
"I didn't even find this place until midwinter or so. It took me ages to figure out where to go." I smiled. "Which is how we ended up at that awful soup place, remember? When you and Vi and Alice helped me move in."
"I've never seen anyone put beets in Italian wedding soup before," he admitted. "I thought maybe I just didn't know any better."
"Obviously that wasn't it," I said, but he just looked away again.
Our waitress came back, this time with our drinks. "Ready to order?" She frowned at Andy, as if he, as the man, would be ordering for us both.
"I have...no idea what to get."
The waitress practically rolled her eyes, and I winced. "I can just—?"
"Yeah," he said, "why don't you just pick something?"
"Okay." I skimmed the menu and ordered my usual, twice over, with a few fun extras thrown in. The waitress scribbled it all down and stalked off, impeccably balanced despite her crazy shoes.
"Sorry," I said. "I forgot how—"
"Don't apologize. It's fine. And I'm glad you're settling in now. Figuring things out." He scrubbed a hand through his dark hair, smiling slightly. "I was kinda worried when we left you here in September, all by yourself. Not that you can't handle it. Just that I would've been a little freaked out, if I were you."
"I was pretty freaked out," I confessed. "I don't think I slept at all the first month. It was all just so different... I hadn't realized how many routines we had at home. You and me. Watching movies before bed, or whatever."
He didn't respond, just sipped his beer. "Yeah," he said finally. "We did have a lot."
"So what am I missing at home?" I pressed. "How is everyone? I never hear back from...you guys." I talked to Vi and Alice pretty often, but it wasn't the same as talking to Andy. And even Vi and Alice were standoffish with me sometimes.
"I—we've all been a little..."
"What?"
"Well, worried about bothering you, I guess."
"Bothering me? How could you ever bother me?"
"You've got a new job, new friends—"
"So what? So I don't care about you guys anymore? You're my best friend, and you've hardly returned my texts for months."
He flushed. "It's been hard for me lately. That's all."
"I'm sorry, I didn't—I should have asked you about Scott. I'm sorry, Andy." I had selfishly assumed this was about me, but of course it wasn't. Our friend and former housemate, Scott, went to jail last spring, awaiting trial, and pled guilty to criminal charges a few months after that. I had never visited him in jail or prison, though Andy had gone a few times without me. I still didn't know how to process what had happened—what Scott had done, and why. "Have you been in contact with him at all lately?"
"Oh—yeah, a little." Andy folded his arms across his chest, one of his hands curling loosely around his bicep. "He's doing okay. It's awful to say this, but I think the structure is kind of good for him."
"I could see that." Scott had always stayed up all night and slept at strange times; he'd been fired from jobs and even thrown out of school at one point for not showing up when he was supposed to.
We'd both always known Scott could be erratic, even moody, but we'd never imagined he could turn violent. And the fact that it had been partly my fault—that I'd talked about Owen Larsen with him, that I'd told him I'd believed Owen was guilty... Well, some journalist I was. My best friend in high school had been murdered by one of my happy hour regulars, and I'd been completely clueless the whole time I was fetching him Manhattans and calamari apps. I'd fallen into step with everyone else, including Scott, and had made Owen our scapegoat without once stopping to think for myself.
The waitress chose that moment to come back and bestowed several beautifully-plated sushi dishes on our table. Some glittered with roe; others were masses of spiky crab legs.
"I have no idea how to eat this," Andy said, staring at the spread. "I've never had sushi on this level before."
I smiled in spite of myself. "It's all the same. You just have to open your mouth a little wider. Like this." I demonstrated.
Andy's gaze fell to my mouth, and his own lips quirked upwards. The corners of his eyes crinkled. "I see."
He picked up his chopsticks and plucked a piece off the plate, dipping it in some soy sauce. I couldn't stop myself from watching the tendons in his wrist flex when he turned his hand. I'd always snuck glances at him when we were working together, especially whenever he'd been making drinks at the bar. He had beautiful hands, but it was more about the way he moved—his easy, graceful competence.
We worked our way through the rolls. I couldn't shake the feeling that tonight, we were both sneaking glances at each other.
"What is it?" I said finally, touching the corner of my mouth. "Am I—?"
"Nothing. I just missed watching you eat." He kept his gaze fixed on his wasabi as he said it, but I felt the words deep in my chest, sparkling like just-lit fireworks.
"Why would you miss something like that?" I tried to pretend I was joking: "I know I can put it away... Impressive, I bet."
He just smiled.
This boy would be the death of me.
Vi had always told me Andy was secretly shy, despite how extroverted he seemed at first. Just ask him out already, she always said, rolling her eyes. But I couldn't see it: if he had any kind of feelings for me, he would've said something before I left for Boston.
And even if I were willing to take the risk, and just ask him myself... I couldn't help imagining my most cherished friendship popping out of existence in a single, misjudged moment. I'd lose him—the way I'd lost him after I'd moved, but so much worse.
And every time I thought about asking him, my big mouth froze shut.
*****
Kaye and Andy are finally on a date! Or not, if you believe Kaye. ;-) What do you guys think of this so far? Is Andy secretly shy, or what?
Thank you so much for reading! <3 <3
~London