Slip of the Tongue (Slip of the Tongue 1)
Page 57
He comes over, lifts me by my waist, and plops me on the kitchen counter.
I giggle, and his face visibly brightens. He shoves a sock on my foot and bunches it over my ankle. It’s like slipping under the covers after a long, cold day, and I don’t even care if it ruins my nail polish. I realize I’m not sweating. “You fixed the radiator?”
He winks at me. “This morning. I’ve been in heaven ever since. This is shaping up to be the best day of my life.”
I can see it in his eyes—he’s temperate. Happy.
He finishes pulling on the other sock. “There. It’s either that or my size twelve sneakers.”
“That would be awkward.”
“Yes. And this isn’t at all,” he says, grinning.
“It’s sweet.” I put my arms around his neck and pull him in for a kiss. “Thank you.”
“No problem, princess,” he says and goes back for the ribs. I’m grateful he walks away at that moment. I don’t think I can hide my once-sweet, now-depressing memory from showing on my face.
“I’m no princess.”
“Then I guess that makes you a pea.”
Finn opens the microwave, but the platter is clearly too large for it. He looks at me helplessly. “Should we do half for now?”
I roll my eyes, slide off the counter, and playfully push him out of the way. “I didn’t slave over dinner for hours just to zap it in the microwave.” I turn on the oven. “Needs a few minutes to warm up.”
“Right.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I told you, the kitchen hates me.”
“A kitchen is like a woman,” I say, leaning back against the counter. I don’t know where it comes from, so I make it up as I go. “You can’t just dive in and make a gourmet meal. It takes time to explore her, to learn what she keeps in which drawers, to play with seasoning and proportions.”
He stands across the room. A smile slides over his face. “So, in this example, you’re the gourmet meal?”
“No—” I’m about to explain it further, but I stop. He’s teasing me. “I’m just saying, don’t go around banging pots and pans.”
He shrugs. “Sometimes pots and pans just want to bang. Then you bring a spatula into the mix—”
“All right, I get it,” I say, laughing. “Do you even know which one the spatula is?”
“Hmm.” He stalks toward me, and my legs falter. The laundry room memory comes back too quickly. He reaches around me, though, and then pulls back to show me his spatula. With smiles on our faces, we look from the utensil to each other. “This one, right?”
“Right.”
“Turn around.”
“No. We need that to serve the food.”
He doesn’t budge, his expression playful but determined.
“Fine,” I say and turn to face the counter. “Be gent—”
He smacks me on the ass, but it barely stings. I break into a fit of giggles.
“Feel better?” he asks.
I nod back at him, sincere. “Thank you. You really know how to cheer a girl up.”
“Anytime. I mean that.” He winks. “Want a tour of the apartment?”
Despite the fact that we’ve been intimate here, I realize I’ve never seen his bedroom. Just being here with Finn is making a decision, but I’m not sure I’m ready to dive in head first. “Okay . . . but—”
“Just a tour,” he says, raising his palms. “Promise.”
I nod, grateful he can read my mind. I stick the ribs in the oven and follow him out of the kitchen. He opens a door in a short hallway. I’m hit with a chalky, pungent smell. The tarped floor is littered with paint cans. One wall has a half-finished mural of horses. “Marissa wanted horses,” he explains.
“You did that?” I ask. It’s by no means Michelangelo, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a father’s dedication to his daughter.
“She sketched it with me. Some of her stuff is here. I was going to get the rest after Thanksgiving.”
I rub my eyebrow. “But not anymore.”
“The house is sold, so they have to move. But—I mean, obviously, I’ll help Kendra find . . .” He looks around the room a moment. “We haven’t worked out any details yet.”
“Oh.” My gut smarts. I look into a box by the door. This is real. Frozen-coloring-book, Shopkins, fuzzy-pink-socks real.
“Don’t,” he says, looking me over.
“Don’t what?”
“This would’ve happened eventually, Sadie. It’s not your fault.”
I tuck some hair behind my ear. I was a little girl once with fucked-up parents. As I got older, I convinced myself it would’ve been better if my dad had just divorced my mom and put each of them out of their misery. “Should you maybe slow it down a little?” I ask. “Give Kendra some time to adjust to the idea?”
He shakes his head. “She’ll convince herself I’ve changed my mind. That’s just the way she thinks. Would you want to be strung along?”
If the last few months are any indication, I don’t do well with ambiguity in my relationship. “I guess not.”
He shuts the door. “Not much to see in there. Or anywhere in this apartment, really.” The next room is just the standard eggshell-white. To the right of a desk, three canvas photographs are propped against a wall. “These are yours?” I ask, walking in.
“I’m not pretentious enough to hang them,” he says, following, “but I’m not sure where to keep them.”
The first photo is a sunny landscape shot of the steps in Union Square. A teenage boy is midair and blurry on his skateboard, flying off a railing. Other kids on boards surround him in various states of movement. A woman on a step has a sandwich in one hand and an e-reader in the other. The rest of the people in the photo are using a phone, watching the teens, or having conversations. Off to the right, a man in a folding chair is surrounded by artwork with price tags. Finn has precisely captured in detail a normal day in the park off Fourteenth Street.
“This is my boss the day I quit,” he says, drawing my attention to the next photo. A gray-haired man has one hand steepled on his desk. He arches an eyebrow at the camera, his mouth set in a tense line, his face a topographic map of pockmarks and wrinkles.
I glance at Finn. “You just . . . quit? And then took a picture?”
“I want to remember that day forever,” he says. “I brought the camera into his office and snapped it without his permission. It’s not the best shot technically since I took it fast, but his expression says everything.”
“He looks pissed. And annoyed.”
“He was. About my exit and the photo. I thought he was going to break my camera, but instead, he just told me to get the fuck out.”
“You weren’t scared to quit your job?” His ex-boss’s swanky office is stark white with sharp-cornered furniture and a view of the river. He has an entire shelf of awards.
“It was more adrenaline than fear.”
“Why’d you do it?”
He doesn’t answer. I look back at him
. “Just needed a change,” he says.
“You’ve made a lot of changes lately.”
He shrugs. “Kendra likes to point that out. I’m working on myself. I don’t get why it’s a problem.”
“I guess when you’re responsible for a young family—”
“I’ve never let them down,” he says. “Not financially. The kind of money I was making, I was able to save a lot. I didn’t buy into material shit like my colleagues did.” He makes a point of looking around the nearly empty room. There are two boxes labeled equipment and office. “As you can see.”
Our eyes drift to the last picture of coffee grounds piled and scattered on a familiar-looking tile floor. “Was that here?”
“Yeah.” He grins. “Evidence of my kitchen klutziness. Kendra usually makes the coffee.”
“So does Nathan. Even the mornings he isn’t having any, he brews it and puts a mug out for me.” Aside from the fact that each photo makes me feel something, there’s no discernable connection between any of them. There’s a stack of 4x6 prints on the desk. The top is a Terrier leashed to a park bench. The rest stick out the sides—a wrinkled finger, a rusted bike chain, a rose petal.
I realize Finn’s been quiet for a while. “Sorry,” I say, realizing my last comment about Nathan. “I shouldn’t share so much.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“It’s weird.”
“This is all weird. If we can’t talk about that stuff, it’ll do more harm than good to our relationship.”
“That’s mature,” I remark.
“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
It’d be a relief not to edit myself. I nod. “It makes sense.”
He comes over and wraps me in a sideways hug. “I want you to feel comfortable enough to talk about what you’re feeling. Even if it’s hard at first. I understand love doesn’t vanish overnight.”
“Do you still love Kendra?”
“I meant you and Nathan.”
“I know.” I blink. Even if it makes me a little uncomfortable, I don’t think I want him to stop loving her all of a sudden. It shouldn’t be that way when you’ve been with someone so long. “Do you, though?”