“He left town, so it’s not like he’ll be booking me again.” My voice catches in the back of my throat. “Asking for more clients is a good thing, right? I mean, that way I can set aside some money before finals come. I was hoping not to work much the last few weeks of school.”
Mel nods. “Maybe—but Avery, do me a favor and take it slow. You don’t need to fuck Manhattan to get over him.”
“Sean asked me to stay with him,” I don’t look at her as I say it. Instead, I twist the hem of my coat sleeve. I didn’t plan on telling anyone that, but the words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. I feel like I’ve been through an emotional shredder and from the way Mel is looking at me, it must be visible on my face. “He offered to pay me so I could stop working for Black.”
One of Mel’s dark brows rises as her mouth opens. For a moment, she’s speechless, which is super-weird. “What? What are you talking about?”
“He said he loves me, and offered to make me his mistress.”
Mel blinks at me. “What’d you say?”
“I said no, that it wasn’t my dream to be someone’s mistress. I want more, and he doesn’t—so Sean walked away.” My voice is too soft, too steady. I blink away the stinging that’s been building behind my eyes and smile at her. “I know you hated him, but he meant something to me. I just need to make sure I have no extra time so I can’t think about him. I’ll fill up my weekends with work and focus on school. It’ll be all right.”
“Honey, I don’t know if you should—”
I start to walk past her with a plastic smile on my face. It feels so wrong, so utterly out of place. “I’m fine, Mel. I’ll see you tonight. We can have pancakes for dinner. I know you’ve been dying to go to IHOP for a while.”
Mel says she’ll talk to me later, but she has that concerned look on her face—the kind people give when they know you’re in over your head. I head down to my car and turn the engine over. I love that it starts on the first try. I love that the windows close and the seatbelt works. I stop thinking about these things because they lead my thoughts back to Sean.
CHAPTER 4
Captree is a little park down by Robert Moses beach. There are docks and that’s where I go after stopping at a deli to grab an egg on a roll and a cup of coffee. I walk to the end of a pier, past some people waiting to board a fishing boat, sit down, and dangle my legs over the edge. It’s not as cold today.
The wind whips my hair into my mouth as I bite down. I spit out the bite of sandwich and the hair and continue to claw at my tongue. I think I swallowed some hair, which skeeves me out.
“Hey, stranger,” he says. I glance over my shoulder and see Marty standing behind me with his hands in the pockets of his corduroy barn coat. His hair is blown every which way, and his cheeks are rosy, like he’s been down here for a while.
“What are you doing here?” I never figured out what to say to Marty after he told me that he had feelings for me. Besides, how do you forgive someone for lying like that?
You forgave Mel, my inner voice reminds me.
“I’m going out on a flounder boat for the day. Thought I’d do something manly for a change.” He gives me a crooked smile.
My eyes don’t meet his for long. I can’t look at him without regret pooling into my mouth like vomit. I miss him, I know I do, but I don’t know how to get past what he did. Do I just pretend it never happened? Do I act like Marty’s just a friend, even when I know he wants more? Everything seems so hard and I wish to God that it wasn’t. I want my Marty back, but that guy doesn’t exist. This one does—the guy in the thick coat with the chapped cheeks.
“You know how to fish?”
“Not really,” Marty steps closer and sits next to me. “How hard can it be?”
“You know you have to touch worms and shove hooks through their wriggling bodies, right?”
“Yup, I brought gloves.” He pulls out a pair of yellow plastic dishwashing gloves, which makes me laugh.
“You can’t use those!”
Marty gives me a sideways look that says he’s teasing, trying to make me smile like he used to. It’s weird how much a person can communicate with a single look. “I planned on wearing a yellow rain coat and matching boots, but I thought the other wharf guys would make fun of me.”
“Ya think?”
“Yeah, but what’s life without a little color?”
“You can drop the gay thing, Marty.”
“What gay thing? A guy can’t like yellow?” He bumps his shoulder into mine and I bump him back. I take a few bites of my sandwich before he says, “Are we good?”