Читать книгу Slightly Single - Wendy Markham, Wendy Markham - Страница 10

Sunday morning.

Will is cranky.

It’s raining.

Will is most likely cranky because it’s raining and because it’s Sunday morning, but naturally, being me, I can’t help feeling like it’s somehow my fault. Ever since we met for breakfast at the coffee shop a few blocks from his apartment a half hour ago, I’ve been struggling to make conversation with him while he broods.

The thing is, he’s moody. I’ve always known that. Part of me is attracted to the temperamental artist in him. Part of me wants him to just cheer up, goddammit.

As the waitress pours more coffee into his cup and then mine, I ask him again about last night’s wedding. It turned out the big top-secret affair was the marriage of two major movie stars who left their spouses for each other in a big tabloid scandal last year. I’m dying to know the details, but so far, Will hasn’t been forthcoming.

“So what was the food like?” I ask him, taking three of those little creamers from the shallow white bowl in the middle of the table and peeling back the lids to dump them, one by one, into my coffee. I tear two sugar packets at once and pour them in, then stir.

“Shrimp bisque, grilled salmon, filet mignon, lobster mashed potatoes…nothing spectacular.” Will sips his own coffee. He takes it black. No sugar.

“What about the cake?”

“White chocolate raspberry.”

“Yum.” I swallow a hunk of rubbery western omelet smothered in ketchup and Tabasco and wish that it were white chocolate raspberry wedding cake.

I wish that I were a bride eating my white chocolate raspberry wedding cake.

No, I don’t.

I definitely want to be a bride, but when Will and I get married—okay, if Will and I get married—I’d love to have a fall wedding with a pumpkin cake and cream cheese frosting. I wonder what he’d think of that, but I don’t dare ask him.

“So, Will, do you want me to come back to your place after I go to the movies?”

I already told him—first thing—about Buckley and Flight of Fancy, and how I was hoping to play matchmaker for Buckley and Raphael.

I also gave him a blow-by-blow description of the party, right up to and including the part where Raphael lit a tiki torch he’d hidden in his closet—defying my warning—and carried it around the apartment until he accidentally set a drag queen’s synthetic teased hair on fire. Jones tried to save the day by throwing the shimmering blue fake water fabric over him to smother it, but it turned out that was even more flammable than the wig, and it, too, went up in flames. Luckily, some quick-thinking bystander doused the fire with water from the spray hose at the sink. I left shortly after that, telling Buckley I’d meet him at one in front of the Cineplex Odeon on Eighth Avenue, a few blocks up from Will’s apartment.

I was thinking that after we see the movie, I could walk over to Will’s and we could get take-out Chinese or something.

Okay, what I was really thinking is that we can have sex. It’s been almost a week since we spent the night together, and the last time—the last few times—have been pretty blah.

But Will dashes my hopes now, shaking his head. “Nah, I’ve got a lot to do after the gym. I’m packing boxes to ship up to the cast house so I don’t have to lug everything on Amtrak.”

I could help him pack boxes. But maybe that would be too depressing.

Unless I were going with him…

But I still can’t work up the nerve to ask him about it.

I try to think of something else to talk about.

We’re in a booth beside the window. Will is wearing a maroon hooded sweatshirt I really like. It’s from L.L. Bean, and he’s had it as long as I’ve known him, and it’s not the least bit raggy, unlike most of my knock-around wardrobe.

Over his shoulder, through the rain-splattered glass, I can see people hurrying by carrying umbrellas. I notice that it’s a purely gray landscape dotted with splashes of bright yellow: slickers and taxicabs. I want to point it out to Will, but he won’t appreciate the aesthetic in his mood.

I reach for the salt shaker and dump some on my hash browns before taking a bite.

“You really should watch the salt, Trace,” Will says.

“If it’s not salty enough, I can’t eat it,” I tell him with a shrug.

There’s nothing worse than bland, under-salted food. My grandparents are supposed to be on a low-salt diet, and you never tasted anything more vile than the no-salt-added tomato sauce they tried to serve everyone one Sunday a few years back. We all agreed that it was disgusting, and my grandmother immediately switched back to making her usual sauce. The doctor keeps scolding them about their blood pressure or whatever it is they’re both supposed to be watching, but I don’t blame them for cheating. I would, too.

“You’d get used to less after a while,” Will points out.

“Maybe, but I don’t want to. It’s not like my health is in any danger.” I’m never comfortable discussing my eating habits with Will. I guess I’m afraid he might bring up my weight. So far he never has, but it’s not as though I think he isn’t aware that I could stand to lose a few pounds.

Okay, thirty or forty pounds.

Luckily, he’s never acknowledged it.

And if my luck continues, he never will.

“There are worse vices than salt,” I point out to him, still feeling defensive. “Like…”

“Cigarettes?”

I grin. “Exactly. Okay, salt and cigs. So I have two vices. Look at the bright side. At least I’m not a junkie.”

He cracks a smile at that.

“Why don’t you have any vices?” I ask, watching him take a bite of his toast. Whole grain. Unbuttered. No jelly.

I half expect him to protest that he does have vices—not that I can think of any.

But he doesn’t. He just shrugs, smiling and chewing his boring toast, confidently vice-free.

“Listen…what if I came with you, Will?”

Who said that?

My God, did I say that?

Apparently I did, because Will has stopped chewing and is looking at me, confused. “Came with me where?”

What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking. I just blurted it out somehow, and now I can’t take it back.

I frantically try to come up with something else to say. Something to add, something that would make sense…

What if I came with you…

What if I came with you…

What if I came with you……to the bathroom the next time you go?

No, there’s no way out of this.

Now that I’ve started, I have to finish.

I put down my fork, take a deep breath, then pick up my fork again, realizing that setting it down seemed too ceremonious, as though I’m about to make a major announcement.

I am, but I don’t want it to come across that way to Will.

That would only scare him off before he really has a chance to think about it.

I stab a hunk of green pepper-dotted egg and pop it into my mouth. It’s always easier to sound casual when you’re munching something. “What if I came with you this summer?”

So much for casual.

I sound like I’m being strangled, and he looks horrified.

“Come with me?” he echoes. “You can’t come with me!”

I attempt to swallow the sodden hunk of chewed-up egg and almost gag. “I don’t mean with you, with you,” I say quickly, to reassure him. “I just mean, what if I found a place to live in North Mannfield and got a job waitressing or something for the summer? Then we wouldn’t have to be apart for three months.”

“Tracey, we can’t be together this summer! I’m doing a different show every other week. I won’t have time to spend with you even if you’re two minutes away.”

I feel a lump in my throat, trying to rise past the soggy wad of pepper and egg making its way down. I can’t speak.

But that’s okay, because Will isn’t done yet. He’s put down his fork and is shaking his head. “I can’t believe you would spring something like this on me now. I mean, I thought we’d agreed that this summer stock thing is great for me. I have to do this for my career. You’ve known that all along, Tracey. Now you have a problem with it?”

I finally gulp down the egg and the lump. “I didn’t say I have a problem with it, Will. I just said I want to come with you.”

“But you know you can’t do that, right? Look, I know what this is. You’re just trying to make me feel guilty so that I’ll change my mind and stay here. And I—”

“I am not!”

There’s an uncomfortable pause.

“You honestly wanted to come with me?”

“Yes! Not with you, though…I just wanted to be near you.”

I feel a pathetic sense of abandonment and panic. I feel like a little girl whose Daddy is trying to dump her off at preschool against her will.

“But, Trace…” He’s at a loss for words. To his credit, he doesn’t mock me. Nor does he look angry anymore.

He looks…concerned.

I realize, with a sick churning in my stomach, that I’ve overstepped the line I’m always so careful not to cross with him.

I’ve gone and smothered Will, the Man Who Needs Space.

“Okay, well, I just thought I’d run it by you,” I say, trying to be nonchalant.

I pick up my coffee cup and notice that the cream has separated into clumps on top. Ugh. It must have been sour. I plunk the mug back into its saucer and fumble for some distraction, wishing there was something left on my plate besides the strawberry stem and orange rind from the garnish I already devoured.

I have nothing to eat.

Nothing to do.

Will says nothing.

Does nothing.

This is awful. I should never have brought it up.

Not like this.

I should have planned it more effectively.

I should have rehearsed what I was going to say, so that he wouldn’t be caught off guard. So that I wouldn’t seem like such a desperate cling-on.

But deep inside, I know that no matter when or how I approached him, he wouldn’t have thought my going to North Mannfield was a good idea.

So anyway, there it is.

It’s settled.

I’ll be spending the summer here in New York, without Will.