Page 10 of Grizz

Chapter 4

Daisy

IstepintoCentralParkand onto the paved path near Tavern on the Green, leaving behind my apartment on the Upper West Side.Tourists cluster near the restaurant’s brick facade, posing with cocktails.I slip past them, weaving through families with strollers, joggers in head-to-toe Lululemon, and a man strumming a six-string with his dollar-filled guitar case showcasing a solid day’s earnings.

Heels are a bad idea.They always are, and today they feel like punishment.I make it halfway down West Drive before ducking onto a side path shaded by American elms.At a quiet bend in the trail, I stop, toe off the heels, and swap them out for the ballet flats in my tote.The relief is immediate.

Near the lake, where the path bends beneath elms that have turned amber, a woman sits cross-legged on the grass with a canvas propped against her knees.She’s painting with oils (actualoils), her coat streaked with reds and blues at the cuffs, a tin of turpentine glinting beside her.She’s just decided this patch of ground belongs to her art, and apparently that’s enough.

I slow without meaning to.

Her brushstrokes are fearless, broad, confident sweeps.Whatever she’s rendering bears no resemblance to the landscape before her.It’s abstract, all fractured geometry and blazing warmth, as if she’s capturing the feeling of the park rather than the reality of it.Hundreds of people have probably walked past in the last hour without stopping, because the world doesn’t tend to notice women doing quiet, defiant things.People notice the spectacle.But a woman on the ground with paint under her fingernails, building beauty from nothing?Invisible.

I recognize a feature in her that unsettles me.A version of myself I’ve been neglecting—the one who got into journalism not for access or prestige but because she believed a well-told truth could reshape how people saw the world.Somewhere between getting fired fromContourand agreeing to babysit a volatile hockey player, I stopped creating and started managing.

The woman leans back, loads her brush with a streak of vermillion so vivid it looks like a wound, and drags it across the center of her composition without hesitation.

It’s bold.Reckless, even.And absolutely as it should be.

A smile forms instinctively.Part of me wants to walk up to her and thank her, but she seems so at peace, I don’t want to disturb her.I keep walking, carrying her image with me like a small, sharp stone in my pocket.

Past the fountain, a couple strolls toward me on the path.Mid-twenties, I’d guess, her hand tucked inside his back pocket like she’s borrowing his warmth.He says something and she shoves him sideways gently with her shoulder, laughing.He catches her by the waist and pulls her back without breaking stride.It’s nothing, really, just a two-second exchange that means everything to them and nothing to the world.

Except the jacket.It’s his, draped over her shoulders, sleeves hanging past her fingertips.That old, wordless gesture—You’re cold, take mine—and it lands deep within me, in a part I thought I’d sealed off.

Connor used to do that.Give me his jacket before I even asked, like he had a sixth sense for when I was about to shiver.

Connor Marsh.The boy who sat behind me in sixth-grade history and passed me notes folded into triangles.We were twelve when he first held my hand, thirteen when he first kissed me.We survived junior high, high school, four years of long distance through college—him at UVA, me at Duke—held together by stubbornness and the belief that a love story that started that young could endure.

A year after college graduation, I found out he’d been sleeping with my childhood best friend for over two years.The girl who braided my hair at slumber parties and held my hand at my grandmother’s funeral.I lost them both in the same week.Twelve years of Connor.Fourteen years ofher.Gone, like they’d been written in pencil, not pen, the entire time.

New York was my clean slate after that.A city loud enough to drown out the silence two people left behind.I funneled everything into my career with a ferocity my editors mistook for ambition.It was survival dressed in professionalism.

The couple passes me, oblivious to what their little interaction set off, his jacket still warming her shoulders.I don’t feel bitter anymore.I outgrew that particular poison, but the scar tissue is real.Trust, for me, is earned in increments and revoked without ceremony.

Elias is the exception.Everyone else starts at zero.

I start east, deeper into the park.The noise of the city dims but never disappears.You can still hear the rumble of buses on Central Park West, the distant wail of a siren, the endless drone of a city that’s always just one crisis away from boiling over.

It feels fitting as I mull over my meeting earlier with Grizz McAvoy.The man is all jagged edges and bad decisions wrapped in muscle and myth.In person, he’s bigger than the camera makes him seem.Not just physically—though, yes, there’s that—but in presence, he fills a room like he’s not sure if he should sit down or punch a hole through it.

Langley described him like he was a challenge to solve, but thirty seconds after meeting him, I realized he was a fuse waiting for the wrong spark.The fact he ended our meeting just moments after Langley left us to get acquainted tells me all I need to know.

This won’t be easy, but it’s a job.

I keep walking and emerge from the Ramble near Bethesda Terrace.There’s a wedding shoot happening on the steps—white dress, forced smiles, the photographer barking instructions like he’s conducting a battlefield instead of a fairy tale.To the left, kids are tossing pennies into the fountain.A couple of street performers breakdance for a circle of tourists holding iced coffees and recording it all on their iPhones.

As I get farther east, the park begins to dissolve around me once again.The gravel underfoot gives way to concrete, and soon I’m stepping out onto the corner of Fifth Avenue, where the world explodes back to life.

The quiet of Central Park is replaced by the hard asphalt pulse of the Upper East Side.Cars blare their horns.Pedestrians swarm the crosswalk with lowered heads and purpose.

I head east on 60th Street, weaving through the sidewalk gridlock.Every block is a battle between speed and image.I spot the restaurant, Le Soir, with its low awning and gold-lettered signage.An establishment that doesn’t advertise because its regulars already know where to go.

Elias picked it, obviously.He always chooses places with character and good lighting and a maître d’ he knows, because who doesn’t Elias know, really?

I spot him at a corner booth and move his way.He rises, sleeves rolled to the forearms as if he’s ready to do serious work.There’s a half-empty bourbon neat on the table beside a martini glass, and I note that Elias wears his signature amused smirk that usually precedes a story I don’t want him to tell in public.

“Still allergic to being on time, I see,” Elias says as we embrace.