Page 99 of Bad Words

I wanted to say, I love you two, do you know that? And do you know how much? But I’d have needed a lifetime to articulate it.

An hour and a hot cider later, I left their apartment into the cold, dripping night. Wet gusts traced my forehead, my cheeks.

Halfway to the train, my steps slowed. I came to a halt beside a halal cart and looked up the street toward McGolrick Park.

After a week of silence, texting Parker an apology felt faintly desperate, as though my only reason for apologizing was that he wasn’t speaking to me. But he’d said his apartment was beside the coffee shop opposite the park. He was virtually on my way home, and while 9 PM was late, it wasn’t inappropriately late for a five-minute talk.

Before I could think about it too hard, I was heading up the street toward the shouts and laughs emanating from the bar on the corner, toward the whisper of naked tree branches rubbing against each other in the wind. I turned up my coat collar and wiped a trickle of snowmelt from my brow.

Two identical brick apartments flanked the coffee shop. The second, beside its column of buzzers, listed NAVARRO / LEUNG on the ground floor, 1E. The lights were on. His roommate? Or was Parker home from California?

I didn’t buzz. I turned back toward the park, flexing my fingers inside my leather gloves. I didn’t have to do this; our truce could be enough. I didn’t technically owe Parker this conversation.

But I remembered the way he’d looked at me in that subterranean maze of shelves on New Year’s Eve, the heat that had stirred in me when he’d said, That’s not what you want, is it?

Did he talk like that to other people?

Why did I want him to keep talking like that to me? To keep messaging me late into the nights?

Why did I want to tell him what had been happening with City since the New Year? Why did I feel that he would immediately understand the gut-deep, almost irrational fear that the idea of the magazine’s bankruptcy induced in me?

I stood on the steps for minutes, silent, trying to decide whether to retreat or move forward. Then the door of the building swung open and a man in his sixties held it open for me, and I said automatically, “Thank you,” and walked inside, feeling as though the choice had been made for me.

I passed the dented mailboxes set into the foyer wall and entered an antechamber out of which led an old wooden staircase with a carved banister. I faced the door marked 1E and tugged off my gloves and, wishing I weren’t wearing a floor-length silk gown, worked a few tangles out of my hair, trying to feel more prepared.

Go, I thought, and rapped three times on the door.

The muffled sound of a male voice. Then footsteps, growing closer. I swallowed and found my mouth dry.

The rattle of a lock, and the door swung open, and Parker was there in front of me, dressed in dark jeans and a LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS T-shirt, his hair messy.

He froze. For a moment we just stared at each other. It occurred to me how beautiful he looked, this rumpled, private version of him.

“Selina,” he said.

“Parker. Hi.”

“Hey.” His eyes strayed toward his apartment. So did mine. In the visible wedge of the place I caught the corner of a ceiling-high bookcase, a rug with blocks of geometric color, a modestly sized television paused on the acting credits of a movie. Two art prints in thin black frames above a saddle leather sofa.

“Um,” he said. “Why are you—sorry, I—”

I’d never seen him so flustered. I searched for some on-ramp into the conversation, something that wouldn’t just fling me headfirst into the apology on his doorstep. I wanted to go in, for us to find that compulsive New Year’s rhythm. Jacob would have called me predictable, but yes, I wanted to do this right, or not at all.

But before I could speak, a high, sweet voice came from behind the door. “Parker? Who is it?”

Parker glanced back and eased the door wider. A dining table came into view.

Standing at its far corner was Emily from the festival. Easy-laughing, kind-faced Emily. She held two stacked plates in one hand and a pizza box in the other, clearing the remains of dinner.

When she saw me, her brows flew high. “Oh my gosh! Selina Chan, right?”

“Yes,” I managed to say.

“I’m Emily Shapiro. I saw your panel with Parker at the Wiseman Festival. It was so interesting!”

Parker looked back to me, unreadable.

The heat had leached from my face. I felt strangely distant. Two empty beer bottles stood on the table, and Emily’s coat dangled half-off one of the chairs, as if it had been flung there.