I tiptoed around him and headed into the kitchen to make some coffee for the house. After you left, my whole sleep pattern changed. The minute I woke up, no matter how early, no matter how hungover, I got out of bed, because lying there without you was an exercise in misery. So coffee had become my job that summer.
The house was always full of people, and I tried not to look too much like I’d just rolled out of bed. That morning I’d thrown on a bikini—my favorite that summer was a red bandeau—with a pair of cutoff shorts. And I’d tied a bandana around my hair, letting the side-swept bangs hang over my left eye. I was tan from all those Hamptons weekends, and the bike rides to the beach had toned my body more than I’d expected them to. I liked what I saw when I looked in the mirror that summer. I had to stop myself often from wondering what you’d think if you saw me—if you’d like it too.
By the time the coffee machine started percolating, Darren had woken up. He walked into the kitchen and greeted me with the worst attempt at a pickup line I’d ever heard. Or maybe it wasn’t even supposed to be a pickup line. He’s never admitted one way or the other. Regardless, it was the sort of ridiculous thing that you would never say.
“Have I died and gone to caffeine heaven?” he asked. “Because you seem like a coffee angel.”
It did make me smile, though.
His hair was pin-straight, but it was sticking up on one side, where it had been crushed against the arm of the couch. And he was wearing boxer briefs and a T-shirt that said New Jersey: Only the Strong Survive. I couldn’t help but wonder where the rest of his clothing had gone.
I handed him the first cup of coffee and he took a sip.
“I’m no angel,” I told him. “I promise. I’m Lucy.”
“Darren,” he said, holding out his hand. “This coffee is fantastic.”
“I ground the beans yesterday,” I told him. “They’re from that new fair-trade coffee place in town.”
He took another sip. “Your boyfriend is one lucky guy,” he said, “dating a girl who can make coffee like this.”
I couldn’t help it, tears pricked my eyes as I said, “No boyfriend.”
“Really,” he said, drinking more coffee, his eyes finding mine over the rim of the mug.
I compared him to you then. His straight hair to your curly. His short, muscular frame to your long, lean one. His brown eyes to your blue. I knew he wanted to flirt, but I couldn’t do it.
“I’m gonna go get my stuff together for the beach,” I told him. “If you leave before I come out of my room again, it was nice to meet you.”
He nodded and lifted his mug. “Thanks for the coffee, Lucy,” he said.
xxvi
He left before I came out of my room again. Or rather, I didn’t come out of my room until I heard him and his friend leave. But he must have asked Sabrina about me, because I got a Friendster request from him the next day. And a message asking for the name of the fair-trade coffee bean store.
We bantered a little through messages, and he invited me to a coffee-and-chocolate pairing event he’d read about in Park Slope. It was a Sunday afternoon, which somehow felt safe and non-date-y, and I had nothing else to do, so I went.
It would be a lie to say I didn’t think about you at all. In fact, I thought about you a lot. But interspersed, there were moments of fun. Of jokes. Of coffee almost coming out of Darren’s nose because he was laughing so hard at one of the descriptions of the pairings. It was the best time I’d had in months. Well, the best time I’d had in months sober.
So when he asked me out for dinner a week later, I said yes. He wasn’t you, but he was clever, he was handsome, he made me laugh . . . he wanted me. And he made me forget about you, at least for a little while.
xxvii
Darren insisted on picking me up at my apartment for our date. He was wearing a suit and his hair was combed back, away from his face. I’d worn a summer dress to work that day—it was new, yellow-and-white seersucker—and I was still wearing it, with a pair of sandals, but he seemed much dressier than I was.
He must’ve seen me looking at his suit, because he said, “I-banker’s uniform. I didn’t have time to change.”
I smiled. “You look nice in a suit.” As I said it, I realized he did. His shoulders were broader than his waist, and the suit was perfectly tailored to accentuate that fact.
I almost offered to change into something fancier, but before I had the chance he said, “You look nicer in that dress. In fact, I’d bet if we took a poll of completely objective humans about the niceness factor of our respective outfits, you’d win.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Niceness factor of our respective outfits?” I repeated.
“That’s the technical term,” he said.
He wasn’t you. He absolutely wasn’t you. He was older, for one thing, twenty-nine. And he was calmer, grounded. Solid, Julia called him. And he was the only one who’d been able to make me laugh since you left. That counted for a lot.
When he crooked his elbow and said, “Mademoiselle?” I linked my arm with his and closed my apartment door behind me. I was actually looking forward to dinner with him.
xxviii
After dinner that night, Darren said he would walk me home, that it was the gentlemanly thing to do. He even walked on the street side of the sidewalk, so he would block me in the event that a car came zooming down the street and splashed through a puddle. It would drench him and not me, he explained.
“I see,” I told him. “What about ladies? What are we supposed to do?”
“Nothing you’re not already doing,” he said, which made me smile again.
Then he cleared his throat. “You know, I was a tour guide at Penn and happen to be qualified to give tours of Prospect Heights as well.”
“Oh really?” I asked, not quite sure if he was joking.
He began talking in an upper-crust accent, like maybe he was someone who had donated a building to a university. I immediately started laughing. He sounded like I imagined the Schermerhorns or the Havermeyers or the Hartleys did, those families that had buildings named after them on campus. I always wondered about them when we were at school. I pictured them living in huge mansions in someplace like Armonk and summering on Martha’s Vineyard. Mr. Schermerhorn wore those red pants that everyone wears on Nantucket and had a perma-tan and an underbite. And Mrs. Havermeyer never left the house without three-carat diamonds in each ear. She had three children who were raised by three different nannies, who shaped each of their personalities quite differently. She was oddly obsessed with the number three. And the Hartleys had show dogs. Corgis, like the queen of England.
I guess I could probably find out about them online now, if I wanted, but that would ruin the stories I made up in my head. I haven’t thought about those stories in years.
So Darren turned to me and, in a voice like a Schermerhorn, said, “That large brownstone is the home of Ashton Cranston Wellington Leeds the Fourth, of the Kensington Leedses. The nobler side of the family. Everyone knows the Glasgow Leedses are gamblers and crooks. And horse thieves. They use teaspoons for their soup and dinner forks for dessert. Utter blasphemy. In fact, there’s been a movement to hyphenate the family name to Kensington-Leeds. You know, for the sake of disambiguation.”
I laughed so hard at that one I almost snorted, which made me laugh even more.
He kept going in his Schermerhorn voice. “I’ve heard that’s why Julia Louis-Dreyfus hyphenated. Those other Dreyfuses were terrible. Same with Wal-Mart. Those other Marts? Forget about it. Disambiguation is very important.”
Every time I tried to respond, my words were broken up with giggles. Then Darren and I rounded the corner toward my apartment. He stopped in front of my building. I stopped too. The laughter died in my throat when I saw the way he looked at me. He was going to kiss me. Panic constricted my lungs.
I hadn’t kissed anyone since you left.
I hadn’t wanted to kiss anyone since you left.
“I . . .” I started, but I didn’t quite know where to go with that.
Darren must’ve seen the look on my face, though, and instead of kissing my lips, he leaned forward and kissed my forehead.