I keep rolling clean cutlery into napkins, saying, “What the fuck are you talking about? You used to chew a strip off me if I didn’t roll up every last fork in this place.”
Arthur taps a heavy finger on the newspaper article, still resting on the table next to me.
“I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time.”
My stomach squirms. I don’t want to hear whatever he’s trying to say. I keep rolling cutlery, stubbornly refusing to look at him or the newspaper article.
Arthur rests his hand on my shoulder instead.
I don’t know if he’s ever touched me before. His hand is heavy, calloused, and warm. It lays on my shoulder like a blessing.
“I’m proud of you, Mara,” he says.
I look up into his wrinkled face, at his faded brown eyes behind their thick, smudged lenses.
I want to say something back to him, but my throat is too tight.
Arthur murmurs, “You’re really doing it, Mara. And look, whether you want to date this guy or not, take his help. Take as much as you can get. Don’t be proud—be successful. You deserve it.”
I put my hand over his on my shoulder, holding it in place so he can’t let go.
My eyes burn, his wrinkled face swimming before my view.
“Why do I feel like you’re firing me?”
“You’ll always have a home here,” he says. “But I don’t want to hold you back. Not even for a Saturday morning. You don’t need this place anymore.”
I’ve worked at Sweet Maple for six years. Other jobs I quit or lost, but this one was always here. Arthur was always here.
“Come back to eat breakfast with everyone else who’s rich and famous and doesn’t have to carry a tray.”
“The best people carry trays,” I say ferociously. “You carry a tray.”
“I will if you come eat,” he says, squeezing my shoulder once more before letting go.
I leave quickly so Arthur won’t see me cry. Tears run down my face, hot and fluid, like there won’t be any end to them.
Cole chases after me, still stuffing his laptop back in his bag.
“Mara!” he cries. “What’s wrong?”
I wheel on him, furious.
“What did you say to him? What did you say to Arthur?”
Cole grabs me by the shoulders, forcing me to stop. I was running away from him down the tree-lined street, and I’m still torn between the impulse to shout at him or flee.
My life is hurtling down this new path, and I don’t know if I want it. It looks like a dream, but it’s mixed up with a nightmare.
Cole’s looking at me with his beautiful face set in an expression of concern, but I know what he is, I know what he’s done. Am I insane to think he cares about me?
Arthur does. But now Arthur is pushing me away because there’s no place for my new life in my old. I can’t be the Mara I always was, poor and desperate, and this new Mara, replete with money and success.
Cole forces me to look at him. Into those dark eyes that have always been the real window inside of him.
“Why do you hate when I talk to Arthur? Why are you worried what I’ll say to him? Or him to me?”
My face crumples up. I cover it with my hands, ashamed.
“I don’t know,” I sob. “I’m not used to people saying nice things about me.”
Cole wraps his arms around me, pulling me close against his chest. He’s warm and strong, his heart a metronome that never falters.
He tilts my chin up so I’ll look at him. So I’ll know he’s telling the truth.
“Mara, I will never tear you down to other people. I will never degrade you in their eyes. I want to build you up, do you understand that?”
I never knew until this moment that I believed every conversation about me had to be negative. It had to be an airing of all my mistakes, all my flaws. What else could they talk about?
“I thought you told him to fire me,” I admit.
“Why would I do that? We made an agreement. You can work here as long as you want, if you don’t mind me camping out in the corner. I’ll admit, it’s not just to protect you. I have to be around you. I’m addicted to you. You fuel me, you light me up inside. Just knowing you’re in the house enlivens me. I can’t go back to the way I was before. I’m afraid of it.”
I’ve never heard Cole talk this way before. I’ve never seen his face so naked, so exposed. Not blank and emotionless—raw and confused. I look in his eyes and I see that he’s telling me the truth: he’s afraid of losing me.
No one has ever been afraid of losing me.
No one wanted me in the first place.
I turn my face back into Cole’s chest, letting his arms envelop me. Letting him hold me tight.
“I don’t want to go back either,” I say.
That night, Cole takes me to Betsy’s party at her Jackson Street gallery.
I squirm nervously in the passenger seat of the car. I’m worried we’re going to see Shaw tonight.
“Maybe he won’t come,” Cole says. “That cop’s still poking around. He came to the studio this morning, did I tell you that?”
I shake my head.
“Janice didn’t let him upstairs, but he made such a nuisance that Sonia had to come talk to him. He’s insisting on meeting with me later this week.”
“Meeting with you?” I frown. “What for?”
“He pretended like it was all ticking boxes. But I’m pretty sure he’s running his own investigation, separate from what the SFPD thinks they’re doing.”
I know Cole has been keeping tabs on it all through a casual acquaintance in the vice department.
I remember Officer Hawks. I remember his perfectly polished shoes, his neat haircut and black-framed glasses. This is a man who ticks boxes. But also a man who notices small details and doesn’t leave a job half-done.
“He’s perceptive,” I tell Cole. “Not like that first idiot that interviewed me. Don’t underestimate him.”
“I don’t underestimate anyone,” Cole says. “I’m not as arrogant as you think.”
“But you don’t think Shaw will be here tonight.”