Marcus and Caleb had both found their dream careers and each other shortly after college. Nick always felt like Marcus and Caleb’s unruly ward, who couldn’t figure out how to properly adult. It was embarrassing.
“We’ve been getting interview requests from some big outlets,” Marcus said. “Vanity Fair. The New Yorker. It’s not too late to claim the pen name, you know. We might even have time to get your photo taken and put on the book jacket . . .”
“No.” Nick’s answer was firm.
“Nick,” Marcus said gently. “Your dad can’t get to you or your money if you don’t let him. You can’t live your life trying to hide from him forever.”
“Do you still not know where they are?” Caleb asked.
Nick shook his head. His parents were hard to keep track of. They moved around a lot and seldom had working phones. He rarely talked to his father, Albert, but his mom, Teresa, called him when she could. On New Year’s Day, she’d called from a motel room in New Orleans. He hadn’t spoken to her since. She had no idea about how much Nick’s life had changed. She knew nothing of his money or the book deal, and he hated that he couldn’t tell her, because then she’d tell Albert, and no good could come from that.
“Either way,” Marcus said, “I think you might be missing out on a big opportunity to—”
“Is it okay if we talk about something else?” Nick asked abruptly. His headache was beginning to worsen. He didn’t know whether to blame this conversation or his hangover. He looked at Marcus, feeling both tired and guilty. “Please?”
Marcus and Caleb were quiet for a few moments. Then Marcus said, “Okay. What’d you do last night?”
Nick paused, thinking of the nutty situation he’d found himself in this morning. “I woke up naked in Yolanda’s bed somehow.”
Marcus blinked in surprise.
Meanwhile, Caleb was cackling. “What?!” he said. “That beautiful, fashionable, classy lady who donated what is practically your only piece of furniture, slept with you?”
“No,” Nick said, laughing, glad that he was able to both lighten the mood and change the subject. “Let me explain.”
Hours later, after regaling Marcus and Caleb with what he could remember of last night and listening as they discussed plans for Marcus’s twenty-ninth birthday party, Nick took the subway to the Manhattan Bridge stop and got off, choosing to walk back to Manhattan. He did a lot of walking since he’d moved here. Maybe it was the wanderlust. He could still travel if he wanted to, but he doubted he’d get any writing done that way.
As he walked over the bridge and through Lower Manhattan, he wondered about Lily and where she was, per usual. When Marcus had asked why Nick wanted to live in Union Square as opposed to Brooklyn, Nick had said he simply preferred Manhattan, but really, it was because Union Square made him think of Lily and their imaginary Christmastime date. He’d searched for Union Square apartments and came across his current building, which had been newly renovated and eagerly accepting new tenants. Nick’s reasoning for moving there was silly and sentimental, something he would never share.
He reached Union Square park and sat down on a bench, looking around at the people shopping at the farmers’ market. Maybe his dream would become reality one day and he’d run into Lily. Right in the middle of the park. Somehow, she’d see him and immediately know who he was, and Nick wouldn’t need to explain himself. She’d forgive him and say she still wanted to know the real him anyway, that the real him was worth knowing.
But who was he kidding? They would never meet, and she would never say something like that. He’d rather think about her every day for the rest of eternity than actually insert himself into her life.
Since birth, so much about Nick’s life had always been up in the air, but this one detail was indisputable: good things crumbled in his hands. Just like with his father. He’d spent a long time trying to fight against this, but now he reluctantly accepted that it was just the way of things.
Lily was better off without him, wherever she was.
4
Lily’s phone vibrated on her desk, causing her mug of pencils to shake. She’d been in the middle of a Fine as Hell Neighbor daydream, in which she’d knocked on his door and asked if she could borrow some sugar. He’d grinned at her, rugged yet charming, and immediately whipped off his shirt and pulled her into his arms. Huskily, he’d whispered in her ear, I’ve got your sugar right here, and placed his hands on either side of her face with gentle urgency and kissed her so passionately that her knees gave out.
Unfortunately, however, Lily wasn’t wrapped in her hot nameless neighbor’s heady embrace. She was at the office. She hurried to stop her alarm, which signaled that it was six thirty p.m., aka time for her to go home. She was making a conscious effort to be out of the building before seven p.m. every day in an attempt to achieve the elusive work-life balance people were always talking about.
Her stomach grumbled, and she leaned back and stretched her shoulders and neck, looking around at her empty floor. Almost everyone else had already gone home except for Lily and Edith. They were the only members of Editorial on the sixteenth floor because Edith had refused to give up her corner office when the rest of the editorial groups in their division had moved to the fourth and fifth floors. Lily’s cubicle was smack-dab in the middle of Ad Promo and Copyediting. Her colleagues were nice enough and always greeted her in the morning, but they pretty much kept to themselves out of a sense of self-preservation. Everyone knew to avoid Edith’s corner of the floor, lest they incur her wrath for simply breathing outside of her door. When she was first hired, Lily used to go to lunches once a month, organized by a couple of the other editorial assistants but then those assistants were promoted, and the lunches stopped happening. It wasn’t like Lily was able to attend that many anyway. Edith always needed Lily, so she mostly ate lunch at her desk.
She could hear Edith mumbling to herself in her office now, mere feet away from Lily’s cubicle. For the last three hours, Lily had been hunched over, doing line edits on a manuscript about the various infections discovered during the Renaissance. She needed to hand the line edits in to Edith at the end of the week, though, so that meant she was taking this manuscript home with her.
She gathered her things and tried to ignore the state of her messy desk. Stacks of manuscripts in various stages. Advanced reader copies piled high, and boxes of foreign editions that needed to be opened. In a beloved corner sat a small stack of children’s books that she managed to snag from the free bookshelf in the hallway near the copy machine. She’d clean her desk soon. That was what she always told herself. Once they got through the summer launch presentation. Once she mailed out author copies. Once she tracked down some Lysol wipes. Once, once, once.