I grin back at him. As we sit in comfortable silence, I replay what Eric was telling me. I take another sip of my water and then clear my throat.
“So that’s how Aja came to be your son, then? He told me you adopted him after . . . but I didn’t know exactly what happened.”
He takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says, exhaling. “Stephanie didn’t think we should. Adopt him, that is. It was our last big fight. Well, as a married couple, anyway.”
“What—why?” I say. “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting Aja.”
He studies me for a minute, gives a little grin, and then takes another sip of his scotch. “She thought he should be with his relatives. In England. But that wasn’t what Dinesh wanted. Also . . .” He pauses and glances at the hallway to make sure Aja hasn’t magically reappeared. “She was worried about Ellie. How it would affect her. I was concerned about that too, of course, but kids adapt. I thought it would be good for her—a lesson that life can change in a big way sometimes. And that we have to be there for the people that we love. Take them in.”
He reaches his right hand up to ruffle his hair, forgetting that he still has his rubber gloves on from dishwashing. When he realizes it, he drops it back on the table. “Stephanie didn’t agree. Said she just couldn’t go through with it. And I couldn’t not go through with it.”
“Wow,” I say.
He drains his glass. “Anyway,” he says, “that was kind of the end of the end for us—me and Stephanie. We filed for divorce shortly after they died.”
I wrap my hands around my cold glass, letting everything Eric just told me sink in. Everything he’s been through. My heart hurts for him in a way that it’s never even hurt for myself. I look at him. Really take him in, not just his “good bone structure” and olive eyes, but the tiny lines around his mouth; the way his hair sticks up like he just got out of bed, no matter how many times he tries to flatten it; his unbuttoned collar, revealing the vulnerable divot of skin at the base of his neck; the ridiculous yellow rubber gloves still on his hands.
And that’s when I notice it.
One of the rubber gloves is moving. Toward me. On the table.
I hold my breath, watching it. Waiting.
It stops millimeters from my hand, still cupping the glass.
“I can’t, you know,” he says, his voice husky, barely a whisper.
“Can’t what?” I ask, sure the earth has stopped spinning, that time is standing still.
“Resist your very sexy hands.”
He gently tugs at my wrist, compelling my hand to release the cup. I watch as his fingers travel up from the base of my thumb to my palm to my own naked fingers, until our digits become intertwined like the roots of a very old tree.
He sighs. “God, I’ve really fucked things up with Aja, haven’t I?” he breathes. He has, but he doesn’t need me to tell him that, so I don’t respond. And we just sit there, holding hands at the kitchen table like we’re some regular couple and it’s some regular Tuesday or Wednesday night in our regular apartment.
But it’s not. It’s Christmas.
My very favorite holiday.
SHAYNA’S SITTING AT the circulation desk when I get to work on Monday. Her head is bowed, a dark satin curtain of hair hiding her face, and as I get closer I see that she’s intently painting her fingernails. Black, it looks like. I don’t think she even notices me walk past her until I hear her say: “D’you hear about that blizzard coming?” She doesn’t look up. Doesn’t break the short brushstroke rhythm of her painting. “Supposed to dump like two feet of snow on us.”
“Yeah,” I say, remembering Eric’s mother said something about it.
“But it probably won’t be anything,” she says, blowing on the nails of her right hand. “Remember last year? They said the same thing—we were supposed to get, like, thirty-eight inches and we got seven.” She rolls her eyes.
“Yeah,” I say, even though I don’t remember. I go to the back room to drop my coat and bag. Maryann is sitting in her office, the door open. I give her a little wave. “How was Christmas?”
She looks at me and drops her eyes back to whatever she’s working on. “Just fine,” she says.
“Good,” I say, not expecting her to ask in return. She’s been short and irritable ever since she fired Louise, and I’ve been trying to give her a wide berth and some understanding. It can’t be easy to fire a friend—especially one you’ve been working with for so long.
THE SNOW STARTS falling right after Shayna’s shift is over at three. Just tiny flurries at first, like flecks of white rice being thrown by overzealous wedding-goers from the clouds.
Around four, I find myself staring at a snow-covered Aja. The flakes have grown exponentially—from bits of rice into fat, wet cross-sections of marshmallows—and they cling to his hair and puffy winter coat.
I nod at him, and he goes over to his computer carrel, dropping his bag.
Eric calls at five. “Hey,” he says. “The trains are a mess. Everyone’s trying to get out of the city. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“No problem,” I say. “It’s fine here. I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone says.”
Eric says something back, but the line is staticky and he gets cut off.
I hang up and look around, surprised when I realize Aja and I are the only two people left in the library. Even the pillow golfer has left.
“Hey,” I say, walking over to him. “Wanna play a game?”
He looks at me, unsure.
“C’mon,” I say. “It’ll be fun. Go get a stack of books from the shelves. Like five or ten. Any books.”
I grab some, too, and we sit on the floor in front of the circulation desk, surrounded by our selections. I pick up one of them. “OK, now I’m going to give you three sentences. Two will be ones that I made up, while one of them will be the real first sentence of the book. You have to guess which one.”
Aja gets into it, and we play for over an hour. We’re laughing so hard that I don’t even notice the door open until I hear a muffled voice shout: “Mm here! Mm here.”
I look behind me, and Eric is half bent over just inside the door and seems to be breathing heavily. It’s hard to tell, though, because he has a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face and a hat covering the top half. In fact, his eyes are the only visible part of his body. I stand up and rush toward him, taking in his wild eyes, his heaving chest, and wonder if he might be having a heart attack.
“Are you OK? What happened?”