Grayson had let himself go slack against her, taking the weight off his own knees. His arms tightened around her shoulders and he’d fallen damply against her leg.
There was a place in sex that emotion didn’t quite reach. No matter how great the betrayal, how intense and inflamed the anger, how long the separation, there was a place that was just bodies fitting into each other—unquestioning, uncomplicated. Easy. It felt so easy to lie here, joint and groove. Maybe they should do this. Make a new life in the Catskills. It would be far enough from the people they’d messed up being. Grayson could share the little barn that was going to be her studio, or maybe he could have it and she’d take the attic, with all that good light.
Easy.
Easy?
Is that what Grayson thought?
Did he come here thinking that it would be this easy? His head felt greasy against her clean skin and his three-day beard pricked her neck. He hadn’t even bothered to clean himself up for her, probably came straight from Sabrina’s bed. What kind of beds do mattress heiresses sleep in? Saina had pictured Sabrina lying atop an impossibly high pile of satiny mattresses, her golden hair fanned out across a mound of pillows, Grayson leaping off the top and landing at Saina’s door. And he’d known that all he had to do was knock.
“Is this what you thought?” she’d asked, furious. “That you’d show up at my door and I’d just welcome you with open legs? Do you really think you’re that irresistible?”
He’d stared at her a minute before replying, “Saina, what the hell.” Just like that. Flat. No affect.
She pushed him off of her and then reached over to tug his jeans up. “Get dressed,” she said. “I don’t want to see you like this. God, you haven’t even said anything to me yet!”
And then Leo, her Leo, had walked in through the still-open door with another bunch of flowers—picked from his own front lawn—walked in, seen them, and turned right back around. Saina jumped up, thanking god that she was wearing a skirt and not a pair of pants that would probably be swamped around her ankles, and grabbed his arm before he could get through the doorway.
“Nothing happened,” she said.
“I think that is probably false.”
“It’s not just anybody, Leo. It’s Grayson.”
“That’s even worse. Underwear.”
“What?”
“You don’t have any underwear on.”
Saina felt nauseous. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I can see it on the ottoman thing.”
Defeat, lacy and pink. “Okay.”
Grayson broke in. “Saina, baby, who is this? You’re dating someone else already?”
She turned to him. “Dating someone else already? How long did you expect me to wait, Grayson? Until you guys had another baby? You got someone pregnant already, and you didn’t even wait until we’d broken up!”
Her former fiancé was already lounging on the rug, as comfortable as if he’d built the place himself, leaning back on one elbow, pants kicked aside, indigo eyes staring straight up at her, unfazed.
“I’m not going to be part of this,” said Leo. He opened his hand and dropped the flowers. Fragrant, obedient, they beheaded themselves on Saina’s salvaged-wood floors.
“That’s it?” said Saina, not sure if she was in despair or not. “That’s how you leave? No him or me, no fight, nothing?”
“You’re not wearing any underwear. How could this possibly turn out well?”
Saina swallowed the very slight urge to make a threesome joke and took a step towards Leo. Battered wool shirt, mended and torn work pants, old leather lace-up boots, faded leather belt with a worn brass buckle that could have brought in a few hundred at her friend Dahlia’s boutique on Ludlow, fingernails scrubbed scrupulously clean the way, she’d learned, that farmers’ always are.
And then she looked over at Grayson. Paint under his nails, always. Even if he hadn’t touched a canvas in weeks. Hair cut by a Lower East Side stylist who required a password to make an appointment (last she’d heard, it was “seventies bush”). Striped boxers from Paul Smith, which even she thought was a needless expense. Yes, Grayson was an asshole. But he’d left Sabrina on a stupid pile of mattresses in the city and come back for her, for Saina. He had.
She felt that sick tug that leads us down paths we know are doomed.
“Leo,” she said, sad. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry sorry or you’re sorry goodbye??”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Be a grown-up, Saina. You make me stand here and talk to you while he smirks at us, you can say goodbye to me.”
And so she’d done it. Closed the door on Leo and turned around to Grayson’s triumphant hug. Later that night, after the tears and the confessions, after Grayson said that Sabrina had miscarried and he’d stayed out of guilt because she’d seemed so sad—an explanation that Saina had known was suspect but still couldn’t stop herself from believing—after they’d explained and apologized and finally crawled into bed feeling like they’d earned it, Grayson had turned to her with a grin and asked: “Is it true, then?”
Knowing exactly what he meant, she asked, “What?”
“What they say about black guys?”
“What’s that, Grayson?”