Julia stalked back into the gallery and over to Erica. Her professional reputation was the only thing that stopped her from screaming. “I need to speak with you.”
Erica turned to her with a smile. If Julia didn’t know better, she’d think it held desire. “I was thinking how nice it would be to catch up. I’m sorry we weren’t able to at the open house when you first arrived. I was leaving for Paris early the next morning.”
Julia gritted her teeth. “This is more urgent than catching up. Could we step outside for a moment?”
Erica’s gaze traveled down her body and back up. “Certainly. Give me one moment.”
Erica stepped away and exchanged a few words with Sasha. Julia used the time to try to calm down. Because no matter how angry she was, and no matter how justified she was, picking a public fight with Erica would hurt her more than Erica in the long run.
When Erica returned, her smile had the same warmth as before. “Shall we?”
Julia led the way toward the exit, working to keep herself from storming out. When Erica’s hand rested in the curve of her lower back, she flinched. She turned back only long enough to glare at Erica. “Don’t.”
Outside, guests of the event loitered on the sidewalk, smoking and chatting. Julia stalked up the block, trying for something resembling privacy. She spun around and folded her arms. “Did you get me this position?”
Erica regarded her, the epitome of polish and poise. “What makes you think that?”
“Whatever you said to Taylor gave her that impression.” And stirred up a fear she’d mostly managed to quash.
Erica’s expression gave nothing away. “Would it be so very bad if I did?”
“Yes.” How could she possibly think otherwise?
“You have talent, Julia. Real talent. If I saw that and did what I could to foster it, you couldn’t blame me.”
Dread knotted in her stomach. “You never bothered to do that when we were together. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
Erica didn’t respond right away, giving Julia’s rage the chance to mingle with self-doubt into a dangerous cocktail of emotion. “You’ve come into your own since we broke up. It suits you.”
Through the haze of fury, Julia couldn’t make out whether the comment was a compliment or a come-on. Not that it mattered. “You left me pretty low. It wouldn’t have taken much to be an improvement.”
A line formed between Erica’s brows, the one tell of frustration she’d never been able to suppress. “You can’t blame me for growing bored. We both had. I was just the one willing to do something about it.”
“You could have broken up with me without breaking my heart.” Why were they even discussing this? She needed to bring the conversation back to the issue at hand—the possibility that everything she thought she’d accomplished was a sham.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She couldn’t stop the snort of derision from escaping. So much for keeping her cool. “Did you pull strings so I got this fellowship?”
Another pause, followed by a deep breath. Julia held hers. “I did not.”
Julia believed her but only because it came out so reluctantly. Air tumbled out of her lungs and a wave of dizziness washed over her. Had it not been humiliating, she might have bent over and stuck her head between her knees. Since it was, she dug her nails into her palms and willed herself to stay upright. “Why did you say you did?”
“I didn’t, actually. Taylor assumed and I didn’t correct her. You have to watch out for those women who are always ready to assume the worst.”
For as powerful as the relief was only a moment before, it evaporated in a cloud of entirely new dread. She could see Erica choosing the exact words to make Taylor do just that. “You had no right.”
Erica sighed, a trace of exasperation coming through. “You can’t tell me you plan on staying with her, staying in Kenota. Your life is here.”
Despite her anger, a burst of laughter escaped. “The life that centered around yours? The one you blew up without a second thought?”
“I backed you into a corner. I regret that. But look at what you’ve discovered, what you’ve grown into. You could do great things. Surely you’re not so stubborn you’d throw it away to spite me.”
Julia laughed in earnest then. Even now, in this moment of being all about Julia, Erica made it about herself. How could she have been blind for so many years? “Spiting you is literally the furthest thing from my mind.”
“Good. I should get back inside. I’ll call you next week to discuss your show.”
Since Erica didn’t frame it as a question, Julia didn’t bother to answer. Even though there was no way in hell she’d let Erica represent her or her work in any way, shape, or form. When she stood alone on the sidewalk, she pulled out her phone and tried Taylor again. Again it went to voice mail.
* * *
Taylor pressed a thumb to her sternum and told herself to relax. She was not having a panic attack in the middle of Manhattan. She closed her eyes and breathed in for a count of four, then out. Again. And again after that. There. That was better.
She opened her eyes just as a chorus of horns blared behind her. Her heart rate spiked again, which was dumb. She was standing on a sidewalk. They weren’t honking at her.
Taylor shook her head and continued walking. She’d ended up in Greenwich Village, full of shops and bars and queers and college students. It didn’t make her feel at home necessarily, but it was an improvement over the stuffy gallery crowd. She looked down at herself. Even if she was wearing a tux.
When she looked up, she found herself staring at Stonewall. Like, the Stonewall. She knew it still operated as a bar, but she expected it to be, what? More like a museum, maybe.
The door opened and a group of boys stumbled out. Not technically boys, but she couldn’t help but think of gay men in their twenties as that. Fondly, of course. With them, the thumping bass of club music. They laughed and linked arms and headed up the street.
Taylor looked at them, then at the door. Why the hell not? She could use a drink.
She sat at the bar and marveled at the queerness around her. More men than women, but people of all ages and genders and gender expressions milled around her. Some talked, some danced, some made out without even bothering to sneak off to a quiet corner. She could never live here, but she could appreciate the community of it. Jeb’s rarely had this many patrons of any orientation, and it was entirely possible there weren’t this many gay people in the whole county.
She ordered a Jack and Coke, then another. After her third, her brain had the fuzzy edges of a nice buzz. She’d expected it to soften the anger and the hurt, calm the roiling in her stomach, but it didn’t. Whiskey, apparently, had its limits.
She pulled out her phone. Julia had sent two more texts, pleading to explain, and another voice mail she wouldn’t be able to hear in the bar anyway. But then communication had ended abruptly about an hour ago. Maybe she’d decided to go home with Erica after all.
Taylor left the bar just after two, a little too drunk to drive home, but too restless to check into a hotel. She followed another gaggle of boys and landed at a Greek place with counter service. Although food was the last thing she thought she wanted, the aromas wafting from the grill pulled her in. It would do her good to soak up some of the alcohol anyway.
She left the restaurant, gyro in hand, and continued walking. She somehow ended up on Broadway and worked her way up to Midtown and Times Square. Other than her senior trip in high school, she’d never visited Manhattan. Seeing so many of its landmarks as she wandered felt kind of surreal. The press of people she imagined during the day had thinned, but what they said was true. The city didn’t sleep.
By the time the sun came up, her feet were screaming and she was completely sober. She popped into one of the sixty or so Starbucks she’d passed and got a coffee, then mapped herself back to the garage where she’d parked hours before. Time to go home.
On her walk back to SoHo, she checked her messages again. She had a worried text from Chris. Julia had called him when Taylor wouldn’t pick up. She assured him she was okay and would explain it all when she got home.
She decided to listen to the messages from Julia. The first was confused and seemed to be laced with irritation. The second picked up the pleading tone of her texts. The third went on for close to two minutes and included a vitriolic account of having it out with Erica and understanding why she left.
The last one did her in. Julia’s anger morphed into sadness and her plea to talk had an almost desperate element to it. Taylor had put that there. She’d been reactive and defensive and had jumped to conclusions. And she’d hurt the woman she loved.
She flipped back to the text conversation and pulled up the keyboard. Hey.
It was a weak opening, but she didn’t want to lead with apologies and desperation. That seemed like the sort of thing she should build to. And she still needed to hear Julia’s accounting of how Erica came into all this.
It occurred to her suddenly Julia might not answer for hours, or at all. Should she go to Julia’s apartment? She’d just started to panic about Julia maybe not wanting to see her when her phone vibrated in her hand, startling her so much she nearly dropped it.
Hi.
Never had two letters had such an immediate and calming effect on her. Even if they were on the noncommittal side. She decided to lead with a little bit of groveling, so Julia would know where she was coming from. I’ve been an ass. Can we talk?
I’d like that. Where are you?
Taylor took a deep breath and looked around, then typed her response. At the corner of Bleeker and Bowery.
Read but no reply bubble. Seconds ticked by. What if Julia told her she should just go? What if—
Haha. For real.
It was hard to know if Julia not taking her seriously made things better or worse. I’m serious. I walked the city all night and now I’m back where I started.
Another pause, probably less than a minute but it felt like ages. You didn’t go home. Shit.
How was she supposed to respond to that? But now we can talk in person?
There was no lag in her response now. We could if I didn’t just get here.
She’d included a shocked face, a crying one, and the one laughing and crying at the same time. It was sort of like the five stages of grief in emoji. On her end, Taylor was processing things more slowly. Despite there being no room for mistaking her meaning, she felt the need to reply with, What?
You said you were going home, so I followed you. Only you weren’t at your house. So now I’m home.
If she wasn’t stuck in the middle of New York City, five hours away from home and Julia and pretty much everything she cared about, she might be able to find the whole thing funny. But she was stuck, and Julia felt impossibly far away. Oh.
Instead of a text reply, her phone lit up with Julia’s face and number. “Hi.”
“Why are you still in the city?” Julia sounded incredulous, but not angry. That was good.
It was a fair question, after she’d declared so strongly she was leaving. She decided to go with the truth. “Leaving would have felt like giving up.”
“Does that mean you’re not giving up?”
The uncertainty in Julia’s voice tore at her. They couldn’t leave it at that, but for the moment, what remained of her anger evaporated. “I’d never give up on you.”
There was a long pause and she could imagine Julia pacing in her living room, weighing whether or not to believe her. “I could meet you halfway? Although wait. I’m not sure Scranton is where we want to sort through all this.”
For the first time since this whole ill-advised trip began, Taylor smiled. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll come to you.”
“Are you sure?”
Seeing Julia and getting out of Manhattan as quickly as she’d arrived? “So sure.”
“Where’s Waylon?”
Even more than Julia’s willingness to talk, her asking about Waylon gave Taylor hope. “He’s with Chris.”
“What if I went and got him and met you at your place?”
“That would be fantastic.” Even more fantastic than Julia offering to meet her in the first place.
“Is the key under the frog?”
She remembered. “It is.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll see you in a few hours, then.”
Five impossibly long hours. But she’d see Julia. For now, that’s all that mattered. “I’ll see you then.”