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She was such a fool. Her head in her hands, tears smearing her makeup, hair curling at the ends and falling out of its pins, an enormous run up the side of Hannah’s control top pantyhose, she knew that she never should have come. She bent down and unhooked the straps of her heels, easing her cramped toes out with an audible groan. God, her feet hurt so much.
But that was okay, because she was never walking again. She was going to stay in that bathroom stall for the rest of her life, too drunk and ashamed to show her face again. How could Ben have come here? How could he do this to her?
The tiled floor swam in her watery vision, blurred from her tears and the wine and the thudding between her temples. All she wanted was to crawl down onto the cool, hard floor and die.
There was a click and then the swell of noise from outside as the door swung open. Casey quickly covered her mouth and tried to sit as still as possible, not wanting anyone to know that the artist herself was in there, bawling her eyes out. She bit down on her nail as the sound of heavy feet crossed the floor. It didn’t sound like heels, but women wore all sorts of things. With how loud these footsteps were, it could be platform shoes. She tried to hold her breath to keep from hiccupping, hoping the woman would pee quickly and leave without bothering to primp in the mirrors.
But the woman didn’t enter one of the empty stalls. Instead, a pair of rich-brown boots in creamy distressed leather stopped directly in front of her stall, a slice of dark denim visible in the gap between the door and the floor. Casey inhaled sharply. Ben knocked on the stall door.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” she grumbled, breath ragged from crying.
“All the more reason for you to come out.”
Just hearing his voice made her spasm into tears again. “Go away, Ben,” she finally managed.
“Are you crying?”
“Never,” she sniffled, not wanting to bare herself to him. Not after he’d left her and then come crawling back...only to leave her, again.
“Please open the door,” he said softly.
“I don’t even know what you’re doing here. You should go.”
Ben pushed against the door, but she didn’t make a move to unlock it. “I came because I saw you were having a show. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Even if I spend most of it in the women’s room.”
She saw his weight shift and a second later heard the sound of the door opening and a woman’s high-pitched gasp of surprise.
“Excuse me, I just need a minute here,” came Ben’s voice, and Casey imagined him gesturing toward the locked stall. She hoped whoever entered wouldn’t recognize her from her shoes now kicked to the side so her feet could breathe. The door shut again.
“We can’t hog the bathroom all night,” Ben said, and she could guess from the movement of his shadow across the tiles that he was raising his arm to brush the hair from his eyes.
Her insides were screaming at him but her voice was surprisingly level. “All you have to do is walk out. You’re good at that, Ben. Then I’ll get up and we can both go our separate ways.”
Maybe it was too much of a jab. But did he really think he could just show up like this, after everything that had happened between them?
Apparently so. Because instead of leaving, he crouched down. She saw his hands on the tile—those same strong, tapered fingers that had touched her, caressed her, held her tight. Then his shoulders came into view, followed by the top of his head.
“God, you don’t make this easy,” he grunted. Casey shrieked and snatched her legs up, leaning back on the toilet seat. Ben was lying flat on what couldn’t be a particularly clean bathroom floor, trying to slide under the door to get into the stall.
“What are you doing?” Casey gasped.
“What does it look like?” His face was red from the strain as he twisted his back and shoulders up under the stall door to look at her. “Hi,” he smiled. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m not the one locked in a bathroom stall,” he pointed out, still splayed across the floor.
There was a flurry of stretching and squeezing as he shimmied under the door, his sweater and perfectly pressed jeans sliding across the tile. Then he pulled his legs in, his face up by the toilet seat. He poked his pinky finger into the hole in Casey’s pantyhose.
“You’ve got a run,” he observed.
“Well aren’t you helpful,” she grumbled. The run was the least of her worries. Now she was trapped in a very small bathroom stall, looking a complete mess, pressed up against the one person she would have given anything in the world never to see again.
Meanwhile, her own show was carrying on without her, her naked guts splayed on the wall for countless strangers to judge. The only good thing about her new situation was that Geoffrey’s wife was no longer sending her death rays across the room. She’d have to trust that unlike Ben, Geoffrey would respect the Women’s sign on the door and not slime his way into the bathroom to find her.
Ben leaned against the toilet paper dispenser, accidentally pushing the metal sanitary container off his hinges and jumping in surprise before settling against the wall again like he hung out in bathroom stalls all the time.
“Ben, what are you doing here?” she finally sighed.
“I told you. I saw you were having a show.” He paused. “To be honest, I kind of thought you’d invite me if something like this ever happened. I wasn’t surprised that you’d gotten a solo exhibition. But I was surprised not to hear from you at all.”
There were so many things Casey wanted to say—like, for starters, the fact that it wasn’t her job to make him feel better when he was the one who’d ended it, and out of the blue, after he’d inflated her with promises he never intended to keep.
But the words wouldn’t come out. The tears had started up again and this time they wouldn’t stop. She was a failure, a complete and utter failure, and Ben was just the next in line to know it.
His arms were around her in an instant, enveloping her with his scent and his touch, his sweater soft as clouds against her cheek. He crouched by the toilet while she sat on the lid, hugging her knees, her dress half falling off, her once delicate braid a bird’s nest tacked on her head. It was as though all the tears of the past year were flooding out again, for her and for Ben and what they might have been, and the hurt she felt, and her exhaustion at the show, and how overwhelming it had been to be back in New York.
“I’m sorry,” she choked into his shoulder, and she knew that she was crying also out of shame, for being afraid to contact him, for running when she saw him, for being locked in a bathroom stall bawling her eyes out instead of kicking ass at what was supposed to be the greatest break of her life.
“It’s okay,” Ben soothed, rubbing her back. “You have nothing to apologize for.” He passed her a wad of toilet paper for her to blow her nose.
“I had way too much to drink,” she admitted. “And I feel like shit.”
The tears were starting to subside, and in their place a vast emptiness was spreading through her, its cold fingers twisting her with guilt and regret, although she wasn’t sure exactly for what. For everything, it seemed. For everything wrong she had done, and the fact that she couldn’t hold on to love. That she’d come to New York and only proven how alone she was.
“You must hate this,” Ben said, raising her face to wipe the tears from her eyes, and with them a large smear of makeup.
Casey nodded miserably. “I thought it was what I should do.”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“I can’t. I’m supposed to, I don’t know, be charming or something.”
He laughed.
“I’m glad the thought of me being charming is so amusing,” she said, running her hand through her hair and cringing.
“I’m laughing because you’re always charming,” he said.
She blew her nose again. “Yeah, right. Always.”
He passed her more toilet paper to wipe the streaked mascara from her eyes. “Always,” he affirmed. “Even now.”
She unlatched the door and pushed him out. “Your lies are unbecoming,” she said. He extended his hand to lead her out of the stall.
“Let’s get something to eat. Those tiny cheese puffs do not a dinner make.”
“You don’t understand,” she protested. “I can’t walk away.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because you’re the great Cassandra Webb, taking the art world by storm?” he raised an eyebrow.
“No, definitely not that.” She shuddered just thinking about it.
“Is there really anyone you need to talk to here?” he asked.
She thought for a minute. Really thought about it. Finally, she forced a small smile. “Do you honestly think I can go?”
“Didn’t I once say that you could do anything you wanted?”
“Sometimes I want to shave my head and eat ice cream for every meal.”
“What did I tell you? Anything you want.”
She rolled her eyes and steeled herself to face her reflection in the giant mirror. It was as bad as she expected it to be. But somehow, she cared a little less. She splashed cold water on her face to bring the redness down and wiped the smeared mascara off as best she could.
A woman walked into the bathroom, glanced from her to Ben, and after a pause in which no one moved, skittered across the floor and barricaded herself in a stall. Ben shrugged and Casey tried not to giggle.
One by one, she pulled the pins from her scalp. Her hair was stiff with hairspray and she tried to twist it back. “What did you think of my ’do?” she asked, making a face in the mirror.
“It looked nice.” He smiled.
“Liar.”
He shrugged. “Okay, I like your curls better. It really does looks nice—or, well, it did. But it’s...it’s not really you.”
“Yeah, that was kind of the point.” She grimaced.
“I don’t see why that should be.”
“Frizzed freak wins Chelsea gallery fame? It doesn’t exactly have the right ring to it.”
“Isn’t this your show? Seems to me you can look however you want.”
“And Gorgon is not what I want.”
Ben laughed. “It’s curly! So what?”
The so what was that it was thick and frizzy and unruly and so, so red, and it went everywhere, spazzing all over her head as if she’d electrocuted herself in the bathtub. But it was so easy talking to Ben, falling back into their comfortable banter, that all she could do was make a face at him and his damnable optimism, which made him laugh harder and announce that she’d found her look for the night.
The twisty thing she was attempting kept failing to hold up without an elastic so she gave up on pulling the long strands back again and tucked the pins away in Hannah’s clutch. She would let it fall wherever it wanted in some kind of half-straightened, half-curly way. It couldn’t make her look much worse than she already did.
The woman came out of the stall and tentatively washed her hands. Casey tried to stifle her laughter, having forgotten someone was listening to the whole conversation about her hideous hair.
“We’re leaving now,” Ben said apologetically, making no move toward the door. The woman avoided eye contact through the mirror and left without drying her hands. They erupted into laughter as soon as the door swung shut.
When Casey was finally ready, Ben reached for her shoes, still on the floor. But she shook her head. “No, there’s no way. I can’t put those back on.”
She was being dramatic—of course she had to wear them. She hadn’t brought anything else. But Ben simply shrugged and said okay. They left the bathroom together, earning a few glances from the people hanging around the hallway. She slid in her stockings across the shiny waxed floor and he slung her shoes over his shoulders like it was the most normal thing in the world.
He walked resolutely toward the door and she followed, not daring to look up. She had no idea whether anyone noticed her at all. She didn’t get a last look at her paintings on display. She had no sense of how long they’d been in the bathroom or when the party would start winding down. She didn’t even know where Hannah and Jen had gone. But she had her clutch with her phone, wallet, and the spare key, so she could make it home.
When they finally pushed open the gallery doors and stepped outside, she allowed herself to revel in her liberation. It had rained while they were in the gallery and the sudden coolness was an immeasurable relief after the stuffy inside. Ben was right—she really could get up and go. She imagined Geoffrey looking for her, striding through every room, asking if anyone had seen her, perplexed as to why she’d walk off without saying goodbye. It was probably in the contract for her to stay until the bitter end, when the last judgments had been wrung and she’d been entirely undressed by his eyes. She shivered and pulled on Hannah’s black wool coat, grateful to have found it quickly on the rack and even more grateful to be out of the gallery, no matter what the repercussions might be.
“Shoes?” Ben extended the straps hanging by a finger.
She shook her head. When he flagged down a cab, she ran out into the street, feeling the gravel and grit and small puddles seep through her ruined tights. She slid across the back seat and Ben followed.
“55th and 8th,” Ben told the driver. Then he turned toward Casey. “I know this amazing hole in the wall Thai place. We’ll be the best dressed people there, but I could really go for some chicken satay.”
They were quiet on the drive, Casey rubbing her feet, Ben still holding her shoes. As the lights of Manhattan sped by, a soft rain trickling down the window, she had no idea how the night had provided this twist—and even less of a clue how it was going to turn out.