So I told him.
The YMCA is busy when I return, international students trying to use some kind of translation app to communicate with the receptionist.
I pick out my best clothes, an H&M top and a pair of jeans that fit tight to my hips. I clean my ballet pumps with wet wipes. And then I hit the showers.
On this floor I don’t get a public shower room with three showers, each with a clingy curtain. I get an individual shower room down the hall. As soon as I open the door and find clean tiles, a toilet, a sink, a shower, a lockable door, the relief washes over me. Lockable. I take my time under the jet of water, and my mind wanders. To Scott in his training gear. To how his arms and shoulders would look heaving back the oar of his boat. To how he and I walking around Chelsea later on tonight will look exactly like the way he and KT might have walked around Chelsea a month ago. There isn’t a person alive on the planet, save for Mum and Dad, who could spot the difference.
I let my hair dry wavy, more like KT’s, and then I blow-dry it and apply my make-up. I spray perfume on to the insides of my wrists and rub them and dab behind my ears, just as she did. I never normally wear perfume. It irritates my eyes.
The walk down Ninth Avenue is a dream. I understand this city now. The noise and the way the sunbeams cut between the tall buildings. The fire trucks and the steam rising from pipes in the middle of intersections. People hustling and people kissing. The metropolis is starting to grow on me.
Pumpkins outside stores: large, medium and small. I guess Halloween is a big deal here.
The occasional waft of my perfume puts a spring in my step. An extra level of confidence. It’s Armani Mania. The scent KT used. I straighten my back and start smiling. I never usually smile when walking around like this, never.
Scott will be waiting for me outside Chelsea Market. Maybe he’s bought me a going-away gift. Maybe a book or a trinket, something he thinks I’ll take back with me.
The Avenue is longer than I’d expected and my pumps are getting more grimy with each block. But I arrive in time. Eight o’clock.
There’s nobody here.
No Scott.
I wait, and I circle round the block in case there’s another exit I missed. A row of four yellow school buses sit parked opposite under a metal fire escape.
The waiting fuels my anxiety but it also makes me excited. What are his expectations for tonight? A fifty-minute bowl of noodles then he runs off to drink tequila shots with his rowing buddies? Or has he carved out a few hours for me?’
And then I see him.
Walking towards me from the East Side, from Eighth Avenue.
He’s backlit by headlights and his silhouette is perfect. The breadth of his shoulders and his chest. The easy way he walks. The glow from his hair and the length of his legs. Suddenly I’m awkward, shy, grinning like a fool. He crosses the street and I can’t look him in the eyes. He comes closer and I look up and he is smiling.
‘Shall we?’
Chapter 29
It’s just like a real date.
Scott seems relaxed. He tells me he trained for two hours today. We are walking next to each other. Like a normal couple.
He holds the door open for me. The restaurant is called Co Ba. Vietnamese food.
We’re seated and people look at us as we pass their tables. The tall chiselled athlete and his date. A natural pairing. I smile and sit down. We’re not at a good table, not in the corner, not at the back of the room, no good lines of sight, and you know what, I don’t even mind. Who’s going to hurt me with Scott Sbarra right here? Nobody, that’s who.
He orders a gluten-free beer and I order water.
‘You don’t drink?’ he says.
‘I tried a glass of wine one time,’ I say.
‘You’re not much like Katie, are you?’ he says.
‘Same and different,’ I say. ‘She was the wild one.’
‘There’s a GoFundMe at school. We’re not sure what to do with the money yet. Maybe a plaque or an assistance fund for international students? We’re already up above fourteen thousand dollars.’
‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘You organised that?’
‘Me and some of the others,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t just me.’
I should really order plain white steamed rice. I should ask for a spoon. I should check out the toilets before I touch the food, just as I do in every restaurant I eat in for the first time. But I don’t. There is what I should do, and there is my own free will. That tension is there. Tonight, with Scott, I choose to be carefree, relatively speaking.
‘You like your pho spicy, Katie?’ His eyes widen. ‘Oh, shit, oh, no. I’m really sorry, Molly, shit, I am so sorry, Molly.’