She trails him to the exit, ruining his attempt to leave the building in a cloud of quiet, stoic anger. Josh ignores her, letting the heavy front door slam behind him. Without the barrier of his patchy beard, the wind bites at his face.
The hinges on the door squeak and Josh picks up his pace, hurrying across the intersection, forcing himself not to look over his shoulder.
Ten seconds later, he hears a pair of footsteps, jogging behind him in double time.
“Hey!” Ari shouts. “Wait up. Where are you headed?” He doesn’t slow down, but she manages to catch up, breathing hard. She looks at him expectantly, like there’s no reason they shouldn’t walk to some new destination together. “Train?”
Josh racks his brain for an alternative before coming up empty—because where the hell else would he be going in Astoria?—and giving her a curt nod.
“Me, too,” she says, putting on the mittens that she claims are warmer than gloves. An adult wearing mittens. This is who he’s losing his goddamn mind over? “I’m meeting up with that couple in Chelsea. Salt-and-Pepper-Man with the hot wife.” Of course she is. Of course that little dress was meant for someone else. She’s not even wearing her new coat today, despite the frigid temperature. Like she doesn’t want to risk reminding him of anything. She’d rather shiver in her unlined, sale-rack-at-T.J.Maxx peacoat.
“This weekend went so fast,” she continues. Since when do they exchange banal pleasantries like this? He should ask Ari what she did yesterday to make the weekend pass so quickly, but he doesn’t actually want to know. Probably went home with one or more near-strangers and left their apartment fifty minutes later.
He’s too fucking agitated to anchor. The emotional storm clearly blew his shitty boat out to sea.
Maintaining a steely silence, Josh takes even longer strides as they round the corner onto Thirty-first Street, as if perhaps he can outwalk the possibility of a conversation.
Instead, she keeps going. “So that girl at the bar was hot, right?”
“Yes,” he says through gritted teeth. It should feel like twisting a knife, but it’s a hollow victory. Mutually assured destruction.
“Gabe said you got her number.”
Josh turns around in front of the wide staircase leading up to the subway platform. “Yes.”
He examines her face for signs of hurt, but her tells are frustratingly subtle. Her lips pinch together into a tight line but there’s nothing he could snapshot and file away under visual confirmation of Ari’s true feelings.
“Cool.” Every monosyllabic word she utters jabs him in the sternum. She takes a few steps up the staircase, transforming her expression back into a placid mask of indifference.
And that? That is exactly why he owes it to himself to try this. To take this nice girl from Connecticut—or was it Philly?—with big brown eyes and full lips on the most standard date possible. Just dinner or a drink. A slightly awkward kiss at her doorstep. It would be perfectly fine and nothing more. There wouldn’t be any stomach-tightening, slow-churning agony.
Which is much better. Healthy. It’s what I deserve.
He takes the stairs two at a time, brushing past Ari.
* * *
ARI FUMBLES FOR her MetroCard as Josh moves swiftly through the turnstile.
She’s tried bland conversation. Following him at close range. No tactic she can muster seems to mend whatever is broken.
As she swipes her MetroCard, her hips slam against the turnstile bar. Insufficient fare. Dammit.
Josh is probably praying for the train to whisk him away before she can refill the card. He’ll return to the safe confines of Manhattan and go on with his life, satisfied in the certainty that he’s dodged a bullet.
Ari makes a show of retreating to the ticket machine, half-hoping he’ll turn around and offer to swipe her through. Not so much because of the $2.75, even though that’s the equivalent of about thirty minutes of NeverTired labor.
She just needs something—one gesture—to build on. To prove this crack won’t deepen.
Tapping her index finger on the fingerprint-smeared glass to select the $5.50 minimum, she watches Josh walk a few steps in the other direction, past clumps of bundled-up people waiting for the next Manhattan-bound N.
By the time she swipes the refilled MetroCard and pushes through the turnstile, Josh is pressing a pair of AirPods into his ears.
It stings.
No. It doesn’t just sting, it hurts. It’s the kind of petty silent-treatment bullshit Cass would pull anytime Ari wouldn’t capitulate and apologize for some crime against their relationship. Like a little warning of things to come.