Page 157 of One Wrong Move

Her voice was a bit shaky, and hesitant, and I wonder if she’s ready to talk about it fully.

“Oh?” I ask. It feels like a beautiful but skittish animal approaching. I don’t want to scare it off. “Is that something we should talk about… or keep it in the box for now?”

She smiles against my skin. “I like that box metaphor.”

“It’s been very useful for us.”

“I think it can be in the box for now. For a little while longer,” she says, her voice soft. “As long as you know that it’s there.”

I rest my forehead against her wild curls and swallow hard. “I know it’s there, baby. Thank you.”

“Mm-hmm. Just a head’s up. And how would you… how would you feel about that? Theoretically?”

“Harp,” I say. My throat feels tight, and I can’t say it to her back, or she’ll hear the whole truth in the words. The years of longing and the recent happiness. So I settle on something else. “You own me completely… and that’s got a box all of its own.”

Harper

“Okay, there’s no way all of that happened in the last two weeks,” Aadhya says. We’re having iced coffees on the steps of the gallery, having just closed up.

I nod. “Yup. And you know what? The thing I was most worried about; the fact that his best friend was my ex? Wasn’t a problem at all.”

“Of course it’s not,” she says. Takes a long sip of her iced cappuccino. “Because he wanted a beautiful woman more than he wanted to keep an old uni friendship. Perfectly reasonable.”

I chuckle. Happiness feels like there are soap bubbles inside me, light and floating to the surface. It’s a gorgeous June day in London, the gallery’s event is coming up, and I’m chatting with a friend. About to walk home through Chelsea and up to Kensington, past the houses I find just as pretty now as the first time I made that journey, to arrive home. Nate will be back at around eight, and we’re going to have a date in the garden.

Our first true date.

“I mean, when you say it like that… I suppose it makes sense.” I cross my hands and look down at my feet. Stuffed into a pair of navy ballet flats. “Only, do you think it’s too soon for me? To get into a new relationship?”

She lifts her shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Honestly? Yes. Maybe. But maybe not. I think a lot of people have hard and fast rules about those kinds of things, but it’s always unique to each case. You have to do what feels right to you.”

“Yeah,” I say and use the straw to stir in my drink. The ice makes soft clinking noises, and, somewhere in the square, a bird trills. “I’m really excited about him and about this. Us. What might happen if I continue down this road.”

“Judging by that smile on your face, I believe you,” Aadhya says while grinning.

“I used to be afraid that he was too much like my ex. They’re both ten years older than me, both quite… well-off. In a way I’m not,” I say.

“Makes sense,” she says reasonably, “if they have a ten-year head start on their careers.”

I nod. It feels weird not to have told her that Nate Connovan, who occasionally buys art from the gallery, is the same man as my “friend-turned-roommate-turned…-lover.” But it would be even weirder to confess it now, after all this time.

“And I want independence, you know? At least for now. I want to see more of Europe, and to work here with you, and see where life takes me.”

Aadhya unfolds her designer sunglasses and slides them on with practiced ease. “My free-spirited American,” she says. “I’m glad they chose you as the new junior trainee, you know.”

I pretend to gasp. “A compliment?”

She grins. “You’re fun,” she says. “Wild, but fun. God help me if I’d been forced to deal with some uppish British girl.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Sorry to tell you, but?—”

“I know exactly what I said,” she says, her smile intact. “And I like being the only me in a room.”

That makes perfect sense to me.

We say bye, and I start walking back home. Past the boulangerie with beautiful loaves in the window, past the second-hand shop and the perfume store, and onto the residential streets. I’m not seeing any of that, though. My thoughts are swirling.

The past two nights, I’ve slept in his bed.

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