Page 18 of Seven Summer Weekends

She stretched out her jaw and pressed her index and middle fingers into the spot where the mandible and the maxilla meet. She must have been grinding her teeth all night. What used to be a once-in-a-while thing seemed to be a regular occurrence since losing her job. He noticed and approached.

“Can I?” he asked, holding four fingers in the air as if he were about to make air quotes.

She nodded, though had no idea why she was agreeing. Sheonly knew that she had woken like this every day for nearly a month. He sensed her hesitation.

“Trust me,” he said.

She winced. Trust was a hard thing for Addison.

He held her face in his hands and circled his fingers deeper and deeper into the spot where her jawbones connected. And the tension began to release—at first slowly, but then quite suddenly, until it felt as if there were only one layer left. One impermeable layer. He looked into her eyes.

“This is more than a lost job. What are you holding on to?”

She shook her head. She didn’t know. Her eyes welled up again, the third time in as many days. She was not usually a crier.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, maybe it is time you found out.”

The rest of the morning was a repeat of the day before. He modeled, she painted. He asked her rather ordinary questions about her life, and she surprised herself with her candid answers. She was hoping to get at the trust issue that, if she were to admit it, definitely played into every decision and indecision in her life.

Trying unsuccessfully to capture the soulful quality of his eyes, she painted them and painted over them half a dozen times before giving up entirely.

“Should we try meditating again?” he asked.

She agreed, and they sat on the floor, where the rug and pillows remained from the day before.

“So, you and Gicky? Was it love?”

“I like to think of it as a love story. Though some may call it tragic. I have a big family in Delhi, and while I had my freedom for a while and got to embrace nature and my spirituality—andGicky—my independence was short-lived. I was called back to run the family business.

“Gicky was fiercely independent. Living in India, being tied down to one place, was not something she could stomach for too long. I never really loved another as I did your aunt. We were so young when we met. I was working at a farmhouse outside of Delhi. The owner was a famous architect who had met Gicky at a show in Greenwich Village and brought her to India to paint a mural on one of his buildings. It was an avant-garde idea at the time. It was supposed to take a month or so, but she ended up staying the year. Mostly because of me. We fell in love after one week.”

“That quick?”

“You say it like you don’t think it’s possible. I’m here to tell you it is.”

She nodded in agreement, though she didn’t at all agree.

He stood, and stretched his back before sitting down again.

“How about you? Have you ever been?” he asked.

“To India, no. But it’s on my list.”

“That’s nice, but I meant in love. Have you ever been in love?”

“Oh. I was engaged once—to my college boyfriend. Well, we didn’t go to the same college. I studied graphic design and visual communication at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he was a finance major at UChicago. We met our sophomore year at this dive bar everyone went to called McGee’s. It was a funny mix of the artsy types from my school with the brainiacs from his. We bonded over beer pong—do you know what that is?”

“I don’t.”

“I could show you. It was a long time ago, but I was prettygood at it, though I doubt Gicky has any red Solo cups in the house. Can’t imagine she was much into single-use plastic.”

Paresh looked at her rather blankly, and she became über-aware that she hadn’t answered his question and was instead spewing utter nonsense. She paused, contemplating the thing she had never really admitted, even to herself. She stopped beating around the bush and babbling to this serious man who could obviously see right through it.

“No. I don’t think I have ever really been in love. I mean, I love my family and my friends, and I was mad for Trixie, my childhood cat, but looking back at my relationship with Philip—my ex-fiancé—I really liked him, and thought, at the time, that he loved me enough for the both of us. And that felt really good, and really safe, until the day the wedding invitations were mailed, and it suddenly didn’t. I ran—I ran all the way to New York.”

“If you have to wonder, you were not. I think it was a blessing that you lost your job. I think you lean toward the status quo when you’re meant for so much more.” He quickly changed the subject, preventing her from arguing with him.

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