Page 22 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
“This first-date question-and-answer thing,” Oliver said. “I don’t believe in relationships. They’re too…people-y.”
Chloe made that little mouse noise again, the one when her feelings were hurt. Oliver tried not to hear it, but it still burrowed into his chest and formed a tight knot against his heart.
“I’m not hitting on you,” Chloe said, rushing to gather her things. “For your information, I’m seeing someone.”
“Oh.” All the adrenaline drained from Oliver’s veins, and he suddenly felt hollow inside. “Um, right. Well… good for you.”
“You know, you had actually reminded me of someone, but I was wrong,” Chloe said. “Hewould never be so harsh and unfeeling.”
At least she’ll never confuse me with who I used to be, Oliver thought. Because when Chloe had known him, he’d been a boy who was chatty and quick to warm to strangers and game for anything anyone suggested. But that boy was long gone. His mother had destroyed him.
Chloe rose from her seat and shook her head. “This was a mistake. So, thanks for the coffee, um, whatever your name is.” She laughed ruefully. “Doesn’t matter, though. Chances are, we’ll never see each other again.”
She didn’t look at Oliver as she turned on her heel and walked out the bakery door.
And she didn’t notice the handwritten chalkboard on the sidewalk where Giovanni had written,Today’s Special—pain au chocolat with a mulberry jam swirl.Then, over the last part:Sold out.
Oliver
On the subway the next morning, Oliver couldn’t stop thinking about Chloe. It had been eighteen hours since they had coffee, and she’d been on his mind the whole time. He’d even dreamed about her and woken up in the middle of the night hot and bothered like a teenage boy. Oliver had forced himself to go back to sleep without doing anything about it, because he didn’t want to taint the memory of his afternoon with Chloe with something so animalistic. She was beautiful—even more so now than when they were younger—but she had always meant more to him than just physical attraction.
For a moment, Oliver froze as memories seized him. His mother, bursting into the house when he was sixteen and yelling at the family that the FBI was onto her, that they had to leavenow. The confusion and fear in his little brother’s eyes. His father desperate to keep their family together no matter what. And that awful, wrenching sound Oliver swore he heard as his and Chloe’s souls were separated.
He’d left Kansas without saying goodbye, without an explanation, and never talked to her again.
A decent person wouldn’t have done that to his best friend. To the girl he loved.
But Oliver had.
“Why am I even thinking about her?” Oliver mumbled to himself. “I don’twanther to know who I am. I don’t deserve it, and she doesn’t need to be hurt all over again.”
The commuters crammed next to him in the train car attempted to inch a little bit farther away. It was risky to stand too close to people who talked to themselves on the subway.
Oliver snorted. He had an intimidating frame, but honestly, he was amathematician. His greatest weapon was boring people to death with equations.
Still, he made a mental note to book the car service for a ride home tonight. One perk of working at Hawthorne Drake was they had professional town car service on retainer for anyone director-level and above who worked late. It was really just a trick to incentivize you to stay in the office, like the free dinners they offered. But Oliver would gladly take the opportunity to avoid public transportation—especially at the height of sweltering summer. He usually stayed in the office till late anyway.
When the train pulled into his stop, Oliver was first off. He wove through the waiting people on the platform, trying to get to the escalator as quickly as possible while not resorting to elbows.
“Excuse me,” he muttered over and over as he jogged up the escalator, ortriedto—why didn’t people understand that you stood on one side and allowed passing on the other? Oliver didn’t know who was worse, the tourists who blocked the path with their suitcases or the locals who parked themselves in his way while browsing on their phones. At least tourists had the excuse of being new to the city.
Finally, he made it to the top of the escalator, sweating slightly in his suit. As he emerged from underground, Oliver had to shield his eyes from the onslaught of sunlight.
His phone rang. It was one of the few numbers he had saved on his phone.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Morning, champ. Is it too early to call?”
Oliver softened at the sound of “champ,” which he’d earned from winning math competitions when he was in elementary school. He was thirty-two now, but even if he wasseventy-two, his dad would’ve still called him “champ.” Oliver didn’t mind. His dad and his brother were all the family he had left. His mother was still alive—Jennifer was in prison—but as far as Oliver was concerned, she didn’t exist.
“On my way into the office,” he said. “But you know I would answer a call from you even if it were three a.m.”
“Regardless, I’ll try not to take you up on that offer.” His dad’s voice hitched, and Oliver winced. Richard tried to hide his constant pain fromhis sons, but both Oliver and Ben knew the sounds of his pauses, the little intakes of air and the holding of them as he pushed himself through stabs of agony.
His suffering was Jennifer’s fault, of course. After her Caribbean timeshare scam collapsed and she made the family flee Kansas because the FBI was onto her, they’d flitted around from state to state. But because they had to keep a low profile, Richard had had to take on temporary gigs where they didn’t ask too many questions and paid in cash under the table. A lot of those jobs had been ill-supervised mining operations or construction jobs. Eventually, the family settled in North Carolina, but on his first job there an I beam fell from four stories up. It crushed Richard’s legs, and he never recovered. He was permanently in a wheelchair now.
“I love hearing from you, Dad, but is there a reason you called?” Oliver strode across the street with a mass of other suited bankers on their way to their offices.
