Page 9 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Today had been a very bad day.
But tomorrow, well…
Maybe if she kept her chin up, she could face it. That’s what Tyrell would have wanted her to do, and obviously Rufus did, too. He’s the one who’d brought her this paper rose.
With shaking hands, Thelma clutched the origami flower to her chest. It was a small thing, but it was a lifeline of hope to hold on to nonetheless.
Tomorrow was another chance to fight.
A new day.
Chloe
Zac showed up early the next morning with steaming cups of freshly brewed coffee for Chloe and Becca. Even in workout gear, there was something dashing about him. Or maybe it was just because he was British, and decades of conditioning through James Bond movies made every American woman swoon at the sound of the King’s English.
“Good morning,” he said, pulling Chloe into a hug while assessing the all-gray hoodie and sweatpants outfit she had on. “That’s awfully drab and unlike you. You doing all right after the bombshell of yesterday?”
Chloe nodded into his chest. He hadn’t done his morning workout yet, and she breathed in the traces of his woodsy cologne that still lingered from his client dinner last night.
“Morning, Zac,” Becca said, eyeing the coffee cups. “Is one of them for me?”
“Extra large skinny latte with hemp milk, no whip, exactly how you like it.”
“You’re the best,” Becca said, although Chloe knew she didn’t really mean it. Becca thought Zac was a love bomber, someone who was over-the-top with flattery and gift-giving to overwhelm their target into a relationship. And because Becca had appointed herself Chloe’s big sister, that meant she was very wary of Zac.
Chloe wasn’t a cynic, though. She liked to believe that people could be nice just to be nice.
“Are you guys going over to the park?” Becca asked.
Zac had recently discovered the circuit training stations across the street from Chloe and Becca’s apartment. So for the past couple of Saturdays, he’d been coming over to get a workout in before heading back to the office for the afternoon. Chloe wasn’t really a let’s-work-up-a-sweat type, though, so she would take a book with her and “keep him company.”
“Depends on Chloe,” Zac said, looking down at her, still wrapped in his arms.
Chloe nodded again into his broad chest. “I’m up for it. It’ll be good to get out.”
Reading always soothed her, especially if it was a previously read favorite that Chloe could sink herself into, the familiarity of the world and the characters like a warm hug from an old friend who had no expectations other than time well spent together.
It was too soon for her to think about finding a new job; it had been less than twenty-four hours since she’d been let go, and Chloe was still working through her shock. But taking some time for herself with a book was a good baby step. She’d always told her students to be kind to themselves, to be patient, and she was trying her best to follow her own advice. She hoped she hadn’t been leading the kids wrong all this time.
While Zac ran interval sprints around the park and did… whatever it was that he did at the circuit training stations, Chloe settled down on a shady bench under a sprawling, leafy oak tree. Later in the day, this bench would be occupied by an Italian man who came to feed the pigeons every Saturday afternoon. But for now, the spot was Chloe’s, and she opened her well-worn copy ofLittle Women. The book had been one of her very first purchases when she moved to New York—from the wonderfully cozy Astoria Bookshop in her neighborhood—and she’d readLittle Womenfour times since. The first time, she had tried to underline her favorite passages, but she soon realized that would mean underlining ninety percent of the pages, so she decided just to love the entire book instead.
As she read, time fluttered by like a summer creek, a gentle burbling with no rush, only peace. That was the beauty of art: you could fall in and lose yourself, yet find yourself at the same time. And when you emerged, you were a wholly different—and better—person.
When Chloe reached one of her most favorite lines in the book, she smiled.
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
It felt, in this moment, as if the universe were speaking to her, or maybeit was Louisa May Alcott across a century and a half. Whatever it was, those were exactly the words Chloe needed, but since she’d long ago given up on underlining passages in the book itself, she reached for the pen in her purse and wrote the quote onto the back of the receipt she used as a bookmark.
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
It seemed truer when she wrote it out, and Chloe felt the muscles in her shoulders loosen a little. Losing her job was a setback—professionally, financially, and emotionally—but she would navigate her way to something new. What that would be, she wasn’t sure, but Chloe reminded herself she had done it before.
After the University of Kansas, she and her boyfriend, Michael, had done okay for themselves. As an art history major, she’d found a job at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, while he’d landed a position as a photographer for theKansas City Star. Then four years ago, he’d wanted something more, and he’d thought New York was the place for them to move up in the world.
But they’d broken up not long after arriving here, and Chloe hadn’t enjoyed her work at the Met because she’d spent all day in the back rooms of the museum, cleaning art or working on their cataloging system and not enough time with actual people. Chloe could have moved back home, closer to the warmth of her family in Kansas, but she’d stayed here, naively believing that the more than eight million people of New York City would inoculate her from loneliness.
It hadn’t. But still, she’d continued on, keeping her head above the surface in the dog paddle of adulthood, where you’re not really sure where you’re going and you’re making a mess doing it, but at least you haven’t drowned.
