Page 24 of Fruit
I look at myself in the mirror after I flush the toilet. Jesus, I look like a crazy person. My hair is frizzed as hell and my make-up is smudged at the edges of my eyes. I knot my hair haphazardly into a bun. It’s not Instagram messy-chic. I look like I’ve been electrocuted.
When I step out of the bathroom, I catch Sebastián crouching on the floor as he plays with Nina. My stomach tightens with guilt. Truth is, I hadn’t really given thought to how Sebastián would feel about having Nina taken away. I’d been the one who heard Nina meowing in the middle of a summer storm, the one to pull her from under the dumpster and hold her in the car. The one who stroked her goodbye as she was taken away, barely responsive, by the vet. I was the one who had decided having Nina was the antidote to the rudderless feeling inside me. Sebastián was just an extra in my life. Convenient help to get the hero and her cat to the vet.
But, now, watching him play with Nina, I wonder if I’d skipped all the parts Sebastián played and the fact that he’d nursed her to health himself.
Still. Maybe I’m just not that good a person. I can’t let Nina go.
“Hey,” I say, pulling the sleeves of the hoodie over my hands. Sebastián gets up.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
We get Nina into the carrier together. She’s not happy, but she’s toomansato protest too much.
“Oh, wait, your hoodie,” I say as I’m about to leave.
“It’s fine. It’s still a little chilly. Keep it until next time,” Sebastián says. I pause slightly but nod.
“All right. Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He looks down at the carrier. “Bye, Nina,” he says.
I press my lips together in an attempt to avoid calling him out for being adorable.
This is the guy who wants to steal my cat away from me, I remind myself. He isnotadorable.
“Okay, well. See you next week,” I say. He nods.
I walk out and don’t hear the door close until I’m down a flight of stairs.
**********
“Yay, I’m so happy we finally managed to catch up,” Hikari says as we sit down at the café table.
“Me too. It’s been like…”
“Since we left college last Autumn.”
“Fuck, yeah. Okay, tell me every—wait, let’s order some food first. Fuck, I’m starving.”
Hikari laughs but agrees, and we debate a few items on the menu. Hikari and I hadn’t been as close as I had been with Joaquin, Ezra, and Moore, the last now playing in the NFL, or with Iván, Isadoro, and Jack, whom I’ve grown a lot closer to the last few years. Hikari had been in most of my classes, however, and she’d been organised enough to motivate me into study sessions with her.
“Okay,” I say once we order. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“Well, remember that job I told you about?”
“The one at Odet Gallery?”
“Yeah. I got it.”
“No shit! Hikari, congratulations! I can’t believe you didn’t open with that.” I grin at her. Hikari smiles, tucking a strand of her straight, dark bob behind her ear.
“Thanks. It’s—honestly, I can’t quite believe I got it. It’s, like, literally what I wanted to do.”
“Oh, my God. Tell me everything.”
“So, each show—I get to coordinate where the pieces go and how they’re lighted and stuff like that, with the artist’s input, of course. But it’s so much fun. That gallery specifically is amazing because a lot of the walls actuallymove, so it’s like, there’s just so much to play around with. It’s like creating art with art, or pulling things together to tell a story.”
