Page 19 of Center of Gravity

Henrik and Associateshad been generous with my request for two weeks off, but then I’d expected no less, having taken no sick days and rarely a vacation day over the last ten years. I busted my ass for them days, nights, and weekends. During tax season, I lived in the office. It was easy to foist taking time off on handling my parents’ estate, especially since I’d more or less left everything just sitting there right after Dad’s funeral so I could help the firm through tax season. But I couldn’t deny that it was difficult to see Sean, especially in the mornings. His office was down the hall from mine and every time I walked past it, I couldn’t help but remember lying in bed next to him, the sleep-hazy way his eyes opened when he woke, that somnolent smile he pressed to my cheek, my stomach, the inside of my thigh. I was his senior and we worked together on several accounts. Over the weeks after we’d broken up, I’d managed to shift myself from some of them to focus on others, but not all of them. And I didn’t want to draw any attention when the whole business was my fault. I was an idiot to have ever gotten involved with someone in the workplace. So I took my dose of punishment every morning when I walked down the hall.

I still hada half glass of wine left when I got off the phone with Summer. I took it with me, letting Winslow out into the small backyard while I walked room to room. Though I’d not grown up here, there were memories enough vying for space with the cobwebs in the corners. Most of them from college breaks or family holidays. Mom piling every piece of her china on the kitchen table to prep for Thanksgiving. Dad bent over his desk, tiny paintbrush in hand, his glasses low on his nose. Or the way he’d fall asleep in the wingback in the living room, his head tipped back, lips parted, book open on his lap. He’d always say he hadn’t been sleeping, “Just putting my dust covers on for a bit.”

Summer was into auras and energy, not in an obnoxious way, just more of an awareness, and walking around the dim rooms, I understood what she meant. When Mom and Dad had both gotten sick, the energy of the house itself seemed to slow and wrap around them. The frenetic hum of Thanksgiving became a muted, syrupy march of time. And now there was just a vague emptiness, this strange transitory state between one family’s memories and what was yet to be. The house seemed stripped somehow, and when I stood in the living room, wine warming in my hand, looking at the bare walls and the two-foot square swatch of paint Alex had tested near the window, I expected to feel more nostalgic than I did.

Instead, something like anticipation rose within me, a nervous, vagabond energy that was waiting for the right place to uncoil. I just couldn’t make sense of it yet.

I turned off the lights one by one as I moved through the rest of the rooms, the house falling quiet and dark behind me, the moon spilling in like a thief of shadows.

I opened the back door and let Winslow in, listening to the drone of cicadas and the steady beat of waves. And then I felt peace. Not whole, not complete, but a kind of patchwork of it interspersed with the sadness I was used to.

In my old bedroom, with the ceiling fan on high and a table fan trained on the bed, I slid beneath the covers and Winslow surprised me by jumping up next to me, giving me a begrudging glare before he snuffled and flopped along my calves.

Just before I set my phone to silent to ward off any late night Sean interruptions, it chimed with a text from Alex saying he could come at noon the day after tomorrow.

I texted him back that that was fine. Because it was.

Everything was fine.

6

Alex

Idecided to admit to myself that I was pursuing another hookup with Rob. Subtly, though, because he was skittish. But I wanted him. Because he was attractive. Because he was difficult. Because I wanted to resolve all of the discrepancies between the man I’d hooked up with in the club and the man I worked with. But there was more to it than that. Something I couldn’t name but acknowledged as a little unhealthy. Not obsession or anything like that, but this compulsion to leave an impression on him. I didn’t know. I wasn’t imagining a future with him. But a night? Yeah. It had become a challenge, and probably it was my own kind of fucked-up way of diverting myself from the other shit in my life, but was it a terrible one? If I could pull it off, at least we both got laid, and what was so bad about that?

We’d finished the walls in the living room and hallway and had moved on to the kitchen, for which I’d chosen an airy, gray-tinged blue that pulled out the deeper hues in the pale granite countertops.

“People themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them forever.”I recited it to Rob’s back.

We’d been working quietly, involved in our respective walls across the room from each other. He was curled over the counter, painting the wall between the countertop and cabinets, angled in a way that made his shoulder blades sharp and showed the round knobs of his spine where his T-shirt stuck to it. His feet were bare, one balanced kickstand-like on the floor as he leaned. There was a very fine dusting of hair over the top of his big toe and two well-defined shadows at his ankle where the tendons strained to keep him in position. I liked to watch the way his body moved within light, the shadows painted over him by motion. It was kind of like an intimate show, this private correspondence of body and light I’d noticed and become fascinated by in my first figure drawing class. I’d been naturally tuned into it ever since.

He nearly bumped his head on the cabinet as he glanced over his shoulder at me, ducking just at the last moment, so that the cabinet raked back a little bit of his hair instead.

“What’s that?”

I repeated the line. “It’s fromPride and Prejudice. I liked it.”

Rob gave me a lingering odd look and I gave him one in return. “Did you not actually read it?”

“I’ve read it, but it was years ago.”

“So it’s not your favorite book?”

The flat line of Rob’s mouth took on a humored curve. “Probably not, no.”

I’d scrounged around one of my boxes in the garage to find my old copy from high school the night before, wondering what it was about the book that had made an impression on Rob. Apparently nothing.

“So whatisyour favorite book, then?”

“Back to those kinds of questions, huh?” he muttered, turning his attention back to the stretch of wall beneath the cabinet. But he answered, after dabbing a spot of paint from the counter with his thumb. “I can’t think of a favorite. I don’t read a lot these days. Unless it’s tax code or something work related.”

So that was a dead end. I hated dead ends with Rob, and they always seemed to come when I asked direct questions. I felt like a blind man trying to put together a puzzle. Shit, a blind man would have done it better than me, and Rob’s puzzle had no corner pieces. I hadn’t ever put much effort into learning more about a person in order to get in their pants before. It either happened or it didn’t.

“So what’s the story with the piercings? Is there one?” Rob turned the tables, though unlike him, I didn’t mind all the questions. Even if he was just asking to be polite or pass the time. I wanted him to know me. Or, at least, I wasn’t scared of it.

“You mean like is it some form of rebellion against my parents or the Man?”

“I suppose.”