Page 3 of Center of Gravity

“So I’ve been told.” His eyes lifted to mine, a playful if wary intimation in them. I could tell he was still trying to feel out the situation.

I pulled my gaze away to find Tom standing in the foyer where he’d rolled in the dolly, clearly waiting for instructions.Right. Packing up my parents’ belongings.

Once we’d walkedthrough the house, it was decided that Tom would run the truck back and forth to the storage facility and Goodwill with smaller items while Alex helped me with packing. It wasn’t my decision, because I would have switched their places, but Alex seemed to be the ruling voice between the two of them, and they’d informed me rather than asking.

I’d packed a few boxes on my own and piled clothing on the bed right after Dad’s heart had finally given out, but then work had gotten busy and in truth, it had been depressing business to do alone and I’d welcomed the distraction of tax season. Thinking back on it now, my mental reflexes had been clouded with grief and I just hadn’t recognized it. I should have, considering I’d already gone through it a months before with my mother. Grief might have followed some kind of logical pattern, but the fine details of it didn’t, and for the past year, the only thing I’d managed to keep in a straight line was my career.

So when Summer had offered to handle setting up the moving and packing over the summer when work was less busy, I’d gone back to the city and left everything. Even Winslow, who’d initially been rehomed with a neighbor down the street until she decided she couldn’t take the yapping and informed me that when I returned to pack, she’d be returning Winslow to me. So I was now a dog and a house richer and felt the exact opposite.

Alex and I focused on the living room, Winslow running figure eights around us as I set him up at the bookcases. My brilliant plan: divide and conquer while avoiding conversation.

In the years my folks had lived there, I’d watched the wall-spanning shelves accrue knick-knacks, starting with the set ofReader’s Digesthardbacks and figurines that had traveled from Jersey and expanded in a patchwork array of more coastal-themed pieces: a watercolor of a sand dollar from some local artist my mom had gotten excited about, a few pictures of Summer and me in front of the fireplace over Christmas visits. Cold War novels mingled among Stephen Hawking, interrupted occasionally by delicate porcelain statues. My father had been a collector of history, my mother a lover of tchotchkes.

Alex, with his arsenal of boxes, bubble wrap, and newsprint, picked up one of Mom’s imitation Lladrós and turned it over in his hand, examining the bottom of it.

“That one can go in the junk box,” I said.

Alex glanced at me sidelong. “Are you sure?”

I must have appeared confused, because he crooked his finger at me, turning the bottom of the piece outward so I could see it when I stepped closer. “See the stamp there?”

He smelled faintly of caramel, an overture of sweetness mingled with soap and a hint of sweat. The sun poured in from the front window, spilling white-gold highlights over the crown of his head. His hair was the floppy sort that was in style, the kind of messy tousle that begged for fingers to straighten it. Or pull it. I gave a cursory glance to the stamp on the bottom, an inscrutable bit of gold cursive. Then I waited for him to continue, trying not to get too stuck on the shape of his mouth and the brown-gold fan of eyelashes I’d never planned on seeing in the daylight.

“It’s an imitation, sure, but the guy who did this one became famous in his own right later. This one’s worth something to vintage collectors. Not a lot, but not exactly something to put in a junk pile, either.”

I stared at my sudden Sotheby’s auctioneer. “How do you know that?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question, but Alex offered me a fleeting smile that stoked a warmth low in my stomach. “I’m an art major.”

“SCAD?” We hadn’t covered that in the club. We hadn’t covered much aside from how to get each other off.

“Holly Brook College. SCAD’s uglier, but way cheaper, stepsister.”

“Art history?” I liked art fine, but the idea of poring over brushstrokes or sculpture in minute detail might’ve put me to sleep. Give me a column of numbers and a balance sheet any day. Numbers made sense. The vast theater of humanity and life played out in art? Not so much.

Alex chuckled as if he’d read my thoughts, “No. Three-dimensional design, sculpture, mixed media. But I’ve had a lot of art history courses. Took one in contemporary last semester and this guy”—he tilted the figurine side to side—“stuck with me because he didn’t nail his own style until his seventies. His career was basically five years of success and profit, then he died. All the time before was spent making replicas. Kind of sad, huh?”

Alex was increasingly intriguing to me, an enigma of art and existentialism wrapped in the package of a guy who looked like he should be wearing shin guards and kicking a soccer ball, and tied up with the silver loop around his lower lip. He was an anti-stereotype stereotype.

“At least he finally got it right.” I could commiserate with late bloomers. Some days it seemed as if I was waiting to see if there was still more left to unfold or if what I had now was the best that it got. Summer had suggested counseling and that conversation had been one of the few times that I’d bitten her head off, telling her I didn’t need psycho-analyzing, just a month or two where something didn’t fall apart.

I reached for the figurine, thumb running over the glossy ear of the lamb and right into the edge of Alex’s. I didn’t feel an explosive spark, not the magical kind you read about in books, this kind of ethereal certainty or soul connection. I just felt his skin. But there was a faint sense of thrumming current that pulled my eyes upward, only to find his were already on me. He smiled and it was a bright and brilliant thing that almost made me forget my devotion to pretending he and that night in the club didn’t exist.

Maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention, maybe it was because we were alone in a quiet room, but it felt as if I hadn’t been smiled at like that in forever. I let myself indulge in a fantasy of pushing him up against the bookcase, spreading his arms wide, and peeling his clothing off slowly, until I realized he’d spoken again.

“—if you were patient.”

I shook my head, not wanting to add anything else to my never-ending to-do list. “Let’s just junk it. Someone else can stumble upon it.”

Alex’s mouth twisted in something like regret as he reached for a piece of newsprint and wrapped the figure before setting it gently in the box.

“It’s yours if you want it,” I said.

His gaze jerked up to me. “Are you sure?

“Sure.” It wasn’t any skin off my nose and he seemed reluctant to let it go. With another quick smile, he retrieved the figurine and put it aside on the window sill.

“So three-dimensional art,” I said. “What’s that look like?” I slid a stack of books from the shelves and, after flipping through the covers, stacked them all in the open box at my feet.

“Very punny.” He grinned. “A lot of experiments right now. I’ve tried marble, metals, concrete.” He rattled through materials and subjects while pulling items off the shelves, holding them out for my direction if he was uncertain where they should go. He was efficient and quick, chattering as he wrapped and boxed, comfortable in the multitasking as he spoke of botched statues, a period where he’d thought he might like to portray the human figure in marble like the Italian greats until he’d decided he was too impatient. I liked his voice, the way it suffused the room with a life that had been lacking for months and I realized, quite suddenly, that my main affliction at this point was not sadness but loneliness. Whether one was more palatable than the other was hard to say.