Page 8 of Silver Linings

“Hey, Hugo,” Silver says as she steps on the elevator.

“It’s Hendrix.” Ill humor coats my tongue as I correct her.

“Mmmm, I don’t know—I’m trying out a few different names for you. I’m not sure Hendrix suits you.” I slow blink, stare flat. “You should probably hit the button for the floor you need.”

Right. I reach for the panel of buttons on the wall, bringing me closer to Silver in the process, but she doesn’t concede an inch. She stays firmly planted as I hit the number seven, noticing she hasn’t selected her floor. I press the five and readjust my body to stand away from her again.

Civil avoidance, that’s what I’m going for. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I shouldn’t engage more than necessary. Professionalism is what I need to be thinking about, not how beautiful she is, or that fresh fruit is now choking my airwaves, making me dizzy with her scent.

The elevator finally starts to climb, and I see Silver turn to face me in the reflection off the steel doors as I staunchly stare forward.

“So,” Silver starts, “you never answered me last week when I offered to have your shoes cleaned after my clumsiness.”

I turn my head slightly to look at her now. She’s not flirting, but there’s definitely a glimmer in her eye that spells trouble.

“It’s alright. I couldn’t get the smell out of them, so I tossed them out.”

Her face goes slack. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’ll get you another pair. Just send me a link!”

“I’m teasing you. They’re my favorite pair of shoes.” They weren’t before, but they are now. She doesn’t need to know that, though. “I didn’t throw them out.”

A bell dings, and the doors open to her floor.

And then I see it, her shift back into this confident indomitable force as she saunters out of the elevator.

Just when I think she’s not going to respond, she flicks her gaze over her left shoulder. “Good. Now you can think of me every time you put them on.”

Then, the elevator doors close, and she disappears from my sight. Which is a good thing…so why do I feel a ridiculous tightening in my chest?

“Honey, I’m home!” Jae calls out from our apartment hallway.

“I’m in the kitchen.”

“Exactly where you should be.” He walks in and slaps my ass while I’m standing at the stove.

“How was work?” I ask him.

Jae has been my best friend since freshman year of college when we first became roommates.

After we graduated, I moved back to Seattle, and Jae became a tattoo apprentice here in the city.

Now, he’s a full-fledged resident artist at Anarchy, one of New York’s most elite studios, booked out for months in advance.

“I got to do this sick photo-realistic landscape of my client’s hometown in South Korea. We made it look like it was inside a stamp. It’s one of my favorite pieces I’ve done this year.”

We used to sit on a ratty couch in our dorm, tv playing in the background while he would ignore his coursework to draw, and I would be doing mine because failure wasn’t an option for me.

My dad had only agreed to let me go out of state for college on the condition that I come home after with a business degree to prep me for running the family business.

Most days, that was okay with me. I had always liked our business of custom furniture, loved the process of sketching and designing and would shirk off studying from time to time to draw with Jae.

Sam and Faye, the other two of our group, would inevitably join at some point, and the night would descend into chaos.

I loved it. Leaving home gave me the small taste of freedom I craved away from my dad and his expectations, but I went back as agreed and I stayed, training under him and my uncle to take over—that is, until our world shattered two years ago.

The very air in Seattle became so stifling that I finally had enough, packed my bag a few weeks ago, and ran back to the only place that ever felt like home: New York.

I pull myself from morose thoughts. “Let me see a picture of it.” I motion to the salmon I’m frying in a pan. “Do you want some of this?”

“Have you ever known me to turn down a meal?” He turns to grab a couple beers from the fridge, depositing one next to me and popping the top off with the silver ring he always wears on his index finger.

“Good point. Thanks.” I reach into the cabinet for dishes to plate up our dinner.

He fishes his tattooed hand in his pocket to grab his phone. “You would be able to see my work without asking if you would just get on social media. Even my halmeoni has Instagram now.”

I grunt in a non-committal response. I deleted social media after the accident, unable to stomach the surface-level messages from too many people who didn’t really understand.

I like it better this way, cut off from the bullshit.

Anyone who needs to reach me has my phone number, and that’s all I need.

We settle on the couch, and I set our plates on the coffee table before flicking on the Rangers game that started a half hour ago. Jae hands me his phone and the image on the screen is so crisp it’s like looking at a photograph.

“Dude, this is some of your best work.” I zoom in with my thumb and index finger to see the lush green mountain-scape surrounded by a flat open field. It’s hard to wrap my head around how he fits so much detail into a six inch piece.

“When are you going to let me tattoo you? It’s embarrassing my best friend won’t let me draw on him. I swear I won’t put a dick on you.” He holds up three fingers in the universal scouts honor signal.

I only have one large piece—a series of vines that twine from my wrists, up my forearms and biceps, curl under my arm onto my chest, and sweep over my shoulders to connect to a root in the center of my back.

One vine for my sister, Laurel, and one for my brother, Maddox.

He and I had it planned for months, and we went in on his twenty-fifth birthday—I got my vines, and he got a scape of Mount Rainier.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to get anything new since, feeling like if I do, I’m moving on in some way.

“Maybe one day.” I can feel my best friend scrutinizing me.

He snatches his phone back. “Enough about me. How was your first day?”

I pause, taking a sip of my beer. “It was fine.”

“That feels loaded”

He sees too much, knows me too well.

“Seriously, it was fine. I got there early this morning, and there was already an issue in this woman’s apartment. Collapsed ceiling from water damage. It’s gonna take me a while to fix it.” I lean forward to take a bite of my fish, staring at the game, trying to give him nothing.

“She’s hot, isn’t she?”

“ What? Why would you say that?” How could he possibly know that? What is he, a fucking psychic?

“Because you wouldn’t look at me when you started talking about her, and you kept the details very…clinical. You always do that when you’re hiding something.” He’s so smug as he takes a sip of his beer. “So, how hot is she?”

I groan and throw my head back on the couch.

He whistles. “That bad, huh?”

“She is unreal and off limits.” I go into detail, telling him about how I met her the day of my final interview and how surprised I was to see her this morning. When I finish, he sets down his plate and beer and turns to face me fully.

He grabs my face in both hands. “Fuck the rules, Hen.” He lets go, reaching forward to palm his beer.

On the screen, grown men pummel each other into baseboards, and it feels weirdly indicative of how the inside of my brain feels.

“I can’t risk this job. You know I can’t go back home.”

“I’d float you for however long you need.”

It’s an offhand comment, one born out of a desire to see me happy again, but my feeble pride would never allow that.

It was bad enough that I let him handle my share of rent until I was able to get a job.

To entertain it again… No, I couldn’t and wouldn’t do that to him.

This is my burden to bear, they were always my burdens to bear.

He truly is the best person I know, a brother by all accounts except birth, and one of the only people I’ve leaned on these past couple years, even in the limited way I was able to.

When everything felt bleak, Jae never gave up on me and checked in on me constantly, as if distance and a time difference didn’t matter.

But something always prohibited me from being entirely forthcoming, an attempt to keep the knowledge of how bleak it felt—feels—from him.

He asked eventually, of course, why I abruptly showed up at his door out of the blue, but he never pressed for answers when I didn’t give them.

“I know you would, but it won’t come to that, because I’m going to remain professional.”

“I’m going to be blunt with you.”

“When have you been anything but blunt with me—or anyone, for that matter? You have no internal filter.”

“Stop deflecting, dick. The last couple years have been shit for you. If she would help bring you some happiness, I think it’s worth the risk. You deserve to be happy. Maddox would want you to be happy.”

I’m white knuckling my fork, and the bite of salmon I just ate turns to ash on my tongue.

Fuck, my chest hurts. Everything hurts when I think about my baby brother. But just like I have for the past thirty-one years, I bury the feeling, unwilling to show weakness.

“I’m okay with how things are. I’m back in New York and around my friends. That’s all I need right now.” He starts to object, but I continue. “I won’t risk my job now that I have one. It’s enough.”

I think he can sense I’m starting to shut down, so he doesn’t press it further.

“What’s her name?”

I arch a brow at him skeptically. “Why?”

“Call it curiosity.”

“I just know her first name is Silver.”

I think he’s finally dropped the subject, because we go back to the game. A few minutes later, I can see him fiddling on his phone right before a wide, Cheshire Cat smile spreads across his face, crinkling his dark eyes.

Turning the phone to me, I see he has Instagram pulled up to an account called @SilverLinings. Silver’s face beams back at me from her profile picture, and it stuns me stupid yet again.

“Is this her?” I suspect he already knows, so I only give a non-verbal nod to confirm. I stand and head into the kitchen for another beer and hear him chuckling. “Dude, you are so fucked.”