Page 8 of Square Waves (Big Fan #2)

VII

Willa must have talked to Leon about our deal, because when I stroll into the store the next morning—wearing a coat of mascara and a lip stain, so sue me—he barely looks up from hanging shelving.

So I get to work.

We spend our days avoiding each other. It’s actually not that hard—he’s assigned to big projects that involve technical expertise and difficult manual labor, and I’m more of a glorified errand runner.

I paint walls, I pick up coffees and lunches, I input SKUs into the inventory system.

If we end up in the same room, Leon and I nod briskly and say as little as possible to each other.

“Is there any more coffee?” from me. “Can you grab the door?” from him.

But that doesn’t keep me from noticing just how good he is at what he does.

Willa was right that he’s inquisitive, and it’s evident he’s put his curiosity to good use, teaching himself how to do a little bit of almost everything.

When the electrician does finally show up, two days delayed, he and Leon talk technicalities that make my head spin.

Leon’s the only person aside from Willa who’s allowed to touch the temperamental kiln.

He lugs bags of clay from one place to another, and his lean arms flex with hard muscle when he does.

I learn more than I should about the way the curves of his tattoo shift when he moves.

The focused expression he makes when he takes product photography and determines pedestal placement.

By the time the end of the week rolls around, I’m a ball of prickly frustration.

I’ve been helpful, but I haven’t revealed myself to be particularly talented at anything—no secret skill, no path to a lifelong career.

That, and I’m annoyed that I can’t stop thinking about how, even though he’s an asshole who hates me, I still want Leon Park.

And now I’m also stuck with the knowledge that if I were to give in to temptation again, the sex would be incredible.

Friday’s weather exacerbates my desire to crawl out of my own skin. It’s a rare hot day, and there’s no AC in the space, so everything feels stuffy and sticky. Willa has a meeting with a potential collector in the afternoon—a fancy art guy—so she’s extra-anxious herself.

She spends the morning fussing over everything, changing her mind so many times that finally, Leon tells her she needs to chill, which means that she comes to vent to me. It’s not yet 11a.m., and everyone’s nervy and sweaty, and the air feels charged.

Willa leaves, but that tension remains. Leon is doing something in the back room, and he’s playing music too loudly for me to concentrate.

I put on headphones. He sees me, and I swear to god he turns the music up louder.

In retaliation, I go out for coffee and a chocolate croissant and don’t get him anything, which is particularly rude because it’s impossible to spend a day here without learning how obsessed that boy is with a good pastry.

By 2p.m., I’m dying to get out and go for a walk. I packed a sandwich that’s sitting in the refrigerator, but I decide I’m allowed to ignore it and take myself out, if only for a change of scenery.

But as I’m about to leave, there’s a knock on the front door. I open it to a heavily perspiring delivery man. “Hey,” he says brusquely. “Where do you want it?”

“Want... what?”

“All of this.”

He gestures behind him, and I see what he’s talking about: a dolly loaded with extremely large boxes labeled HEAVY and also FRAGILE.

Oh Jesus fucking Christ. This is the last thing I need right now. My stomach is growling, the air is stifling, and I have no idea what’s in those packages, much less where they’re supposed to go.

I don’t want to ask Leon. But also I know calling Willa in the middle of her big meeting is not an option.

I take a deep breath and then release it. “Can you hang on a sec?”

“Sure, but if you could make it quick—I’m running late, and I need to get going.”

“Of course, of course, just let me—” I hurry across the room and open the door to the back, sticking my head through. “Leon, are we expecting a delivery?”

He jumps at the sound of my voice. He’s been sitting at the table in the back, sketching while eating, and one of his hands goes to cover whatever he’s been drawing. “No.”

“Okay, I just, there’s a guy here, with a dolly?”

Leon’s face changes in an instant, and he’s on his feet. “Oh fuck, is this the Villeneuve delivery?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t—”

Leon is already striding past me.

But at the door, the delivery man has already unloaded the shipment. So much for Where do you want these? “Can you sign, please?” he asks, holding out his clipboard.

Leon dashes off a signature. And then it’s just me and him and the boxes. There are ten of them, three or four feet on each side. HEAVY and FRAGILE start to look like taunts.

Leon sighs. He wipes his forehead, damp already from the heat. “We need to get these to the far corner.” Then, with a withering look at me, “I can probably do it myself.”

I shrug, taking some comfort in the well-worn groove of our mutual distaste, grab my bag, and head for the door.

Then I make a crucial mistake. I glance over at Leon and see how hard he’s struggling.

The boxes are a little too wide for his wingspan, and they’re too unbalanced for him to carry.

He curses, steps back. Considers his options.

I picture Willa’s disappointed face if something were to get damaged just because I felt the need to prove a point.

Then Leon attempts another lift. It seems like it’s going better, but then the box shifts, starts to slip, and I can’t help it: I drop my bag on the floor and dash over before it falls out of his hands. Our eyes meet, and we almost smile.

“Thanks,” Leon says.

“Yeah, well. These look expensive. Too many loud warning stickers on the packages for them not to be.”

Leon laughs. It’s the first time I’ve seen his face open up since—

Not useful .

“What’s in these, anyway?” I ask as we both try to strategically position ourselves around the corners of cardboard.

“Do you know who Alan Villeneuve is?”

“Nope.”

“He’s a glassworker. Makes these chandeliers that—actually, once we move them, I’ll open one up and show you. They’re pretty amazing.”

“Okay.” The tension between us lessens by a couple of degrees. “So should we just... walk?”

“I think we should try it.”

We do a kind of shimmy, each of us grasping the short ends of the box. My hands are sweaty and my fingers are cramping by the time we gently—so gently—lower it back to the floor.

“One down.” I wipe my palms on my cutoff shorts.

Leon takes a beat too long to respond. “And nine to go.”

I roll my wrists. “How did you get so in-the-know about the art world?” I’m proud that I don’t sound as accusatory as I usually do with him.

Leon nods. “I worked at a coffee shop in college, and one of my coworkers was a really great sculptor. That’s the funny thing about the odd-job life—it’s either burnouts or superfocused side hustlers.

Anyway, she introduced me to a lot of cool people.

And their work started to change my perspective on it. ”

A flare of jealousy burns in my stomach, which is completely ridiculous. I know literally nothing about this woman, except that she... exists. And Leon thinks she’s cool. Which, so what?

“Were you—back there—I didn’t mean to snoop, but—”

“I was sketching something for a painting I’m making.” Leon looks at his feet before lifting his eyes to mine, seemingly with some effort. “Willa asked me to hang some pieces here.”

I think of Procrastination —of course I do—but I don’t consider bringing it up. Progress. “Oh. That’s cool.”

“Yeah. It is.”

Leon nods to me, and we pick up the second box in silent tandem.

“So what do you think of this Rick guy?” I ask as we start to move. “The one Willa’s having lunch with?”

“Richard,” Leon corrects me. “Richard Kerrigan.”

“Right. Him.”

Leon shakes his head. The movement almost sends him off balance, and he doesn’t answer until we’ve put the box down.

“He’s legit. He used to be one of the most famous art dealers in San Francisco.

He retired to Marin a few years ago, but then he got bored.

He’s not officially in the business anymore, but he buys and sells out of his home sometimes, and being part of his personal collection is the ultimate.

He’s gotten more into functional art recently—furniture, glassware, pottery.

The kind of stuff Willa does. His house is, like, a thing. ”

By the time we return for the third one, we’ve found our rhythm with the boxes.

When we’re done, I’m covered in a film of sweat, and so is Leon.

He’s wearing a perfect Bay Area skater outfit today: a pair of khaki Dickies, a T-shirt so worn-in that it’s practically translucent.

He lifts the hem to wipe his face, and I’m hit by a wave of memory: what it felt like to linger there.

To dip my head lower, and taste him. The room smells like him, that same intoxicating mix of exertion and Old Spice, and I’m terrified that he can see it on my face.

Maybe that’s why I blurt out, “Did you tell anyone what happened?”

Leon’s expression goes wary in an instant. “What?”

Nice to know I’m the only one still thinking about it. But it’s too late to back down, so I say, “You know. About us. What happened the other night.”

“No.” His eyes narrow as he assesses me. Then he turns toward the first box we moved. He crouches down, pulls a box cutter out of his pocket, and runs it along one of the carefully taped seams.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I told anyone?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Cassidy.” He puts the blade down and stands back up. He sounds like he’s being very patient with me. “I know you. And I know you’d never admit that you lowered yourself to sleeping with me .”

That he’s not wrong just makes me angrier. “But aren’t you equally ashamed that you slept with me? That you couldn’t resist my try-hard, bitchy wiles?”

“You didn’t have to try very hard, as far as I recall.”

I cannot believe he’s using my orgasm against me.

All of the resentments I’ve been storing up for way too long come spilling out.

“You know, I never finished answering your question, at the bar. It wasn’t just that time in seventh grade.

It was every time after that. It was when you slouched into class late and sat in the back and laughed like all of us who were there to take it seriously were some kind of joke to you.

It’s that the last time you made any art, it was nothing more than a wink at your own cleverness, a fuck you to me, and a reminder that you can get away with anything if you feel like it.

It’s the way you are , Leon. You act like nothing in the world matters to you.

Not school, not girls, certainly not me—”

Leon scoffs. “What was the purpose of me trying to impress you back then, or even now? And when was I supposed to do it, for that matter? When you were making a point of showing me up in school? Or at the bar when you treated me like I was still that same eighteen-year-old? You’ve made it very clear exactly what you think of me: that I’m a slacker well beneath your notice.

But look where we both ended up: right fucking here. ”

In the silence that follows, I realize we’ve both been shouting. Leon’s breathing hard, like he just ran a mile. Like he’s gotten something off his chest that he’s been waiting more than a decade to say.

I want to come back at him. To tell him he’s wrong, and I’m right and always have been. But when he puts it that way—I don’t know. I don’t like the version of me he’s describing either.

My hand throbs with a cramp, and I realize I’ve clenched it into a reflexive fist. The muscles protest as I force it to uncurl.

God , I think. I’ve been defending myself against Leon’s imagined dislike for so long that I never really thought about how it was for him to be on the receiving end of my anger.

Once I’ve had that thought, all of the fight goes out of me. I pull my hair off my neck and huff out a breath, like it’s the temperature and the work that’s doing this to me, not him. At least one thing is clear: I need to get out of here, now .

“I’m gonna go get some lunch,” I say.

“Whatever.”

I grab my bag from where I dropped it. Behind me, I can hear Leon opening the seam of the next box, and I remember his offer to show me what was in them. I am curious, but I don’t dare turn back.

Instead, I release myself into the heat of the day.

When I return, the charge of the space has dissipated, and Leon is holed up in the back.

But he did unpack the boxes, and their contents are on display: a series of intricate glass mobiles, each of them rainbow-hued and shimmering in the sun streaming through the skylights.

They throw rainbows onto the walls and puddles of color onto the floors.

My eyes go wet. I can’t remember the last time I saw anything so beautiful. I want to ask about them—how they’re made. What they mean. If he got emotional at the sight of them too.

But that would mean having to acknowledge everything we just yelled at each other. The rage we’ve been sitting on for stupidly long. So instead, I go back to the table and open the laptop. My ears perk at any sound coming from the back, but I don’t see him for the rest of the day.