The Seven Year Slip

EVENTUALLY, I STOPPED PAINTING and drew myself a bath.

I sank down into the hot water, the lavender and chamomile from the soap I’d used soft and calming, and I stared up at the crown molding on the ceiling, all of the intricate swirls and gilded patterns characteristic of the Monroe. I must’ve dozed off at some point, because the next thing I knew the front door was opening, and I heard someone cross the apartment. Their footsteps were heavy. I rubbed my eyes with my pruny fingers.

I sat up in the bath.

Iwan.

I reached for my phone on the stool. Five p.m. already?

“Lemon? I’m back,” he called, his footsteps coming closer.

“Here!” I replied, trying not to panic. “I’m—um—in the bath!”

His footsteps suddenly stopped. “O-oh!”

I winced. Nice going, Clementine, I thought to myself. You should’ve just said not to come in. My ears burned with embarrassment. “Don’t make it weird!”

He sputtered. “I’m not making it weird, you’re making it weird!”

“You made it weird first!”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You said Oh!”

“Should I have said something different?”

I buried my face in my hands. “Just—just ignore me. I’m going to go drown myself in the tub. Goodbye.”

He chuckled. “Well, don’t drown yourself for too long. I’m cooking again tonight,” he added, and his footsteps faded into the kitchen.

I quickly reached for my towel and pulled myself out of the bath. I heard him in the kitchen, putting things away, as I dried myself off and remembered that I hadn’t picked out any clothes. “Shit,” I muttered, and opened the bathroom closet to try to find one of her bathrobes. Instead, I found a lovely black satin robe with a marabou feather trim. It was utterly ridiculous—the kind of expensive robe wealthy women in old movies wore, complete with a long cigarette holder and a dead body in the foyer. I snorted, pulling it off the hanger. I’d almost forgotten that she had this monstrosity. A few years ago, it caught fire thanks to her Saint Dolly Parton candle, and she ended up tossing both out the window in a panic. The apartment smelled like melted feathers for weeks.

Well, it was better than a towel, at least.

I shrugged on the robe. It still smelled like her perfume. Red by Giorgio Beverly Hills. So distinctive and intense. She’d worn it for close to thirty years.

As I came out of the bathroom, Iwan glanced over at me, my hair damp, smelling slightly of lavender soap. He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Blinked—quite a few times. Then he said, quite seriously, “Ma’am, I’ve a very serious question to ask you: Did you murder your husband?”

I fluffed up the boa and adopted a terrible mid-Atlantic accent. “I’m sorry, Officer, I can’t recall how my husband died. It must’ve been the pool boy! I’ll have to get a new one.”

He arched an eyebrow as he stood by the stove, where he slowly heated a large saucepan, half a dozen lemons on the counter beside him. “Pool boy or husband?”

“I’m not sure, what’re your credentials?”

He flicked his gaze down the length of me. “I’ve a pretty healthy résumé,” he replied in that soft, low Southern drawl of his. “And plenty of references.”

I tsked. “For your character, I hope.”

The edges of his mouth twitched as it turned into a sort of halfsmirk, and he really thought he was being suave as he leaned back against the stove—and gave a yelp. “Sonova—!” He quickly threw his hand into the air, but he’d already burned the shit out of the tip of his pinky finger, and stuck it in his mouth.

“Are you okay?” I asked in alarm, dropping my awful accent.

“Fine,” he said around his pinky in his mouth. “I’m fine. ’Tis only a flesh wound.”

I gave him a look and came over, taking his hand out of his mouth to inspect his finger. There was an angry red mark all the way across the inside of it. “We should put butter on it.”

“Butter?” He sounded incredulous.

“Yes? My mom always does it.”

He laughed then, and gently took his hand out of mine. He turned on the faucet and ran his pinky under the cool water. “This’ll do just fine, I’d hate to mess up your aunt’s Échiré.”

It took me a moment to realize—“Her fancy butter has a name?”

“It’s not fancy if it doesn’t have a name,” he replied gallantly, turning off the faucet while I grabbed a bandage from the first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet. He outstretched his hand again once he’d dried it, and I wrapped it in a Disney Band-Aid. “Would you like to kiss it?” he asked. “Make it feel better?”

“That doesn’t work.”

“About as well as butter, I suppose” was his reply.

“Well, in that case . . .” I really didn’t like how smug he sounded, and in my aunt’s feather boa, suddenly feeling brave, I brought his hand to my mouth and gently kissed the bandage.

His face turned a lovely pinkish-red, from his neck all the way to his scalp, making the freckles across his cheeks glow. And it was also strangely sexy, his curly hair messy from a day out in the city, his tie loosened and askew, dressed in a white button-down that didn’t quite fit him, and black trousers that I was sure were a few years old at this point because they were frayed a little at the hems. Whenever I took a closer look at him, he was disorienting in the kind of way kaleidoscopes were, constantly moving and shifting, full of colors and shapes that shouldn’t have gone together but did in a way that made it perfect.

He might have been the most handsome man I’d ever seen.

But especially when he blushed.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbling with the difficulty, discombobulated.

I dropped his hand and said, “Butter works, by the way.”

“I . . . uh.” He looked at his bandaged finger.

“It feels better, doesn’t it?”

His gaze fell to my lips. Lingered there. He bent toward me, millimeter by millimeter, and the closer he got, the more of him I drank in, his long eyelashes, the freckles across his cheeks and nose, multiplying by the moment. His lips looked soft. He had a nice mouth—a kind one. It was hard to explain why it looked kind, but it did.

But then something made him pull back, second-guess himself, and my stomach twisted a little in regret. He cleared his throat. “Fine, fine. Butter might work,” he said, busying himself with tossing in measurements of sugar, some sort of corn starch or flour, and salt, and the pinkish tint only remained at the edges of his ears.

Were you about to kiss me? I wanted to ask, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted the answer to be no. But instead, I asked, “What’s for dinner?”

“Oh, this is dessert,” he replied, motioning to the lemons on the counter. “How do you feel about pizza tonight?”

“I think there’s a number for delivery on the fridge . . .”

“I meant frozen.”

I let out a laugh, though it sounded hollow to my ears. “Are you sure you’re a chef?”

“I’m full of surprises, Lemon,” he replied, teasing me with another grin, and we were back to before. It was silly to feel disappointed that he hadn’t kissed me. This wasn’t me at all. And, apparently, it wasn’t him, either. “And besides,” he added with a wink and shot me charming and—admittedly cringey—finger guns, “I’m making you a dessert tonight, instead.”