He’s still staring at the student art even though I’m 90 percent sure he isn’t really seeing it. No doubt he’s ruminating on all the reasons he should say no. But when he opens his mouth, something else comes out.
“Sure. Yeah. That sounds fun.”
And just like that, it’s a date.
Sort of.
16
Friday comes too quickly and yet, at the same time, not quickly enough. It’s like the universe can’t decide if I’m more nervous or excited—because as much as I dread the dinner itself, I can’t stop thinking about Wyatt. Who said yes. Who is going with me. On our sort-of date.
It’s not really a date, of course. This dinner falls well within the purview of instructional content—I’m only going for my capstone project, which Wyatt is helping me plan. And because Michal invited me. So I probably shouldn’t be reading too much into things.
I’m definitely reading too much into things.
Michal, when I tell her I’m coming, lights up immediately. “You’re going to love it,” she says, already flipping through her notebook to find a scrap of paper, scribbling down the address. “We have a really good group of people. Everyone will be so excited to meet you.”
I’m not so convinced.
“Um…listen,” I force myself to say because not saying would be a dick move, “I kind of invited Wyatt Cole. Is that okay?”
Both Michal’s eyebrows shoot up. “Like my professor Wyatt Cole?”
Ugh, die now. “That’s the one.”
She barks out a laugh, and instead of rescinding the invitation as I expect, she goes, “I mean, yeah. Bring him. I’m definitely not saying no to feeding challah to Wyatt Cole. He seems like he’d be fun once he got the stick out of his backside.”
I mean. She isn’t wrong.
“And is it okay if I take pictures?” I ask. “I’m doing my capstone project on different spiritual paths within Judaism and—”
She doesn’t even let me finish. “Yes, of course! That sounds like an amazing project. We’d be thrilled.”
So I guess that’s that, then.
My last class of the day ends at six, which is almost but not quite early enough for me to make it back to Astoria, get changed, put on makeup, and then fight either traffic in an Uber or the absolute mess of train transfers required to get from Queens to Brooklyn before sundown. I’d just stuffed a black dress and some Glossier in the pit of my backpack and hoped for the best.
But as I’m swiping mascara onto my eyelashes in the fluorescent light of the Parker bathroom, I’m not really sure why I’m so concerned. I don’t think anyone at this dinner will care what I look like. Michal’s seen me looking worse. And Wyatt…well, I might care what he thinks, but he’s seen me in a variety of humiliating states, so the shine has probably worn off there.
I find him in his office at six-thirty, backpack slung over one shoulder. My lips feel weird and dry beneath their layer of red lipstick. “Hey. You ready?” I ask.
Wyatt glances up from his desk and meets my gaze. For a moment it’s almost like he doesn’t recognize me—a moment that stretches on long enough for me to wonder if he’s already forgotten that he agreed to come to dinner tonight. If this, the dress and the lipstick and the shoes with metal studs on them, is all just a bit too much.
Or if maybe, just maybe…
A coal flares in the pit of my chest, and I stare right back at him, refusing to look away even as that heat spreads like liquid through my entire body.
He clears his throat, one hand rising to grip the back of his neck. “Yeah. Sure. Ready whenever you are. Just—hold on.” He clicks at a few things on his computer, then finally pushes away from his desk to rise to his feet. His cheeks are slightly flushed, despite the healthy rattle of the window unit blowing cool air into the office. “Where is this place again?”
“Greenpoint.”
“Ah yes, the most inaccessible part of Brooklyn. Love it. How do you get there from here again?”
The answer is a route that involves more effort than any trip to Brooklyn is worth, in my mind, but I also understand I’m biased. You have to take the W or the R to the L and then switch to the G train, which is—in fact—the only train that goes to Greenpoint. Like, at all.
Greenpoint sits at the northern tip of Brooklyn, cut off from Long Island City—and the rest of Queens—by a slim creek, crossed by the Pulaski Bridge. It’s an old Polish neighborhood, the kind with short, narrow streets arranged in alphabetical order and little bakeries selling luscious marbled babka for prices half what you’d pay at Orwashers. It also has what might be the best pizza in New York. Hence it being an exception to my “never setting foot in Brooklyn again” vow.
It’s rush hour, of course, because rush hour is really like rush three hours in New York. That means Wyatt and I are crammed together on the train, shoulder to shoulder, his hand gripping the gross subway pole just above mine. I’m hyperfocused on that point of near contact, on how easy it would be for him to slide his hand just an inch downward and cover mine. The way it would feel illicit somehow, in public like this. My whole body aches to just…lean back against the firmness of his chest and let him envelop me.
Okay, be cool be cool. Look at something else. Someone else.
Only, fuck, no, don’t do that either. Awkward. It’s an unspoken rule that you don’t look at other people on the train. You’re supposed to just gaze blankly into space, absorbing without seeing, as if in a trance, until your stop. And even if you might talk to someone you know on the train during normal times, when it’s this busy, it doesn’t feel right. It’d be like clipping your nails in public—doing something that everyone does but that’s weird in this context.
I shift away from the rest of the train to turn toward Wyatt, not that staring at Wyatt’s broad chest improves my predicament. He’s wearing a navy-blue shirt that puckers slightly at the base of his throat. The color is heathered, intertwined with threads of gray and gold. One of them has come loose just over his heart. I stare at that thread like I can cauterize it with the heat of my gaze alone.
This close, even on the train, even surrounded by the stench of body odor and urine and someone’s McDonald’s fries, I can smell the low, warm scent of Wyatt’s shampoo.
Ahhrgjgjgjhgsd. I’m going to die here. I am going to perish, and on my grave they will write, Died horny for teacher.
Two transfers later, we emerge onto street level, and I take in several steady breaths of air that doesn’t smell like Wyatt. And I immediately dig out my phone and pull up the address on Google Maps.