Page 31 of Shades of Grey & Gold

I frown, glancing at my phone. It’s seven-fifteen. Nobody rings my doorbell at seven-fifteen in the morning unless it’s a delivery driver who has been personally sent by the universe to interrupt whatever I’m doing, which is a thing that happens to me with suspicious regularity.

I pad downstairs in my pajamas—oversized t-shirt, plaid pants, fuzzy socks, the full indignity—and pull open the door expecting to see FedEx or UPS bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Patrick is standing on my porch.

I narrow my eyes. He’s in a suit, which means he came here before work, which means this was intentional and not accidental. How exactly would it be accidental anyway? His hair is slightly more disheveled than usual and his expression has a stiff look to it.

I stare at him.

He stares at me.

“I came to—” he starts, and I go to shut the door but notice the coffee in his hands.

“What’s with the coffee,” I ask, but it comes out like a statement with a cringe.

A beat. “I remembered your order and thought…”

I look at the cups. I look at him. I look at the cups again.

“Come in,” I say, because I’m tired and the coffee smells good and I’m not having this conversation on my porch in my pajamas. “But don’t… touch anything.”

He sits in the armchair across from the couch. I put the couch between us like a moat as I stand behind it. He looks awkward, staring at the couch, which I assume is where he thought I’d sit. And awkward is fine with me.

The coffee is right. That’s the thing I can’t get past. It’s exactly right—the temperature, the combination of hazelnut, mocha and caramel syrups that sounds ridiculous when you order it and tastes exactly like what it’s supposed to taste like: a glorious sugar rush. I take a sip and feel a flash of betrayal at myself for enjoying something from a source I resent. I eye him suspiciously, wondering how he did this right.

I can’t remember the last time he got my coffee right when we were together. Hell, the last time he even brought me coffee.

Yes, I can. It was the first year we were together, before law school, when he was still performing a version of himself that was worth keeping. He used to show up to the library with two coffees, set mine down without interrupting whatever I was reading, and sit across from me and do his own work without demanding my attention. He just wantedto be near me and make sure I had what I needed to exist happily. I fell in love with that version of him. That version was real enough to be convincing.

Then I started law school and became an inconvenience, and he stopped getting the coffee right and started getting everything else wrong instead.

I take another sip. Warm, caramelicious treachery. With whipped cream.

Patrick has one hand on his coffee cup and blows out a breath of air slowly. He looks around and stands, obviously uncomfortable, and walks away from me, towards my desk. He’s looking at it and I’m wondering what the fuck we are doing here.

He stops and taps the top of my desk, his eyes popping up to mine. I make a face at what must be the remnants of his wedding invitation still spread across my desk in the corner—the lace paper, the torn envelope, the RSVP missing because it’s already in the mail—and he’s clocked it. I can tell by the slight tension around his eyes when he looked over, but he hasn’t said anything.

“I sent it as a peace offering,” he says, tapping the desk again. “Knowing we were moving here. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. That it might be less of a shock if you knew first or… something.”

“It was a shock anyway.”

“I know.” He exhales. “Max, I know I don’t have any right to ask you for anything. I know that. I know you will probably never forgive me for what I did and honestly, I’m not here to ask you to and I don’t think you should.” He moves to stand in front of the chair, towards the couch and I take a step back. “I just—I want to be able to be in the same building as you. I don’t want to have to leave a room when you walk in. I want some version of this that doesn’t feel like open warfare every time we’re within ten feet of each other. And I know I caused that, and I’m sorry, and I know sorry doesn’t cover it, but—”

He keeps talking.

I know he keeps talking because his mouth is moving and sound is coming out and Patrick has never in his life stopped talking in the middle of a thought. Because God forbid the man ever listens to anyone else.

But somewhere around ‘the way things ended wasn’t fair to you’ my brain makes a quiet and unauthorized departure to the memory of a restaurant two blocks from the office where pasta was ordered and a legal argument was made and a man with golden-green eyes and ink running down his forearms refilled my wine glass without being asked, and told me I could call it a date if I wanted to. I feel my lips tilt in a small smile and my eyes which must still be looking at Patrick don’t see Patrick anymore.

Instead, I see a smile and the crinkle of gorgeous eyes across from me. The most perfectly pink lips sip wine. He looked at me like nothing else existed in that restaurant, barely even glancing towards the waiter with polite words before his eyes were back on mine.

I wonder if he’s awake yet. I bite my bottom lip, and my smile gets a little bigger.

I don’t even know where he lives, which is a strange thing to realize. A few blocks from the office, he said once, which means somewhere in that grid of streets I walk every morning. I’ve probably passed his building. He’s probably standing at a window with a coffee. Maybe he has his own espresso machine. That kind of sounds like Cal. Waking up, walking to the kitchen in his underwear and having an espresso before—

My mind makes a U-turn. I wonder what he looks like first thing in the morning. Hair unruly. His beard soft without the day behind it. The way his eyes look when he first opens them while he lies on his pillow. I can almost feel the way his fingers would caress my cheek and his lips. He would definitely offer me one of his fancy espressos.

I think about his lips again and the way his mouth looked around the rim of his wine glass last night. The way he laughed at something I said and his entire face changed, and for a second, he looked exactly like the person he was at a Halloween party at twenty-three, sitting at a table with a beer and a cowboy hat and—