Page 52 of 32 Days in May

Eleventh floor.

Too late.

“Wow.” I move slowly through Marco’s living room, dragging a hand over the long, suede back of his couch. “You own this place?”

“I bought it when I was twenty-two, immediately after season one.” Marco says this like it’s some sort of discredit to the fact that he owns property in Lower Manhattan. I can tell he’s vaguely self-conscious of his celebrity, but to be honest, I’d completely forgotten. Somewhere along the way he’d just turned into Marco, the filmy mug shot and the overly photoshopped promo photos of him in a cowboy hat gone from my memory.

He’s in the kitchen, divided from the living room by an enormous glossy island, making us both an espresso. The distance is sobering, and I’m desperately grabbing at conversation topics.

How could I let myself turn to goop at his feet in the elevator? I need to keep my wits about me. I need to stay vigilant.

Marco’s watching me, tongue running over his bottom lip, arms flexing as he leans back against the kitchen counter. He picks up a piece of mail and idly fiddles with it.

“But I thought you filmed in Los Angeles?”

“Yeah.” He snorts. “Idiotic. But I was positive we’d get canceled, and I missed the East Coast.”

“Did you want to get canceled?”

Marco ruffles slightly, like retrieving whatever memory that just dawned on him has caused a cellular-level cringe. “Not right away, but a season and a half in? It just seemed inevitable. The writing was bad, no one got along, the idea was stupid.”

“Did you like anything about the show?” I ask.

Marco smirks. “Misha Landon.” Of course. Misha played some sort of bombshell neighbor with a trite, mid-aughts take on gender roles. Girl Mechanic. Sexy Miss Monster Truck. Hot Plumberina.

“Of course you did.”

I’ve wandered over to a wall covered in black-and-white photographs, grainy and filled with a familiar warmth. An old man sleeping in a plastic chair somewhere in the Mediterranean next to an old man sleeping in a plastic chair somewhere on an American beach. A woman asleep on the subway, tepid sunshine casting her face in a milky, godly light.

“You asked,” Marco says, pulling my attention back to him. Another smirk as he presses another espresso shot into his fancy machine. “Don’t be jealous. She was the biggest asshole out of all of us.”

“I am not jealous. I was just hoping you’d say something like the experience or getting paid to make art.”

“Art? It was a show built entirely on a pun.” Marco rounds the island with our coffees in hand, socked feet padding softly on the parquet floors. He flicks his head in the direction of the couch—enormous and pure white, covered in a million pristine pillows. I’m both terrified I’ll spill coffee on it and dying to belly flop down. “If I asked you your favorite part of working with vegetables—”

“That’s not my career,” I interrupt quickly, defensive. “It’s just what I do.”

He raises an apologetic brow. “What’s your career, then?”

Caught. I walked right into that. And Marco knows it. He’s practically vibrating as he settles into a corner of the couch. I can see it in his eyes—finally got something out of her.

I kick off my heels and follow behind him. The dress I picked for tonight has become unbearably uncomfortable and the arches of my feet are killing me. I sink down into the couch like it’s a warm bath, letting out a groan of delight. “What a meal, am I right?”

Marco narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t think you can change the subject on me.”

“I worked in advertising, at an advertising agency, for years.” I tuck my feet underneath me and lean forward to take my espresso from him, but never quite manage to pick my cup up. Instead, I say mournfully, “I started off as a copywriter, like the lowest of the low, but over time, I worked my way up to being an assistant art director. I had a team of copywriters and . . . yeah, that’s all.”

“Damn. Really?” He sounds incredibly impressed. “That’s cool as hell.”

“It was. It was a lot of things. Fun, toxic, stupid. But—” I shrug. “I don’t know. Life’s different now.”

Marco drains his cup and sets it back down on the large glass coffee table in front of us. He’s working his lips between his teeth, gaze fixed on me again. “Was your favorite part making art?”

I tilt back my head and laugh. “Good one. Nothing about what I did was art. We had briefs and budgets and legal copy and timelines. And if you tried anything different, you’d piss off some girlboss and never hear the end of it.” I purposefully leave out that, frequently, that girlboss was me. I untuck my feet and extend my legs, flexing and stretching my toes. “This is a really nice couch.”

Marco slides toward me and then, as if he’s done it a thousand times, he pulls my feet into his lap. He possesses an otherworldly ability to move my body, to move my mind, to coax me out of myself. I don’t fight him at all, not even when he takes my foot in his hands. His touch turns my legs to jelly, warmth spreading upward from his fingers and down through my abdomen and thighs. We left something unfinished in the elevator. My coffee stays put on the coffee table, growing cold.

“Jesus, you’re tense.” His hands work up over my ankles, over my calves.