Flynn

* * *

I stare in disbelief at the former freight elevator shaft that’s now a strange museum. “It’s actually an elevator. And it’s the size of a car.”

She nods, a hint of mischief in her eyes as she bounces on her pink-booted feet. Pink boots I want to see on my shoulders.

I blink away the filthy thought, even though it’ll surely return in seconds.

“It’s the smallest museum in all of New York. It’s five square meters,” she says as we step inside and ogle the odd displays lining all three walls.

“And it’s weird. Admit it. This is intensely weird.” I spin in a circle, gesturing to the tubes of toothpaste on the shelves, the crushed coffee cups and bags of potato chips. Each object has a letter and a number in front of it, like you could enter it on a vending machine keypad.

Only the tubes and bags and cups aren’t for sale. They’re crushed, stepped on, trampled. The exhibit placard reads “Found objects from the streets of Manhattan.”

I study the objects, searching for hidden meaning but find none. I shrug and glance at Sabrina. “I don’t want to be one of those ‘why is this art’ people, but . . . why is this art?”

“I don’t know that it’s art, so much as it’s odd,” she says, crossing her arms as she regards the display here in Tribeca on the tip of Chinatown.

I scrub a hand over my jaw, thinking. Trying to connect the dots. “So it’s odd. Is that why we’re supposed to like it?”

“I don’t even know if we have to like it.” She waves a hand at a shelf of discarded honey-roasted chip bags. “I like that it’s entertaining. That it’s strange. It makes me think about all sorts of things.”

“Okay, Rodin,” I say, naming the sculptor whose most famous work was dubbed The Thinker. “What do these trampled-on toothpaste tubes make you marinate on up there?”

Smiling, she studies a wrinkled bag. Fire-hot, it promises. “It makes me think about things we overlook. Things we ignore.”

“But shouldn’t an empty bag of chips be ignored?”

“No.” Her tone is strong, laced with unexpected emotion.

I step back, giving her some space. “No?”

“You should clean it up. Throw it out.”

“Fine, true,” I concede. “I wasn’t advocating being a slob. And I’m totally against litter. But why do old tubes of toothpaste and empty bags of chips affect you?”

As she stares at the display, sadness flickers across her eyes. Her lips form a straight line, then she breathes in deep. “I think people, places, and things get ignored. And this exhibit forces us to see what we’d rather ignore. Every day, we walk past uncomfortable sights, we weave around painful conversations. And other people ignore us. I guess I like this place because it reminds me not to do that.”

As I study a coffee cup with tire tracks on it, I suspect she might be onto something—a universal sort of truth about human nature. “How to be a better human,” I say.

“Yes.” Her lips curve into a grin. “That’s what I would call this exhibit.”

“So you’re saying that perhaps looking at trash—displaced objects—makes us think how we can treat each other better?”

“I do believe that. Is that cheesy?” she asks nervously, her right hand fluttering to her hair, patting her silver bow-shaped barrette. Her phone’s not recording, and I like that we can enjoy a few moments just for us, not for print.

“No. You actually made sense of something that I saw as kind of pointless, to tell the truth. I don’t know that I now consider it art, but I guess it does make me think a little more deeply about what we ignore. I’d like to believe I don’t ignore the people who matter. I went to see my sister and her baby earlier this week. I try to see them every week,” I say, maybe because I’m looking for points.

Sabrina’s warm smile tells me I’ve tallied several with that. But her smile disappears as she returns her focus to the display. “That’s good, because no one wants to be ignored. I don’t like it. I don’t like being discarded.”

I draw a deep breath to ask a hard question, since I think she wants me to ask it. “Did someone do that to you?”

“Yes,” she says sharply, then fixes a pinched smile on her face as she spins and faces me. “And I didn’t like it. But that’s that. I’ve moved on.”

As I wonder who he was, a spark of anger ignites in my chest. Because some guy hurt her, and that pisses me off. What kind of idiot would let a woman like Sabrina become displaced?

Whether she wants to talk in detail or not, I won’t stand by and let her think I don’t care, when I care deeply—more than I expected I would.

I touch her shoulder. “I’m glad you’ve moved on and I feel one hundred percent confident that whoever he was, he’s a complete jerk who tramples on people, and tubes of toothpaste.”

Her smile is genuine now, and she whispers a wobbly “thank you” then squares her shoulders. “Speaking of discarded things, let’s put your brainpower to use.” She raps her knuckles against my head.

“Activating brain power for your usage,” I say robotically.

Her laughter is pretty, like bells. “Want to chat about your college days now?” She holds up the phone, ready to record.

“I was wondering why you haven’t hit that button yet.”

“We were just talking for fun before.” She shrugs playfully. “Besides, I figure all this pre-talking will get you buttered up and ready to spill all.”

I laugh. “Thanks for the warning. So the museum is a warm-up act to me sharing everything about college?”

“It sort of frees both our minds from the usual grind, don’t you think?”

I consider this, then nod my agreement. She does make a good point.

“By all means.” I gesture to the sidewalk and we stroll through Tribeca, passing shops and bakeries, boutiques and hip stores. I tell her about my days as a math major, the things I learned, and how that set the stage for starting my first company, and at a corner bodega, I stop, pointing to a pineapple for sale.

“Do you like pineapple?”

“Duh. Isn’t it impossible to dislike pineapple?”

“It is. But did you know pineapples are math?”

She squints. “Explain.”

I grab a spiky fruit, hand a few bills to the vendor, then spot an artichoke and a cauliflower. I add those to the order, and soon we find a table at a café up the street.

She shoots me a quizzical look. “We’re making artichoke, pineapple, and cauliflower salad? I’m admittedly a little skeptical.”

“No salad is forthcoming. But this pineapple is why I studied math,” I say, spinning the fruit in a circle.

She takes out her phone and hits the record button once again.

This is the interview portion, the reminder that even though the time at the museum felt like a quirky little date, Sabrina and I are now on the clock for her article. Hell, I need the reminder because it’s too easy to get lost in how I feel with her.

Carefree. Happy. Easy.

As if I’m simply enjoying getting to know someone I like.

Someone I like a lot.

I can’t have that someone, though, and that’s why I need these moments. These reminders of who we are when she clicks on her recording app. But maybe these not-dates, these work-slash-fun slivers of time, are what I need more than falling for someone. Maybe I need to have fun with a woman and not worry about what she’s after.

With Sabrina, I haven’t felt that worry since the night at The Dollhouse. I didn’t experience it on the subway, and I don’t feel it tonight either. The time with her is like a rejuvenation. It’s refreshing, as if her curious spirit and inquisitive mind are restoring my faith in humanity.

She pokes the pineapple and looks at me expectantly, waiting for my explanation.

I turn the pineapple around, showing her the spirals that comprise its hard, rough skin. “See? They fall in patterns.”

“They do?”

Enthusiasm courses through me, and my geekery emerges in full force. This shit is awesome. “Mother Nature is amazing. Mother Nature loves math. Plants love sequences. The Fibonacci sequence is one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, and so on. Basically, you add up the prior two numbers to get to the next one. And what you have here is the Fibonacci sequence. Pineapple spirals only appear in one of the numbers in this sequence.”

I take her hand and bring her index finger to one of the spirals, dragging it down the scales. Silently, her lips move, counting. A row of five. A row of eight. A row of thirteen.

Slowly, she raises her face, her eyes sparkling with astonishment, as if she’s found buried treasure. “Mind. Blown.”

“Nature is actually completely dependent on math. You see these beautiful patterns all across the world. The same is true for the cauliflower spirals,” I say, running her fingers across the florets in the vegetable. “And the artichoke too. Sunflowers follow the same pattern. Math is literally all around us.”

She shakes her head in amazement. “I had no idea.”

“It’s cool, isn’t it? Math doesn’t dwell in a quiet little separate space, but it can intersect with nature and ideas.”

“Evidently.” Her eyes drift down to my hand still on hers, and maybe because I’m amped up on the Fibonacci sequence, I don’t analyze what I do next.

I do it.

I thread our fingers together, and a spark of pleasure rips through me. From that. From that bit of contact. From the thrill of holding her hand.

A quiet gasp escapes her lips, and then she tightens her fingers around mine, grasping. She nibbles on the corner of her lips, something she did the night we spent together, and it shoots me back in time to those seconds before we kissed in the library.

I swallow. My throat is dry. Somehow, I manage to keep talking. “Math is the foundation of my business, in a lot of ways. Numbers serve as the core, and I build ideas on that. I’ve always taken that approach. That’s what excites me in business—taking patterns and numbers and then marrying them with what people might want next.”

“I know what I want next,” she whispers.

Her sultry tone is like a dart of lust straight to my chest. It stokes the fire in me. “You do?”

“I can’t have it, but I want it.”

She laces her fingers tighter, running her thumb along my skin, triggering a fresh wave of sparks within me.

From her thumb stroking my flesh.

One simple touch and I don’t know if we’re talking about the interview, or business, or math, or what we like. But I don’t care, because talking to her is what I like.

“You,” she whispers, her honeyed voice like a caress. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but it turns me on to no end that you’re this math god and that’s your foundation, and then you layer T.S. Eliot on top of it, or you put Gatsby on top of it, and you think about whether random things are art or ethics.”

I lean closer. “If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one turned on.”

She draws a breath, then lets it out in a sexy, needy moan.

“Sabrina,” I warn. “This is dangerous.”

She squeezes my hand. “So dangerous,” she says, lowering her face, averting her gaze. “I’m trying not to launch myself at you right now.”

“I suppose I ought to be a gentleman and say I’d resist you . . . but I wouldn’t.”

She looks up and lets go of my hand. “Okay, you’re too tempting. You practically seduced me with a pineapple and the Fibonacci sequence.”

I pump a fist. “Nerds for the win.”

She laughs and turns off the recorder. “Okay, hot nerd. Let’s get out of here before you seduce me with a cauliflower next.”

“Don’t forget the artichoke. It’s willing to offer services for seduction.”

“And the artichoke would probably render me helpless to resist too. Ergo,” she says, pausing to press her hands against the table as she rises, breaking the moment for good, “we should go. I have one more favorite place for us today.”

I don’t say no. I want this next non-date, artichoke or not. “Take me where you want to go.”

“I’m going to take you to the locksmith in the Village.”

It sounds quaint and provincial, but when we arrive I see it’s more than that. The front of the shop in the Village is covered in a replica of Van Gogh’s Starry Night made entirely of keys, forming swirls and spirals like the famous painting.

“The guy who owns this shop recreated Starry Night with twenty thousand keys that he kept over the years,” she explains as I step toward the wall, raising my hand.

I run my finger over the bumpy metallic surface. “It’s like he wanted to leave his mark on the neighborhood.”

“Yes,” Sabrina says. “That’s what I think too. The Village has become home to condos and fancy restaurants, but this is a sort of homage to days gone by, when this place was an artist’s enclave. And this craftsman, whose business could have been kicked out or shut down, has turned his storefront into a sculpture.”

“Found art, like found math in nature,” I say, musing on the possibilities.

“Or maybe a reminder of change? The artists who used to live in the Village can’t afford it anymore. Hardly anyone can afford to live in Manhattan.”

Her observation raises another question—how can she afford it?

I don’t even have to ask. The question must be in my eyes, because she jumps in. “If you’re wondering, I can only afford to live in Manhattan because I’m staying in my cousin’s apartment. She’s gallivanting around Europe, and she lets me stay there for basically a nickel, and God knows I need her generosity.”

The money talk again. I tense, a bolt of worry slamming down my spine as she mentions the very thing that often separates people. Money is a dividing line. Is she trying to figure out how it divides us? How money changes what people want from you?

Once again, I’m left wondering if it plays a part in her wants. That warning voice speaks louder, a reminder that trust must be earned.

Fully.

“I love that you’re kind of obsessed with what New York was. Its past,” I say, so I can dodge the thorny subject of incomes, and how I can afford to live in New York twenty times over and how she’s living off her cousin’s kindness.

“I am, and it’s probably a pointless obsession. We can’t really cling to the past. God knows I’ve had to move on from so many other things.”

That’s an issue I don’t want to dodge though. I want to know what holds her back, beyond work. I want to understand where that sadness comes from. “Do you mean ex-boyfriends or family?”

“Both,” she says heavily. “My ex was pretty much the worst, and my mother is pretty much the worst too.”

“The ex—he’s totally out of the picture?”

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “He’s so far out of the picture he lives in China. We were supposed to be married, and he left me two days before the wedding.”

“Jesus,” I mutter. “He’s not fit to pick up the potato chip bags you walk on.”

She smiles. “I know. And I’m glad I’m over him.”

A warm, golden feeling spreads through my chest, blatantly ignoring my concerns about trust, overtaking them, even. “I’m glad you’re over him too.”

* * *

The next day, Jennica pops into my office. “Any chance you’d want to talk to Kermit?”

I remember the halo from the party, and him hard pitching me on an interview, then commenting on the halo, like he knew what had happened.

I shake my head. “I’d rather not.”

She presses her palms together in a plea. “He’s pretty insistent, and he does have a great reach. Will you reconsider?”

Sighing heavily, I lean back in my leather chair, thinking. I need to make sure my focus remains on Haven—always on Haven. These people depend on me. As much as the guy irked me with his offhand comment, if I have to sweep it under the rug, I will, and keep my emotions out of the equation. “Will it help the marketing? Is it important to the company?”

“I think it’ll help our rollout. The more publicity we get, the better. His network is expanding. His work is getting great pickup—not just the shows he hosts, but all his shows. His podcasts and reports are carried everywhere.”

When I started the interview with Sabrina, I promised myself I wouldn’t let my feelings for her get in the way of that piece. While she has more on the line than I do when it comes to this story, I can’t afford any missteps either. Not with her, and not with anyone. It would definitely be a misstep to piss off Kermit.

I look at my watch. “I’m pretty focused on this piece with Sabrina right now. It takes up a lot of time. Could we set something for when it’s done?”

She bounces on her tiptoes. “I can do that.”

“Glad I could make you happy.”

She smiles. “I know he’s a pain in the butt, but he’s also a rising star, and he’s somebody we can’t overlook.”

That’s what irks me. I feel like he has something to lord over me. Something he’ll whip out at any moment. That’s another reason why I personally can’t afford to ignore him.