“Yeah, well,” he mutters thornily, like I’ve just told him his breath smells. “Happens, I guess.”
“Come on now, it’s not that bad. I started getting them in my twenties too.” I gesture to my own head, which has started a steady salt and pepper transition from black at the tips to graying at the roots. “And you don’t seem to mind them on me.”
This seems to bring Julian back. He grins, squeezes my hand where it rests against his cheek.
“Ilikeyour grays,” he says. “You otherwise look quite young, and the contrast is kind of…mystical.”
“Mystical,” I repeat, amused. “I’ve genuinely never heard that one before. Is that another way of saying I look old and wise? Like a wizard?”
Julian rolls his eyes.
“Ethereal, then,” he revises. “You know, the first time I saw you, I thought you looked like a fairy.”
“A fairy?” I repeat, chuckling.
“Yeah. You know. These wide-set eyes on your heart-shaped face.” He drags a finger down the side of my face, bumping past my prominent cheekbones, the hollows beneath them, ending at the point of my chin. “And this bone structure. Both delicate and dramatic.”
He is appreciating me the way an artist might, breaking down my features as if he intends to commit them to memory and then tocanvas. I’m almost sucked into his spell when he adds, playfully, “Also, you’re quite short.”
I scrunch my nose in faux indignation, then twist out of his reach and head for the door.
“You do know shorter people live longer, right?” I say over my shoulder. “Remember that the next time you want to look down on me.”
Julian laughs a little too hard for the joke, then quips, “I’m always looking down on you,” and I bite back a smile that he can’t see as I push open the door and step out into the cool air.
The farmer’s market is in full swing by the time we arrive, and even having walked this street a thousand times before, I’m still struck by how much Hyde Park has changed since I left it. Where there had once been mom and pop restaurants there are now Sweetgreens and Nando’s, and the elegant brownstones are now accompanied by looming glass and steel apartment complexes. We wander down rows of tents of people selling their wares: fresh produce from community gardens and local farmers, the occasional artisan selling skin-care products and beaded bracelets. A man I’ve only ever known as the “bread guy” but haven’t seen in years greets me like an old friend and convinces us to try his pecan sticky buns, and we wait for far too long in line at a coffee shop that serves us uniquely flavored lattes (rose cardamom for me, black sesame for Julian). Julian stops at a boutique perfumery, charms the woman who mans the booth, and walks out with three bottles for the price of two. I’m almost annoyed until I watch him tuck a hundred-dollar bill into her tip jar.
“How do you do that?” I ask him when we are out of earshot.
Julian reaches down, grasps my hand in his.
“Do what?”
“Make people feel so at ease.” I tuck a loc behind my ear, a little self-conscious. “Make them, I don’t know,likeyou.”
I expect Julian to laugh me off, not to turn pensive like he does. His hand slips out of mine and into his pocket as he looks out into the crowded street. A dozen people look back, turning to him like blossoms to the morning sun.
“They don’t like me,” he says eventually. “They don’t know me enough to like me.”
“But they might want to,” I say.
Julian shrugs.
“No, they don’t,” he says. “They want me to be who they think I am, and I indulge them. They like the performance.”
What I’m feeling isn’t empathy, exactly. I’m precisely the kind of woman that most peopledon’tlike: too prickly, too unaccommodating, too much the career-obsessed harpy that every early 2000s rom-com sought to fix with the power of love. But I get it. On the occasion when being liked has been necessary, the box I’ve had to fold myself into has always felt constricting.
“Then stop performing,” I say, matter-of-fact. “Just be you.”
The look that Julian gives me is half exasperation, half affection. He opens his mouth to respond when a hand taps him on the shoulder from behind.
Julian turns, and I have to school myself not to gape.
The young woman standing behind him is movie star striking, with feathered bangs and a perfect smoky eye. She looks chic in an ankle-length duster, unbuttoned to reveal a slender figure that turns her simple black shirt and jeans into a statement.
“Hi. Sorry to interrupt,” she says, acknowledging me with a brief glance. “But is that vintage Burberry?”
Julian straightens and gives her an answer, and I shrink as bloodrushes to my face. A woman is flirting with my date, and he is flirting back. Well, okay, flirting might be an exaggeration, but he is engaged in a conversation about his coat, the small signs in the stitching that the beautiful woman (“Alicia,” she says) used to verify it as the real deal. The only time I’ve ever commented on Julian’s distinctively posh style has been to poke fun at it, but Alicia appreciates it, can pick out the value of his pieces on sight. They look good together, like they would be paired for a magazine photo shoot or cast opposite each other in a romantic comedy. Anyone passing by would assume that they were a couple, and I just an awkward bystander struck still by their beauty.