The Wangs vs. the World(17)

Easy.

Easy?

Is that what Grayson thought?

Did he come here thinking that it would be this easy? His head felt greasy against her clean skin and his three-day beard pricked her neck. He hadn’t even bothered to clean himself up for her, probably came straight from Sabrina’s bed. What kind of beds do mattress heiresses sleep in? Saina had pictured Sabrina lying atop an impossibly high pile of satiny mattresses, her golden hair fanned out across a mound of pillows, Grayson leaping off the top and landing at Saina’s door. And he’d known that all he had to do was knock.

“Is this what you thought?” she’d asked, furious. “That you’d show up at my door and I’d just welcome you with open legs? Do you really think you’re that irresistible?”

He’d stared at her a minute before replying, “Saina, what the hell.” Just like that. Flat. No affect.

She pushed him off of her and then reached over to tug his jeans up. “Get dressed,” she said. “I don’t want to see you like this. God, you haven’t even said anything to me yet!”

And then Leo, her Leo, had walked in through the still-open door with another bunch of flowers—picked from his own front lawn—walked in, seen them, and turned right back around. Saina jumped up, thanking god that she was wearing a skirt and not a pair of pants that would probably be swamped around her ankles, and grabbed his arm before he could get through the doorway.

“Nothing happened,” she said.

“I think that is probably false.”

“It’s not just anybody, Leo. It’s Grayson.”

“That’s even worse. Underwear.”

“What?”

“You don’t have any underwear on.”

Saina felt nauseous. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I can see it on the ottoman thing.”

Defeat, lacy and pink. “Okay.”

Grayson broke in. “Saina, baby, who is this? You’re dating someone else already?”

She turned to him. “Dating someone else already? How long did you expect me to wait, Grayson? Until you guys had another baby? You got someone pregnant already, and you didn’t even wait until we’d broken up!”

Her former fiancé was already lounging on the rug, as comfortable as if he’d built the place himself, leaning back on one elbow, pants kicked aside, indigo eyes staring straight up at her, unfazed.

“I’m not going to be part of this,” said Leo. He opened his hand and dropped the flowers. Fragrant, obedient, they beheaded themselves on Saina’s salvaged-wood floors.

“That’s it?” said Saina, not sure if she was in despair or not. “That’s how you leave? No him or me, no fight, nothing?”

“You’re not wearing any underwear. How could this possibly turn out well?”

Saina swallowed the very slight urge to make a threesome joke and took a step towards Leo. Battered wool shirt, mended and torn work pants, old leather lace-up boots, faded leather belt with a worn brass buckle that could have brought in a few hundred at her friend Dahlia’s boutique on Ludlow, fingernails scrubbed scrupulously clean the way, she’d learned, that farmers’ always are.

And then she looked over at Grayson. Paint under his nails, always. Even if he hadn’t touched a canvas in weeks. Hair cut by a Lower East Side stylist who required a password to make an appointment (last she’d heard, it was “seventies bush”). Striped boxers from Paul Smith, which even she thought was a needless expense. Yes, Grayson was an *. But he’d left Sabrina on a stupid pile of mattresses in the city and come back for her, for Saina. He had.

She felt that sick tug that leads us down paths we know are doomed.

“Leo,” she said, sad. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry sorry or you’re sorry goodbye??”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Be a grown-up, Saina. You make me stand here and talk to you while he smirks at us, you can say goodbye to me.”

And so she’d done it. Closed the door on Leo and turned around to Grayson’s triumphant hug. Later that night, after the tears and the confessions, after Grayson said that Sabrina had miscarried and he’d stayed out of guilt because she’d seemed so sad—an explanation that Saina had known was suspect but still couldn’t stop herself from believing—after they’d explained and apologized and finally crawled into bed feeling like they’d earned it, Grayson had turned to her with a grin and asked: “Is it true, then?”

Knowing exactly what he meant, she asked, “What?”

“What they say about black guys?”

“What’s that, Grayson?”

“You know, big feet, big hands . . .”

“Are you really asking me about Leo’s penis size?”

He’d shrugged and grinned at her again, and somehow she’d fallen for it. She’d shrugged back, and said, “Yep, all true.” And then she’d winked, winked. As much as she’d hated herself for it, she wanted to keep on being that person: loose and funny and lovable. The girl who can joke about her lovers and their dicks, and didn’t get hung up on little things like cheating fiancés who knock up their mistresses.

And for seven days that was who she’d been. Playful and light, blissed out on a permanent sex buzz that didn’t let up even when she’d come down with a urinary tract infection. For seven days it had been spaghetti out of a pot at midnight and long drives to estate sales in the middle of nowhere and ignored phone calls from her friends and family. Only the farmers market was off-limits, because Leo would have been there and how could she parade Grayson in front of him? Or worse, put him in a position where he might have to serve Grayson? Bag up his vegetables and count out his change? She couldn’t, and so the tomatoes in the sauce on their midnight spaghetti remained distressingly unheirloom, the off-season apples they ate while lying, legs entwined, in the backyard were dug out of a plastic bin at the local A&P.