In a New York Minute(4)
Before he could reply, the train lurched forward and I stumbled a step, my left arm instinctively shooting out to stop myself from falling. I reached for a pole to grab on to, but there was nothing there, and instead I face-planted into him, my left cheek smooshed against his chest, which was warm and solid. My arm that had searched for the pole slid along his side instead, and I wrapped it around his back just to have something to hold on to, my fingers gripping his shirt like a steering wheel. The jolt sent my dress flapping behind me. He took a step forward to balance himself, and his hand landed on my butt where my dress hung open, his fingers firm on my skin.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I heard him say from somewhere. Something about the soft press of his palm—hot and brief on my bare skin—was both electric and comforting, all at once. We stood like this for what felt like minutes: two strangers awkwardly embracing, my cheek still flush against his chest, so close that if I actually stopped to listen I could probably hear his heartbeat.
“It’s okay,” I babbled into the cool relief of his shirt.
He pulled his hand off me and steadied it on the roof of the subway car. “Excuse me,” he said, taking a small step back, holding his hand out like it had just been burned. “That was an accident. My apologies.”
Then he glanced down, first at me, and then at his shirt, where I’d left two wet blotches where my eyes had been. And right below it—oh god—was a trace of snot. Suddenly, getting laid off didn’t seem like the worst thing to happen to me today.
I backed away from him, and the pregnant woman gave me a sympathetic look as I accidentally bumped into her. Again.
“I would take it,” she said as I muttered another apology. “Unless you want—” She gestured to the clip in her hand.
The conductor’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker as the train rolled to a slow stop in the tunnel. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re just holding here as we wait for a train to leave the station ahead of us.”
“Okay, yeah.” I nodded at the stranger on the subway. “Thank you so much.”
He held up the jacket in front of me by the collar, like the men did for their dates in the black-and-white movies that my grandma and I used to watch. Gingerly, he draped it over my shoulders, tugging it ever so slightly so it hung snug over my body, his cheek coming dangerously close to brushing against the top of my head. I breathed a sigh of relief that I was no longer showing my ass to the entire city. As I did, I caught a whiff of his scent lingering on the collar. Apparently, this man’s neck smelled like an afternoon spent with old books stacked on wooden shelves as icy rain cracked against the window, with hints of spicy pine and a fireplace that roared with hot flames and flickering coals. It was heady and decadent, steady and dark.
Someone handed me a tissue, and I blew my nose into it until it was too damp to use. “I just got laid off,” I blubbered. “And now this.” I gestured with my head, as if I could somehow point to my dress with my forehead. “It’s really been a bad morning.”
He offered me a small smile and a nod but said nothing.
I tucked the tissue into the pocket of his coat and noticed a small grimace ripple across his face.
“I’ll get it dry-cleaned and back to you as soon as I can.”
He shook his head. “I swear, I’m good. Besides, I think you need it more than me.”
I nodded. He wasn’t wrong. I did not want to ride the subway all the way to Brooklyn and then make the twelve-minute walk back to my apartment with my dress ripped open down the back.
“I really appreciate it,” I said, and I could feel the sobs hovering at the back of my throat, ready at any moment to make another appearance. I gritted my teeth and took a breath, calming myself, reining the tears back in. “This is worse than the time I peed myself from laughing too hard outside Cherry Tavern and had to buy a sweatshirt on Saint Marks to wrap around my waist and wear home.”
“I’m sorry, what?” He looked genuinely confused. “You peed yourself?”
It was a bad habit, a tic, the thing I did when other people just bit their nails or twirled their hair. I tried to change direction with humor. “It’s nothing. Anyway, I’m really grateful. You quite literally saved my ass.”
But he didn’t laugh; he barely cracked a smile. Instead, his brow tightened in response, his cheeks pinkish and bright. His mouth was a straight line, and as he glanced away, I noticed the hint of his tongue running across his bottom lip.
God, I wished Cleo and Lola were here to witness this. Laid off. Humiliated in front of an entire subway car. Butt cheeks bared to the world. Topped off with a hot guy coming to my rescue—a hot guy who was clearly not impressed by my ability to rip an entire article of clothing in half without even using my hands.
One day, this would make an amazing story, retold through swells of laughter over pitchers of beer. The kind of tale that earned a declaration of “This is going in my wedding toast for you,” which was the highest praise we awarded the mortifying moments we shared together. I’d literally lost both my job and the clothes off my back, and my dignity was not far behind.
Thinking of my friends calmed me, and my breathing steadied a bit. Inhale, exhale. The train lurched forward again and roared into the Canal Street station, in the heart of downtown Manhattan. I stayed focused on Cleo and Lola and imagined what we would all nickname this guy when I told them the story. Hot Suit. He was definitely a Hot Suit. Maybe not my best work. Certainly, not very original. But it was to the point and easy to remember. He was hot, and he wore a suit. Done and done.