One To Watch(44)

She furrowed her brow. “What isn’t the way you want to say it?”

“Fuck.” Asher exhaled.

“No cursing!” a producer piped in.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Bea, from my vantage point on that fucking boat, it seemed like you were goddamn pretending with every man you fucking encountered. I didn’t realize until much shit piss later how awful the other men fucking were to you that day. If I had, I never would have fucking confronted you the way I did. You have every fucking right to be angry with me, and I apologize for my goddamn behavior. I was feeling annoyed and insecure, and I fucking took it out on you. Which was, you know.”

“Fucking shitty?” Bea chimed in with a small smile.

Asher nodded. “Exactly goddamn right.”

“Asher, come on.” The producer shoved his way past the cameras and into their setup. “You know we can’t use any of that. We need to take the whole apology again.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Asher folded his arms. “The point is to assure Bea my apology is genuine. If I give you something that would air on television to make me look like a great guy, how is she supposed to know if I’m serving my interests or hers?”

Bea felt her whole heart lift—for the first time since this show started, she finally had a way to know that a man was telling her the truth. Bea was half-convinced Lauren would find a way to use this footage to make Asher into a joke on the show, but at this particular moment, she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

“Can I ask”—Bea took a step toward him—“if you felt like I wasn’t the person you came here to meet, why didn’t you leave?”

“I made a promise that I would really try to make this work.”

Bea smiled. “That’s funny.”

“Is it? Why?”

“I made the same promise. As recently as two days ago, in fact.”

“Yeah? And how’s that going for you?”

Bea looked up at him long enough for it to get uncomfortable—except it didn’t.

“I don’t know yet.”

Asher smiled at her. “Is it cliché if I ask if we can start over?”

Bea laughed. “Absolutely, it definitely is.”

“So I shouldn’t do the thing where I reach out my hand to shake yours and say, ‘Hi, I’m Asher.’”

“Not unless you want me to kick you off the show right here and now.”

“Ah, an escape hatch! Good to know.”

“Hey!” Bea faked being offended, but they were both still beaming.

“Do you want to go downstairs and see some modern stuff?” she asked.

He nodded, and without another word about it, they walked down the museum’s wide central staircase side by side.

The more time they spent ambling through the museum’s dozens of galleries, surrounded by Rothkos and Picassos, the more Bea found herself enjoying Asher’s company. He listened attentively while she talked about Picasso’s use of hats to add levity to paintings of his depressed friend, the photographer Dora Maar. She’d written her art history thesis in college about Picasso’s reduction of a fellow artist to her clothes and her emotions, as if that were the truth of her.

“Well,” he asked, “how do you find the truth of someone, then?”

“If not through their hats?”

“I’m serious.” He nudged her. “Tell me something true.”

Bea opened her mouth, then closed it again, her heart suddenly pounding.

“It’s okay,” Asher encouraged her. “I’m listening.”

“I’m afraid that at the end of all this, I’ll be alone. And all the people who’ve said horrible things about my body will say, ‘See? We were right about her. We were right about all of it.’”

“And if you never really take a risk, you’ll never have the chance to find out if they were?” Asher asked pointedly.

“You’re going to have to stop doing that.” Bea blushed.

“Doing what?”

“Seeing past my tough exterior.”

“I like your tough exterior.” Asher’s lips quirked in a small smile. “When I look at you, I like everything I see.”

When they walked out of the museum into the crisp spring night, Bea wasn’t ready to leave. The producers told her they had time for one more stop, so Bea led Asher to the cavernous Resnick Pavilion, which had a new exhibit showcasing some of the museum’s more controversial works of the last sixty years.

“This looks remarkably like a pot I made at summer camp,” Asher said, pointing to a lumpy brown sculpture.

“It’s a Claes Oldenburg—a baked potato.”

“I should have said mine was a baked potato. It looked like one.”

“You did pottery at summer camp?”

“You’re surprised I wasn’t out playing soccer? I would have sat all day by myself with a book if they’d let me.”

“Sounds like we were pretty alike as kids,” she said.

“I’m glad one of us grew out of it.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. After all the semi-intentional arm brushes and leg nudges of the evening thus far, the warm weight of his palm felt full, somehow, or even heavy—and she loved it. She wanted more.