The One Who Waited novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Loft

Merry moves into Luke's apartment above the Brooklyn scene shop, and Derek storms her restaurant to tell her that her 20% votes with him until they marry, which will be never.

"Nobody," I said. "It was a guardrail."

"Did the guardrail let you drive home alone?"

"The guardrail was very supportive."

He almost smiled.

Then he took the suitcase out of my hand and threw it in the back of the truck.

He held the passenger door.

On the seat was a travel mug and a folded blanket that smelled like sawdust and dog.

"Coffee," he said. "It's bad. I made it in a hurry."

It was the worst coffee I had ever tasted.

I drank all of it across the Manhattan Bridge while the sky went gray over the river.

Neither of us said much.

Once, at a red light on Flushing Avenue, he glanced at my arm.

"Stitches?"

"Eleven."

"Forearm?"

"Steering wheel."

He nodded and looked back at the road, and his hands tightened on the wheel until the light turned green.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard at five in the morning was all brick and chain-link and old cranes against the sky.

He pulled up at a long building with a loading dock and a sign that said SCENIC in faded blue letters.

"You live in a theater?"

"I live above the lumber."

Inside it smelled like pine and paint and hot glue.

There were flats stacked twenty feet high, a staircase from some musical lying on its side, and half a pink castle under a tarp.

Up a steel staircase was a door, and behind the door was his apartment.

It was huge and plain.

A long table he'd obviously built himself. A couch. Windows full of the East River.

An old shepherd mix lifted his gray face off a dog bed, looked at me, and thumped his tail twice.

"That's the dog," Luke said.

"What's his name?"

"The dog."

"You didn't name your dog?"

"He came with the building. He never told me his name. I didn't want to guess wrong."

I laughed.

It came out of me so suddenly it hurt.

Luke looked at me for a second too long.

Then he picked up my suitcase again.

"Your room's at the end. It locks. Bathroom's yours. I use the one by the shop."

The room had a bed with clean sheets still creased from the package.

He had bought sheets.

Three weeks ago, after a phone call from an ER, he had gone out and bought sheets.

He leaned in the doorway.

"Rules," he said.

"You have rules?"

"I've had three weeks. Separate rooms. You pay nothing, you owe nothing. And any day before the thirty-first, you can walk out that door and I'll drive you wherever you want."

"Any day?"

"Morning of. Halfway down the aisle. I'll carry your bag."

"What do you get out of this?"

He scratched the dog's ears.

"Somebody to drink my coffee."

"Your coffee is a war crime."

"Then I'm getting a lot out of this."

At seven the crew came in.

I heard them before I saw them. A radio. Somebody singing badly. A forklift.

When I came down the steel stairs in my coat, the whole shop stopped.

A dozen people in paint-spattered coveralls stared up at me.

A woman with a drill in her hand said, "Holy crap. She's real."

An old man at the table saw put his hand over his heart.

"Is this the one he bought the sheets for?"

"Back to work," Luke said.

Nobody went back to work.

The welder brought me a doughnut on a paper towel. The painter asked if I liked purple. The woman with the drill told me Luke had re-hung the bathroom door twice this week because it squeaked.

Luke went red to the ears and turned on the table saw.

I went back to work on Saturday with sawdust on my boots.

The restaurant was in the West Village, three blocks from the apartment I had just left.

For eight years I had run the dessert station in the back corner by the walk-in.

By eight o'clock we had forty covers and a ticket rail full of chocolate olive-oil cake.

I was plating my sixth one when the kitchen went quiet.

Derek was standing at the pass.

He had walked straight past the host stand, through the dining room, and into my kitchen, in his quarter-zip and his good watch.

My head chef looked up from the grill.

"Sir, you can't be back here."

"I'm her fiancé," Derek said.

He had never once called himself that.

"Get your coat, Merry. You're coming home."

Every cook on the line was watching.

The dishwasher turned off his sprayer.

"I'm working," I said.

"You've made your point. You slept somewhere else. Fine. Now come home before this gets embarrassing."

"It's already embarrassing, Derek. You're in my kitchen."

He leaned over the pass.

He lowered his voice, but not enough.

"Do you know what happens to Steady's roadshow if my co-founder runs off with a convict six weeks before the IPO? Do you understand anything about the business you're living off?"

"I put thirty-eight thousand dollars in that business."

"And I turned it into a company. You make cake."

I set the plate down very carefully.

My head chef put down his tongs.

"Out," he said to Derek. "Now. Or I call the cops."

Derek straightened his sleeves.

He smiled at the line cooks.

Then he looked at me.

"I'll go. But let's be very clear, babe. Your twenty percent votes with me until we're married."

He turned toward the door and stopped.

"And we're never getting married."

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