Love Is Red by Sophie Jaff Read Free Book Online

but professional. Italian, maybe. Dark pants, white shirt, broad shoulders, slim hips, long legs. You’re tall. She’s watching the way you walk. She’s checking out your ass. And why shouldn’t she? Guys watch her all the time. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to do the same? So when no one else is looking, she’ll stare at you, this attractive man walking away. You smile.
    You are gone for a while. She finds herself looking up to see if you’ve returned. You haven’t. She grows irritated with herself. It shouldn’t be a big deal either way. Eventually she’ll have to go to the bathroom. Eventually she’ll have to leave. If you haven’t returned, that’s your own fault. She continues to check. She wills herself to concentrate on her own work. Now everything becomes annoying—the way that woman is breathing through her mouth, the tap and then another tap of someone’s pen across her teeth, a compulsive throat clearer, a sniff.
    She looks up again and sees that you’re back. You’ve come back silently. You mouth Thanks at her and then, with a nod of your head, you gesture over to the white-haired guy, the one who’s been coughing.
    She looks over at the cougher. He’s fishing a wrapped cough drop out of a packet, then pushing it, crinkling the paper as he does so, into his mouth.
    She stares at you in amazement. You? she mouths.
    You give a little nod, smile, and shrug your shoulders in a winningly apologetic way as if to say, What else could I do? Then you give a little wink, not a lascivious one, just enough to say, It’s been taken care of.
    She realizes at this moment that this is what she’s been searching for all her life. It’s been taken care of. Taken care of with humor, taken care of with charm, taken care of with a lightness of touch. She would like to be taken care of.
    Maybe you’ll oblige.
    â€œI can’t believe you did that,” she says. You’re both standing on the steps outside the library. Right by the lions, their proud, worn faces impassive and resigned in the late afternoon. You turn to look at her; her hair, her face, are particularly beautiful in the last of the dying sun. “I wanted to kill that guy,” she continues.
    You smile. You wonder what she would say if you told her that he’ll be dead soon enough.
    After all, he’s rank with depression.
    You don’t say anything, though. You just look at her, as if you can see through the beautiful outside to her beautiful inside. No one ever looks at her like that. You smile.
    She wonders if you’ll ask for her number. She wants you to ask for her number. You don’t ask for her number.
    â€œSo . . . ?” she says, and tilts her head, hopefully, nervously, unsure.
    You tell her that you hope that next time it’s quieter, but you confess that you’re glad that guy was coughing; otherwise you wouldn’t have had a chance to meet.
    She’s staring up at you in confusion. If you’re glad to have met her, why don’t you ask her for some way of contacting her? She’s wondering if she should ask for your number or an email address, some way of contacting you, but no, she can’t, she can’t. She’s already scanned your hands and found no ring. You must have a girlfriend. The nice guys always have girlfriends. You see a small flash of frustration in her eyes. She’s used to men wanting her. You were her knight in shining armor. Why aren’t you following through?
    â€œNice meeting you,” you say and then she has no choice; she must walk away, but before she goes you see the flash again.
    You like this flash, this flash of entitled petulance.
    Petulance is maroon, it crumbles like stale graham crackers, it smells of carpets stained with apple juice, it sounds like the tap of impatient fingernails, it feels like the scratch of pearls across your teeth, it gives a twist and pinch of salt to