Livvy (5 page)

Francisco greets me with a hug at the front door. “Welcome home, Livvy,” he says. “You look beautiful. So much older already.”

“It’s just the haircut,” I assure him. When we get into the elevator, Dad pushes the button to the 12th floor, then inserts a key into a slot next to it. “New security measure?” I ask my father. I never had to do that before. He shrugs his shoulders as I take a closer look at the button. It no longer has a
12
on it. I notice it’s marked with the letter
H
just as the doors open to the top floor. I peek out into the hallway first. Everything looks exactly how I remember it. “What’s going on?”

“We’re home,” Matty says as he holds up his well-worn keychain that he’d bought on one of our family vacations.

“What do you mean, ‘we’re home?’” I ask. Did Dad give Matty my apartment? Sure, it was his to do with what he wanted until I turn eighteen, but that’s only a few weeks away.

I follow my uncle down the hall to the door, but he turns before he gets there, unlocking apartment C on our right. “Wait, you bought the apartment across the hall?” I ask him, feeling a sense of relief.

“We bought the floor, Contessa,” Dad says. “Apartment C is Matty’s.”

“And whose is B?” I ask, nodding to the other smaller apartment on the right–or what used to be Apartment B. “Wait, where’s the door for B?”

“There is no Apartment B anymore.”

“And mine is A?” My voice is quiet and tentative.

“Yours
will
be A.”

“Well, what happened to B?”

Dad opens the door to my loft, where my aunt Anna is standing in the middle of the room. It looks nothing like it did a month ago. Walls are lowered and moved, the floors are new, the furniture’s different and the decor is eccentric and colorful, exactly how I like things. I quickly glance over to the wall I’d been avoiding. I’m disappointed and happy, all at the same time. I’d not wanted anyone to move the paintings, but I also didn’t want to look at them yet. They’re even more remarkable than I’d remembered.

I did those.
I
am
proud of them. Whatever pain I endured to create that wall, I wouldn’t change a thing. “Come in, Livvy,” my aunt says, coming forward to give me a tight embrace. “I hope you like it.”

“Did you do all this?”

“I helped with the decor, but your dad hired the renovation team. They’ve been working like crazy to get this place ready.”

“It’s–” Suddenly, I notice how the open apartment spans around the corner.
Apartment B is now part of Apartment A.
My family is silent as I study the space. The bed is no longer in the main room. The room itself is smaller, but with the floor-to-ceiling windows and new partial walls, everything still feels open. The next space is a beautiful bedroom, but maintains the loft feel without full walls or a door. A new, third space is beyond yet another half-wall–my studio. It’s huge, with a polished concrete floor that will be easy to clean paint from. There are two easels facing the windows, with blank white canvases prepped and ready for use.

Around the corner is another open living space, and then two enclosed bedrooms beyond that with an additional bathroom next to them. “So there’s a little privacy if guests come,” Anna says as I enter one of the rooms, “or, you know... the future...”

My stomach falls at that statement. This is my
home
. This isn’t some temporary living space that I’ll reside in until I get married and move to the suburbs, which I’d never actually intended to do. This is where my parents expect me to stay.

“I love it,” I breathe as my brother rushes past me and crawls onto a guest bed.

“Can I stay with Livvy?” he asks, peering out the window over the headboard that sits against it. The view from the north window isn’t as pretty as my view of Central Park, but it still overlooks a part of the city I love. Across the street is the Guggenheim and other apartments, their balconies decorated with ficus trees and ferns and flowers.

“As long as you leave the firemen at home, Trey,” Mom says with a laugh.

“Anna’s put so much thought into this place, Liv.”

“It’s so beautiful,” I tell her.

“I left the bedroom very neutral,” she explains, “so you can add your own touch to your room.”

“You did an amazing job putting my touch everywhere on your own!” I say to her, giving her another hug.

“I hoped you’d say that.”

“It looks so different. It doesn’t even feel like the same place.”

“Is that good?” Mom asks. I turn around and smile at her, knowing the old layout held special memories for her.

“
I
think it’s good,” I assure her as she hugs me again.

“We finally got our dance floor,” Dad says to Mom as he invites her to the hard, slick floor of my studio. My mother walks over to his awaiting arms and they start dancing together.

“Oh, god,” I say with a laugh, leading everyone else back into the main space.

“Do you like your new neighbor?” my uncle asks.

“I love my new neighbor!”

“Good, because we have a secret passageway between my bedroom and a guest room.”

“Seriously?” I laugh.

“It has double doors. Your dad wanted you to have another exit, in case there’s a fire or something.” He rolls his eyes at the far-fetched scenario. “
I
thought you might let my friends stay there from time to time.”

“Sure! Of course!”

“Happy early birthday, Livvy,” Dad says, coming back into the main room with the rest of us. He hands me the key.

“I can wait until my actual birthday, Dad,” I tell him, trying to give the key back. I’m honestly not sure I’m ready to
live
here.

“I want you to have it now, so if you want to come here and paint when you’re home, you can. But we’d still love to have you stay at the house for now. And whenever you want to, really. You’re always welcome there.”

“Whatever, Jacks,” my uncle says. “This floor is going to be the place to be! We are going to have so much fun!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Dad sighs as Mom and Nolan laugh. “But honestly, Liv... I don’t think I could have relinquished this place to you if your uncle hadn’t agreed to move here. I was pretty close to contesting Donna’s will,” he says, and I know he wouldn’t have really done that, but I’m sure this has been hard for him. “I worry about you.”

“Daddy, the idea of me living here alone just got a lot less scary,” I admit. “Thank you so much.”

“See, I knew you weren’t that anxious to move out... to move on with your life.” His comment is smug, and directed toward my mother more than anyone else.

“You were right,” she says stubbornly, words that she says to him more often than she’d like to. “Should we tell her about the party?”

“What party?”

“I thought you mentioned you wanted to have a party.”

“I do, yeah. But, you know, just something small. Finn’s going to be in town, and Maddie said she and Jackie were going to come home, too. They’ll probably bring Andrew, and I’m sure Clara will come. Maybe Lexi and Kyle can get a sitter... and then, you know, maybe I’ll ask some friends from Yale to come, too. I mean, hey. They could even stay in the guest rooms,” I say with a smile.

“Will there be alcohol?” my dad asks tenuously.

“I can’t buy alcohol,” I retort with a shrug, looking away from him.

“But your cousins can. I want you to do me a favor.”

“Dad...”

“Hear me out. Matthew’s going to have some friends over that evening. I’d prefer you not drink at all, but I’d rather any drinking be monitored by someone–especially if some of your guests don’t stay the night.”

“So Apartment C is the bar?” I laugh.

“Always,” Matty answers.

“In moderation,” Dad says. Mom nods her head in agreement. “You’re not old enough,” he reminds me. “I just know it’s a reality. I’d rather this than have Finn use a fake ID to get cases of beer.”

“So you trust Matty to be a good chaperone?” I ask the question without thinking. My uncle’s posture tenses up, just as mine does.

“You’re still here,” he says nonchalantly, patting my stiff shoulder. “He’s never let me down.” They exchange a brief glance. In that split second, I know my dad knows what happened between me and Jon in Mykonos, regardless of the many lies we’d all told him. But I also know he isn’t holding a grudge against my uncle. Matty and I smile at one another.

While my parents leave to take Trey to his baseball game, and my uncle and his boyfriend return to the apartment across the hall, I stay at the loft and organize my studio, putting new brushes and paints in bins and on shelves that make more sense to me than they do to my aunt. Once everything is how I want it, I take a seat on the newly-installed, cushioned bench by the window, looking out to the northwest. Jon’s up there, somewhere. He’d be amazed at this place.
Too bad he’ll never see it.

In the corner, I notice drapes pushed together and as I look up, I see an old, sturdy pipe that’s been repurposed as a curtain rod. It stretches the entire length of the loft, and I notice other sections of fabric hanging from it, tucked behind the partial walls and in another far corner.

Curious, I start to pull the curtains, and there are enough of them to cover all the windows. The apartment is dark in the middle of the day. We hadn’t needed lights when we came in, so we never turned any on, and now, I can barely make my way across the room to a switch. When I finally feel my way toward the nearest wall, I turn on the light. A row of spotlights shines on my series of thirty paintings. The lights are soft, and the display looks even more beautiful like this. I have to turn around to stop myself from crying, from wallowing in my pity. I don’t want to do that today. I won’t do it anymore, period.

I’m amazed at how much smaller the apartment looks without the expanse of the city flaunting its uniqueness and charm through my windows. It feels like a totally different space. I know that no one can see in through the windows from the outside, and wonder why Anna thought curtains were a good idea. I retreat further back into the apartment, toward the studio, away from the paintings that reflect the best and worst moments of my relationship with Jon, away from the light. In the smaller living room around the corner, it’s dark again. I sit on the couch there, listening to nothing but silence. It’s as if I’ve shut off all of my senses. It’s calming. It’s a relief. It’s exactly what I need.

CHAPTER 4

Dad has prepared an early dinner on Sunday, wanting to give me plenty of daylight so I’m alert for my drive back to New Haven. Matty joins us–without Nolan–who apparently spends his Sunday afternoons with his family.

I’d been painting all morning at the loft. While I had started a project yesterday, I wanted my normal brushes. I was used to their weight, and the feel of them in my hands. Even though the ones Anna had selected were top-of-the-line, they didn’t feel quite right and would need more breaking-in.

When I returned home last night, my parents talked to me about finances for the first time. I will be responsible for some of the utility costs in the new apartment. I have money in savings–thanks to Dad’s insistence of me opening an account when I was eight and putting ten percent of my allowance into it every week. The majority of the profits I’d made from selling my paintings were also put away. I had enough saved to last me quite awhile, but Dad has already said he won’t let me deplete my savings on this. He wants me to sell more paintings or find a job. I know he’s leaning toward me getting a job. After being faced with the series I’d painted over the summer yesterday and this morning, I start considering selling my tribute to Jon. My heart. My soul.

My past
.

It’s not because I don’t want to work. I wouldn’t mind, and I know it would help me get my mind off of things I shouldn’t be thinking about. The truth is, school is unpredictable, and juggling a job with a schedule when I don’t know what projects will be heaped on me next is a little stressful to me. Painting is not. I know the series that is featured on the main wall of the loft is good. It’s
really
good... but I wouldn’t sell it as a series. No one gets to know the whole story. They can have pieces of it. But the entirety of our relationship should belong to me and Jon–and no one else. Especially not someone who’s giving me money for it.

The sale of thirty paintings would probably fetch more money than some people make in a year. The money would last me long enough to paint three times as many paintings, if I was inspired and had the time and resources. So far, inspiration hasn’t been a problem for me. It hasn’t been for awhile. And they’ve given me an amazing studio at Yale, so resources aren’t an issue, either. It’s just time. Time I should spend studying. Time I should spend meeting people. Time I should spend exploring new places and things.

I know for a fact, though, that I’ve been spending too much time sleeping. With an eye mask and headphones that play relaxing thunderstorm sounds, I can sleep through whatever keeps Rachelle and Katrina up at night. This would be ideal time to go to the studio and spend a few hours working among my classmates.