“Sadie, will you move in with me?”
Chapter 4
Connor
Dusk purpled the city skyline and bare-boned winter trees shivered in the frosty, late November wind that brought yellowed leaves dancing over the busy streets, caught in the hurrying headlights of passing cars. The shuffle of joyful, holiday passersby wrapped in their Christmas sweaters and warm hats were uninterrupted by the glossy black car with its tinted windows and its driver, who hummed off-tune Christmas music under her breath as she drove. A sallow, cold fog hung in the air, casting the teeming city into slinking shadows and flickering street lamps in the fallen twilight. The dark of the night spread quickly and the bright glow of the city blotted out the twinkling stars high above in the velvety black sky. It was almost picture-perfect, the way the colorful lights and decorations covered the buildings, like some forgotten yuletide greeting card of a Hallmark town, buried somewhere in someone’s dusty closet. The sidewalks showed an excess of Christmas shoppers, their arms overflowing and teetering with their mountains of expensive gifts and trinkets.
Sadie Harlow watched from inside the black car’s tinted windows, and I watched her. She was something of a mystery to me. Though she had seemed overly excited about this whole thing, she expressed wholeheartedly that she did not like me, at least not yet, and that we were nothing alike. Sadie didn’t like my father at all and though that was understandable to me, I was hard-pressed to understand her disdain of me. Despite the hot chocolate thing that had been chalked up to a bad day in general, I didn’t think there was any sort of bad blood between the two of us.
It was common for people that didn’t know me to assume I was like my father. He was hard and unshakeable. He was a towering skyscraper and he always got what he wanted when he wanted it. In comparison, I was just some dusty roadside gas station or grocery store, on its last leg of business and unsure of its future. It was very strange though that Sadie seemed to see my father as something else, something darkened and cracked in her mind, like a deteriorating structure, ready to fall at any moment. I wondered what she actually thought of me and had the strangest urge to be able to read her mind. I doubted I would like what I found there. Was I cracked and broken like my father? Or maybe I was just a blank slate, ready for color.
Back at the studio, Sadie Harlow seemed to think over my offer of moving in, and then shrugged at me as if to say, sure, why not? Her living situation must have been pretty rough for her to say yes so easily, and I was strangely satisfied to be able to give her some sort of respite from wherever it was that she had been staying. I had always lived alone though, and despite the cameras following us once we moved in, it was going to be a big change to have someone living in my space. The last person I lived with had been my dad and we hadn’t exactly been buddies in our cold home. He had his side of the house and I had mine. I wondered if Sadie was the kind of person who crossed boundaries or if she had her own walls, built up high. I suspected she was the latter. She watched the bright lights of the city pass by and I got the impression that it wasn’t something she actually enjoyed. There was an odd, resigned sort of look on her face, one of someone who wished to be somewhere else but understood that they were stuck where they were. Was she from New York originally? I didn’t think so. It was something I would have to ask, just one of the myriad things bouncing around in my head that I’d like to know about her.
Nora had taken to her almost immediately when I’d offered to take her back to her apartment complex. Though now, she was driving us to the little diner that Sadie mentioned back at the studio. I could see the sign on the side of the building, the flickering neon lights proclaiming Manhattan’s best milkshakes! and Our cheeseburgers are #1 in New York! Nora parked the car across the street and let her seat back, lounging in the car with a book as we left.
I followed Sadie as she huddled in her thick sweater and crossed the street quickly, her breath fogging in the cold night air. There was a whimper, and I could see a little dog sitting and wagging its tail by the door and staring morosely into the empty water bowl at its feet. Sadie made a little sound and jumped over to it, digging inside her bag for her water bottle and crouching down beside the dog. She dumped the contents into the bowl until the water sloshed over the side and the little yellow dog’s breath fogged as he drank happily. Sadie’s face was awash with happiness and my chest ached at her kindness. The people I knew usually ignored the errant street dogs, shooing them away without a care. Sadie was different.