Chapter Thirty-nine | Still Beating
♫ Still Beating by Mac Demarco

I don't go places on my own.

It makes me too nervous. I worry about not being able to handle myself when there's nobody around I feel comfortable asking for help. I can have the greatest ideas and the craziest cravings, but if no-one's there to let me grab onto them, I tend to stay right where I am.

At least, that's how it used to be.

I don't want to be an adult who can't go places on her own. I'm about to be nineteen and wrap up my first year at college. There's so much I've already achieved. Now, I want to achieve knowing how to be by myself in public.

That is why I use Ramona Sinclair as an excuse to get out of my dorm and purchase a bucket of fried chicken.

It's a strange thing, carrying fried chicken into a skyscraper with its golden accents and black marble. I even consider taking the stairs, not having forgotten last week's fiasco, but then I remember my legs and step into the elevator, regardless. Halfway up, I realize I have to pee, which is a standard thing when I'm nervous.

It gets to a point where, by the time I'm all the way to Ramona's floor, I'm practically dancing my way to her front door.

She takes her time opening the door after I've knocked, her eyes widening when she sees me. "What are you doing here?"

I weakly lift the hand that's holding the to-go bag. "Chicken," I say. "I have to pee so bad. Can I please use your bathroom?"

Ramona clearly hesitates. She hasn't even opened the door all the way, she just kind of poked her head out.

"If you couldn't tell by my squirms— it's either your bathroom or your front door at this point."

She grimaces. "Fine," she says. She steps back, opens the door wide and holds out her hand. "Give me the chicken. Bathroom's first door to the left."

She doesn't have to tell me twice. I push the bag into her arms and half-run to her toilet, which looks like the type of bathroom celebrities film those Vogue makeup routine videos in. It doesn't even look lived in. A fluffy, white bathrobe hangs steamed on the wall, and the counter (in which her sink is dipped) is lined with branded skincare products. Dior, Chanel, Guerlain, Orogold. I'm sure she gets these for free, even.

It's strange looking at myself in her ginormous mirror, as lanky and spastic as I am and literally sitting on the toilet with my pants— Milo's jeans— at my ankles.

It's why I don't spend too much time in there and instead find Ramona in her kitchen, where she's busy plating the fried chicken on two crystal plates.

"Seriously?"

She looks up at me. "I told you I have class, didn't I?" She says calmly. "Eating from a bucket is for people who don't have exclusive Artemest crystal plates from the 1956 spring collection."

I lean against the counter of her kitchen island, watching the focused expression on her face. "Can we at least eat with our hands?"

"Yes, Nova, we can eat with our hands. I might be rich, but I'm not uncultured," she deadpans. She folds the bucket up and throws it away, before taking the two plates and nodding her head towards the living space.

Her apartment is a smaller and much lighter version of Atlas' penthouse. Where his walls are dark grey, hers are a powdered pink, complimenting her furniture from her glass coffeetable to the white, soft dining chairs.

To my surprise, she doesn't sit on the sofa as dignified as she did the night of Halloween last year. Instead, the sits with her legs crossed on the carpet and scoots close to the coffeetable, where she puts her 'exclusive Artemest crystal plates from the 1956 spring collection'. Whatever that means.

I sit next to her, keeping my hands in my lap. I'm surprised she hasn't barked at me to leave the moment I exited the bathroom. I can't make a wrong move and be ejected from this apartment, now.

"What are you waiting for?" She asks, suddenly, assessing my passive position.

"What are you waiting for?" I ask in return.

Ramona eyes the plate as if the chicken on top of it could come back to life and jump at her at any moment.

It takes me a while to unfold my hands, but I decide to be an example for her once it works: I open my hands, take a chicken wing between the pads of my fingers and the lower part of my palm, and bite into it.

Ramona is mortified.

"It's just chicken," I say to her.

"It's not just chicken, it's fried. Doesn't the word just make you wanna puke?"

I take a second to think of what to say to her, all confused and hesitant, but clearly curious and hungry. "Do you really need me to walk you through this?" I ask at last.

"No. Of course not. I'm older than you," she insists with a sneer. And then she takes a wing, perfectly balanced between two fingers, and takes the tiniest bite known to man.

I take another bite, myself. She's so focused on herself that it gets easier to use my hands and supress my slight trembles even in her presence. I can't think too much about the fact that she's right about being older than me, about being more than me just like Atlas, or about the fact that I can look outside right now and see Broadway and Central Park and the entirety of New York.

"How is it?"

Ramona nods her head without looking up from her chicken wing. "It's nice," she says. "I guess this is... nice."

I smile at her, or at myself, because she still won't look up at me.

"Is there anything else you haven't eaten before?" I wonder out loud.

She gives me a suspicious look. "If I tell you, will you show up here again?"

"Only if you'd like me to."

That seems to have been the right answer. Ramona thinks about it, momentarily pausing in her movements.

"I could never really eat pizzas," she finally says.

"Why not?"

"I wasn't allowed to." She shrugs. "And you know what? I've actually had a taste of it before, just never fully indulged myself. Interestingly enough, anything Italian was strictly off-limits while I was growing up."

I want to know if I can ask the question I want to ask, but have no way to know for sure.

"My mother was also a model, you know," Ramona says, without being prompted to. She picks at the fried chicken wing between her fingers, suddenly less eager to have another taste. "However, she found herself caught between two worlds. On one hand, she came from a Caribbean family where food held great significance, while on the other hand, there was the American modeling scene that seemed to promote the idea of constantly denying yourself. Living in New York rather than Jamaica, I suppose it was easier for her to conform to this mindset. She would only eat to avoid fainting."

"Is that how you were raised?"

"Not at first. She used to navigate the two worlds, her career and her home life, quite effortlessly. But as I matured, it seemed to unsettle her, as if she was afraid of my growth and development, particularily in terms of embracing my physical femininity."

When Ramona notices her last statement confuses me, she adds, "She put me on a restrictive regimen to halt my physical development when I was nine. We also engaged in calorie-restriction together. Her belief was that it was crucial for me to stay petite, considering my height, in order to secure a place in the modeling industry. And she used to go on and on about how men just loved women who were as small as possible. But I never gave that idea too much thought. It's one of those things I'd rather not dig into, you know? There are more interesting things to focus on than what men supposedly prefer."

I nod. "That's..." The words linger on the threshold of my mouth. Nothing I could say would cover how I feel. Nothing I could say would mean enough.

"You don't have to say anything," Ramona tells me. "It's clearly over now. Otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here like this with you."

"I'm sorry, Ramona." I still say it, as weak as it sounds.

She glances up at me, her face pensive, before saying, "I know, thank you," and taking a deep breath. "I'm just rebuilding my relationship with food at the moment."

"That's good," I tell her. "If you don't want to do it alone, you know where to find me."

Ramona nods her head, but her shoulders are still squared. In a short moment, she looks up at me, determined, and says, "We need drinks." She pushes herself away from the coffee table and jumps to her feet.

"Do we?" I ask, watching her enter the kitchen and pull open a cabinet filled with bottles of aged wine.

"My mentioning my mother calls for drinks," she says distractedly, scanning her collection. "You don't have to go all out, just have a sip. I've had my share of chicken wings, so how about you try something a little more sophisticated? Something like a... Pinot Noir." She takes the bottle and clenches it between her body and her arm, swivelling around to retrieve two wine glasses from yet another cabinet.

I nervously glance at her all-white apartment. "I will probably spill it and ruin your furniture."

She plops down next to me. "I'll just buy whatever it is you ruin again."

"Right." There's not much else I can do but watch as she pours the wine into the glasses, a full one for her and a mere few drops for me.

"Taste it before you hate it," she mumbles at me, before taking a swig.

I reach out my better hand and lightly touch the stem of the glass. Ramona, I see out of the corner of my eye, holds it between her two fingers with an ease I'm perpetually unfamiliar with. I know from my parents that that's the way to drink wine, but with hands like mine, there needs to be enough to hold onto, should I wish to hold on at all.

To my relief, Ramona doesn't seem to mind that much when I grip the glass in a way that best fits my limited mobility. I put the glass to my mouth, tilt my head back, and have a taste.

When I was younger, I figured wine would taste like grape juice with alcohol. Instead, it's a taste not quite like anything else I've ever had before; a comparison I can't actually make.

"How is the wine?" Ramona asks me, as she tops up her own glass.

"It's... I don't know. Don't you have to be certified or something, to say anything about wine?"

"No. You're allowed to express your opinion," Ramona near sneers, as if she's offended I'd even think so.

"Then, it's okay."

Ramona tilts the bottle of wine towards me, a questioning look on her face.

I hesitate for only a moment. So far, her apartment feels safe and she seems too occupied with herself to notice too much of me. It's why I watch her pour a bit more than last time into my glass, as I grip it tightly with a feeling of slight excitement. How would my parents feel about this? I'm a long way from twenty-one. And I'm fully aware that Ramona— though she has been nice so far— is a textbook bad influence.

Still, for the first time in my life, I feel myself eagerly want something regardless of what others might think. It is almost symbolic that it happens inside of Ramona's apartment, and not Atlas' or Milo's or Elle's.

"It tastes like how this apartment feels," I tell Ramona after my fifth glass.

The faintest hint of a smile tugs at the corners of her lips. "I see the wine's doing its job."

"Was this your intention?" I ask. She frowns. "Getting me drunk?"

"My intention was getting me drunk." She snorts, pouring herself another glass. She's going faster than me. This is her sixth glass, or her seventh. Or maybe her eighth. "Now look at me, taking care of you, instead. I should've had the entire bottle to myself."

"Maybe," I hum. I lie down on her carpet, spreading my legs and my arms and scooting over so that I look up at the ceiling through her glass coffee table. I can see the bottom of the wine glass and the wine. Have I ever seen either before? How many times have I even peered up from underneath a coffee table and seen the ceiling?

I sigh. "You shouldn't have let me in."

"I know. I shouldn't have let you in." Ramona leans on the coffee table with her forearms, tilting her upper body ever so slightly.

I can feel her look at me after that, through the coffee table as she continues sipping wine. I'm overcome by a feeling of curiosity. Has she ever really looked at me? She did, the first time we met. How long did it take for her to decide she didn't like me?

"Why don't you?" I ask out loud.

She clears her throat. "Why don't I what?"

"Why don't you like me?"

Her clock— also glass, with a white face— ticks eleven times before she answers me.

"Who said I don't like you?"

"I'm pretty sure you did, at some point," I snort. "And it was noticeable."

Ramona shifts her weight back, pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them to her. "Do you want the truth?"

I nod.

"I'm a bitch, Nova."

The answer is so blunt and unexpected that I can't help but laugh, but she seems serious.

"I mean it. I'm a bitch. I saw you in the exact place I wanted to be in and just like that, I decided to hate you."

"What's changed since then?" I ask, rolling onto my side to face her. "Is it the Atlas thing?"

She nods her head pensively. "Yes, it definitely had an effect, among other things. Normally, when I'm being a bitch, I couldn't care less. But you managed to make me feel guilty about it, especially after that incident in the elevator last week."

"I introduced you to the feeling of guilt," I conclude with a sense of pride.

Ramona rolls her eyes. "I completely forgot that you're intoxicated. Let's not have this conversation now."

"I'm not intoxicated. Look, I can—" I lift up my head, banging into the coffee table I forgot I was lying underneath.

To my surprise, Ramona bursts out laughing.

It's the first time I've heard her laugh. The sound is short and lower than her regular voice, and her shoulders shake.

But she can't help it. "C'mere," she chuckles, reaching out both of her hands and taking my head in them, cradling away the pain as she does.

I scoot out from underneath the table, sitting up next to her. She drops her hands and reaches for the wine again.

"Can I have some more, too?"

Ramona's eyebrows lift high. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I'm fine," I say. I knock a fist against my temple. "That bump sobered me right up."

"I suppose it can't hurt," she mutters, and pours me another glass. After this, she puts the bottle to her lips and finishes it. "So, what has gotten you to grasp for alcohol like this?"

"I'm not. I'm just curious."

"This is not curiosity. This is avoidance."

I look at her, considering her nonchalance. That's the thing about Ramona Sinclair, I'm learning: she's perfectly able to extract information from you by making it feel like not a big deal.

"Avoidance?"

"Milo Macarevich," she says simply.

I avert my eyes again and the glass returns to my lips. My muscles are tightening, even though the alcohol seemed to have extracted the tension earlier. "I'm trying wine because I wanted to try wine. Not everything has to be about a boy." But out of the corner of my blurred eyes, I reach for my phone. Milo Macarevich is on speed dial; but I'm always too afraid to call first.

I fist the phone in my hand.

"I strongly support that message," Ramona nods, swinging the now empty wine bottle in the air as she speaks. "Except, this is about a boy. Why in the world you see something in him, I will never understand, but it's there."

I turn to her fully, licking the wine off of my lips. "That's the thing," I emphasize almost desperately. "The thing I can't understand is why nobody gets it. It's like the world has put on blinders and they can't see what's right in front of their eyes."

"What are we supposed to see?"

"That he's everything. He's in everything," I rasp. "I can't take the subway because then I just think about the time he took me to Brooklyn and held my hand the entire time. I can't even see soup or pasta without thinking about his apartment and how many times we sat on his floor or his rooftop discussing everything under the sun. I can't go to my meetings because then I think about how he dragged me out of bed and put on my shoes and went with me. I can't put on my pants without thinking of him snipping the tag off. I can't go to the lecture hall without thinking of him in the front row, cheering me on. I can't eat when he's not blabbering on about Feeding Nova. It's like I'm infected. It's like he's some sort of supervillain and he's somehow on every street corner and in everything I do and he's attached himself right onto my brain."

My chest is heaving. With shaky hands, I attempt to put the wine glass onto Ramona's coffee table, afraid that if I don't, I might crush the glass in my tension-ridden hands.

Ramona plucks the glass from the hands in question and nearly smashes it onto the table. "You are in love with him."

"I just like him. A lot."

"You are in love with him."

"He's my best friend and I think I'm drunk—"

"Nova Carter," she interjects again, sternly demanding my attention. "You are in love with him."

"So what? What if I am?" I say to her, exasperated. "He's literally living his dream. I have nothing to do with it. I will never put my feelings before his happiness." I shake my head. "I won't do it."

"Okay." Ramona puts the bottle to her eye and squeezes the other one shut. "Damn. It's really empty."

"Okay?" I repeat, ignoring her last remark. "That's it?"

"What do you want me to say? You're right. He's living the dream right now. You wouldn't want to pull him out of that, would you?"

I sit back, avoiding her eye, even though she doesn't pay me much mind. "No," I agree. "I wouldn't."

But some part of me is disappointed that it ends there. That she doesn't encourage me. I half-thought she'd be moved, if anything, and put me on the next flight to Italy like in a romance novel.

Instead, we sit there.

"More wine?" Ramona suggests.

"Yes. More wine."

You have two push notifications.