Wish I Were Here

Chapter 6

I —” I stare at Helen with my mouth hanging open. “Of course I exist . I’m standing right here in front of you.”

Helen’s eyebrows rise and lips purse, but ever the professional, she calmly says, “Unfortunately, your physical presence doesn’t constitute proof of identity. Your name and Social Security number didn’t show up in any of the government records when we ran our checks.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I submitted a copy of my official Social Security card.”

“Well, at the end of the day, a Social Security card is just a piece of paper. And I’m not saying you would do this—” She holds out a manicured hand to reassure me, but something about her tone has a false ring to it. “But Social Security cards can be faked.”

Faked? Who does Helen think I am? “Mine wasn’t faked.”

“Well…” Helen crosses her arms. Underneath her class president exterior, I’m getting a hint of mean girl who puts gum in your hair. “That seems like exactly the sort of thing someone would say if it was faked, doesn’t it?”

She has a point.

I grasp for something that makes sense. “But the mathematics department hired me for the position. They have copies of my transcripts and my dissertation. They checked my references. All of that proves I’m a real person.”

“Again, I’m not saying you would do this, but there are also ways to fake that sort of thing.”

I feel the heat rising in my face. It’s one thing to suggest I mixed up my paperwork, and entirely another to imply that I didn’t write my own dissertation. “Who would have written my dissertation, then? There are only a handful of scholars who understand the nuances of my field of study. How would I fake it?”

“Well…” Helen says, drawing out the word like she hates to be the one who has to break it to me. “Unfortunately, the university has discovered the occasional student who relied on artificial intelligence to… enhance… their papers.”

My breath hitches and my chest squeezes. “ I did not use artificial intelligence. ” It comes out louder than I intended.

Helen’s eyes widen, and she takes a step back from me. One of her hands slides toward the phone, probably to call security, and the other reaches for her desk drawer like she has some sort of weapon stashed in there. Human resources is probably where all the disgruntled employees end up, so I can’t completely blame her. Except I’m not a disgruntled employee, and I’m not here to complain about my sick time or lack of dental benefits. My entire career is on the line, and this woman is implying that nothing about me is real.

But even through my panic, I can recognize that throwing a tantrum in this woman’s office is not going to get me what I want. My control of this situation is slipping, and I need to wrestle it back. I take a deep, cleansing breath, holding my palms up to show I’m harmless. “Look,” I say. “I just want to clear this up. I can assure you that I did write my dissertation, my references are real, and I earned every A on my transcript. How can I prove it to you?”

I remember Luca’s engaging smile earlier, and how, for just a moment, it almost made me forget about the broken elevator. I try one out for myself, curving my lips upward and flashing my pearly whites. I’m pretty sure I look less like my charming doorman and more like I’m having my teeth checked at the dentist, but it does seem to defuse the situation.

Helen slowly draws her hand away from the phone, curling it into a fist. Just in case I make any sudden movements, I guess. “If you really are who you say you are… there will be some sort of record of you.”

“But—where? How do I find a record?” I can hear a little break in my voice at the end. They don’t teach you this sort of thing in calculus class: what to do if your identity disappears into thin air. No perfect grades on my transcript or dissertation can help me now. “You said I didn’t show up in any of the government systems. I don’t even know how that’s possible. I’ve had other jobs before, and they’ve never had a problem finding me.”

Helen sighs deeply, and maybe hovering close to crying is working better for me than a Cheshire cat grin, because her face softens. “It could be some sort of mix-up. A record was moved or deleted. I recommend you take your documents down to the Social Security office and see if they can clear it up for you.”

“Really? Do you think that’s all it is?”

She nods, maybe humoring me, but hope swells in my chest. Helen is no longer looking at me as if I’m some sort of criminal, and like she said, maybe this is all just a misunderstanding. I’ll take a quick trip down to the Social Security office and have this cleared up before the faculty luncheon this afternoon.

Except there’s just one little problem. My gaze swings to Helen. “What about the orientation? Will I have to miss it?” I told Dr. Gupta that I would attend today. What if he asks about it over lunch?

But Helen just shrugs. “I think that’s the least of your problems at the moment.” She brushes off her hands, clearly done with me. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an orientation to get to.” Helen closes her computer and holds out a hand, gesturing for me to leave the room first. Out in the hall, she pulls the door shut firmly.

As quickly as I can, I head out of the building and make a break for the bus. My personal paperwork is at home, so I’ll need to stop there before I can run over and clear this up at the Social Security office.

When I walk into the DeGreco, the first thing I notice is that Luca seems to have cleaned himself up and taken a shower. His thick, dark hair is still wet, waving over his forehead and curling slightly at the nape of his neck. The second thing I notice is that the elevator is still broken.

“Seriously?” I stare up at the dark panel over the elevator door. “Dante didn’t come yet?” I bang on the button, though I’m pretty sure I have no hope of it making the elevator appear.

“You’re home early,” he says, ignoring my question along with my disgruntled expression. “How was your day, dear?”

I don’t have time for this. It’s one thing to descend eight floors in a pair of heels. It’s another entirely to have to climb them. Especially when I’m in a hurry, and my day is falling apart. “What happened to Dante? I thought he was coming to fix the elevator.”

“He was here, he fixed it, he left, and now it’s broken again.” He shakes his head like, What are you gonna do? “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Hartman’s wedding anniversary, so Mrs. Hartman is breaking things all over the building.”

“You’re saying someone broke the elevator ?”

“It’s a long story.” Luca shrugs. “Why the rush anyway?”

“I need to get up to my apartment to get some papers.”

“Did you forget something? Otherwise, that was the fastest orientation in the history of orientations.”

I’m not sure how he’d know. There’s no way Luca underwent any sort of training whatsoever for this job. “No, I did not forget something.” I can feel that familiar panic pooling in my chest. “I submitted everything I needed to submit on the day I received the email.”

Luca nods. “I wouldn’t expect any less of you.” He pulls out a rag and starts cleaning the counter in front of him. Except I suspect it’s a gesture for my benefit—to make it look like he’s working—because he just keeps swiping at the same two-square-foot area. “So did you ace the orientation and they sent you home early?”

I press the elevator button again and then give up. “I can’t talk now. I have to climb eight flights of stairs to my apartment.” And with that, I slip out of my high-heeled shoes and make a run for the stairwell. Once inside, I shuffle up each stair as fast as I can in my fitted pencil skirt, cursing my choice of clothing today. I’d kill for Mrs. Goodwin’s black trousers right now.

I manage to keep up a swift, steady pace until I get to the fourth floor, and then my thighs start burning and my steps begin to slow. By the fifth floor, I’m holding on to the railing and starting to breathe hard. Around the seventh floor, I’m panting and cursing. How hard is it to fix an elevator? Maybe Dante should be fired. “Maybe Luca should be fired, too,” I mutter.

And then, from behind me on the stairs, I hear the most annoying voice I’ve ever heard in my life ring out. “You called?”

I spin around as elegantly as I can muster in this cursed skirt while clutching the railing for dear life and find Luca casually ascending the stairs, half a flight behind me, breathing normally, not a hair out of place. “Why are you following me?” I demand.

“I’m not following you. I simply came to ask if you wanted to take the elevator.”

I grip the railing harder. “I thought the elevator was broken.”

“Oh, it is.” Luca nods. “The passenger elevator, anyway. But we could have taken the freight elevator.”

I gape at him. “Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me there was a freight elevator?”

“Maybe I like seeing your nose all scrunched up like that when you’re out of breath.”

If I had the energy right now, I would push him down these stairs. Instead, I swing around and start my slow shuffle back up.

Luca takes the steps two at a time, and in less than three seconds he’s standing on the step above me, looking down. “Actually, I didn’t tell you there was a freight elevator because you ran out too quickly and didn’t give me a chance.”

On equal footing, he’s a good eight inches taller than me, so I have to tilt my head back to look at him on the upper stair. “Are you saying I could have been riding the freight elevator all along?”

Luca shakes his head. “It’s in the back of the building, and you have to go through the storage closet to get to it. You can’t go on your own. I’d have to take you, because you need a key to access it.”

My gaze slides past Luca to the door on the landing behind him, lingering on the large number eight painted there. “Well, I guess it’s too late now. This is my floor.”

I haul myself up the last few steps and push through the door into my hallway. Luca trails after me to my apartment. I consider telling him to go away, but at this point, it would be more trouble to argue with him than to just let him tag along. I do my best to ignore him as I pull out my key, unlock the door, and push it open. It doesn’t really surprise me that Luca follows me into my apartment, too. He’s never struck me as someone who waits for an invitation. I head directly to the built-in cabinets on the far wall, while Luca stands in the middle of the living room, spinning in a slow circle.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“Thanks.” I fling open a cabinet door and pull out a file box full of papers, tossing the lid to the side and kneeling next to it. Inside, I find all my personal paperwork tucked into color-coded files, the contents of each listed on a tab I made with my label maker. The sight of those uniform cardboard shapes lined up in a neat row slows my heart rate a smidge.

Somewhere to my right, Luca is still checking out my apartment. “It doesn’t really surprise me that your place is so clean.” He takes another turn. “But I admit I didn’t expect all this. You’ve done an amazing job with the decorating.” His eyebrows rise, and he sounds impressed. I look up from my box of files and take a second to look around, trying to view my new apartment through Luca’s eyes.

I’ve never had a home, a real home and not just a cheap month-to-month rental that we were in danger of getting kicked out of at any moment. One where Dad’s unicycle and stilts leaned against the worn living room couch and his juggling clubs blocked the hallway. So, when I moved into this place, I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on furnishings, but I dipped into my savings and splurged on the emerald-green velvet sofa, the cream-colored rug that’s as soft as clouds under my feet, and the botanical block prints handmade by a local artist.

I stare at those prints on the wall. The artist carved the delicate lines of each petal and stem into a block of wood that she printed onto a canvas in layers of color. My eyes shift to the vines peeking out of Luca’s rolled-up sleeves. Funny that I would choose to decorate my most cherished space, and he would choose to decorate his body, so similarly. My gaze drifts up his shoulder and down to the buttons on his shirt. I’ve only ever seen the ink on his arms, but he’s wearing a V-neck T-shirt under his doorman uniform today and, given the hints of color climbing above the open collar, I’m assuming the tattoos extend down his chest. And maybe… lower? I flush the color of the crimson poppy near Luca’s elbow and yank my eyes from his trim thighs. They snap to Luca’s, which I now realize have been trained on me this entire time.

I look away. “You expected my apartment to be stark and cold, right? All clean lines and beige surfaces?” From our limited interactions, I imagine how he must think I’m stuffy and uptight, how my desire for rules and order must seem like a curse for someone as carefree as Luca. We’ve been like positive and negative numbers since we met, always on completely opposite sides of the line.

Luca slips his hands into his pockets. “I never know what to expect with you, honestly. But stark and cold aren’t quite the words that come to mind.”

“What words come to mind?” I ask before I can stop myself. Something thrums across the small space between us. I’m reminded that we haven’t always been like positive and negative numbers.

It was that first day we met. Right here in this apartment, actually. I’d been so thrilled to be moving out on my own, so happy to find this quiet building full of older people and this sunlit apartment full of character. For the first time in my life, I hadn’t cared about rules or regulations or what it said in a manual. I’d wanted the apartment, and when Luca said I could have it—I—

Well.

I don’t know what came over me.

I kissed him.

My face flushes just thinking about it. I basically threw myself in his direction, and he pulled me against him, mouth meeting mine as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if I belonged in his arms. It was just a brief brush of lips, but it was like I’d somehow worked out the most complex mathematical equation in my head. The pieces fell into place, and everything added up like I was exactly who and where I was supposed to be.

But I’d pulled away, and he’d made a joke, and that was it. The next time I saw him I was tripping over a bike in the mail room, and the time after that was the lost dry cleaning incident. I realized how unreliable he is, and I’m assuming he decided that I’m—

Well, I don’t know what he decided, since I’m still waiting to hear what word comes to mind when he thinks of me. I’m not sure why I’m holding my breath, but I am.

Luca looks me over. “Determined,” he finally says. “Passionate.”

My heart slams into my chest.

“You never, ever do anything halfway,” he says, like he might actually admire that about me.

I could toss these files aside, cross the room, and be in his arms in less than ten seconds. Something about the way he’s looking at me makes me think he might welcome it.

Except that Luca kisses everyone, and dances with everyone. And charms everyone.

I spin back around to turn my attention to the file box. What am I doing staring into Luca’s eyes and contemplating throwing myself at him when I have the biggest crisis of my life to avert? If I don’t get it together, I’m about to lose this apartment and everything else I worked so hard for.

“What are you looking for?” Luca asks, and if it comes out a bit gravelly, it’s not because of me.

I pull my neatly labeled files from the red section of the box and fan them on the floor. Health Insurance , Credit Card , Bank Account . Here it is… Personal Identification .

I reach into the folder and find my Social Security card along with my birth certificate, both stashed in clear plastic envelopes to protect them from water damage. “This. I’m looking for this.” I wave the papers in Luca’s direction.

Luca’s brow furrows. “Why do you need your Social Security card and birth certificate? I thought you said you submitted all the paperwork for your new job already.”

“I did! It was all there!”

“Then… what are we doing here?”

I stagger to my feet, clutching the paperwork tightly against my chest. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’m about to go and prove that I exist.”