It wasn’t until I nearly climbed up his body that one of us regained our senses, and I realized it had to have been him. Because although the kiss slowed, the rest of me didn’t, my body stretching to cover as much of his as I could and my hands fisting his shirt, bringing us as close as we could get without getting arrested.
We popped apart, lips parted and chests heaving and eyes wide, like we’d seen a color neither of us had laid eyes on before.
A crack like a gunshot whipped our heads in the direction of the sound as a wave of laughter rose, followed by more cracks and snaps as the crowd grabbed balloons and popped them, though some were left bouncing over the crowd, kept afloat by a bodiless hand here and there.
I stepped back, needing and hating to put space between us. My smile said more than I wanted it to.
“You’ve had your taste,” I said blithely, ignoring my racing heart. “Now what?”
“I’ll take the bottle.”
He reached for my hand, but I drifted back, my fingers sliding through his.
“Come to the next party and maybe you’ll get a glass.”
“And if I can’t get an invite?”
But I smiled at him over my shoulder as I turned. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
The determination on his face told me I was right.
3
Something Else
LEVI
“You’re a sweet boy, Levi.” Peg smiled at me from behind the fluff-and-fold counter at the Laundromat.
“Don’t tell anybody.” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “You’re gonna ruin my street cred.”
She laughed that husky sort of laugh only achieved with the help of fifty-some-odd years of Marlboro Reds. “Taking care of Billy like you do? You could be off, having fun. Living it up. Chasing tail.”
“Who says I’m not?” I took the offered laundry bag full of my foster dad’s clothes and slung it over my shoulder.
She waved a hand at me. “I mean it. I don’t know what Billy’d do if it wasn’t for you.”
“Eat microwave dinners and bowls of cereal for sustenance.”
“Nilla Wafers for dinner.”
“Only on Tuesdays.”
That earned me another laugh. “How come no girl’s locked you down yet? If I were forty years younger, it’d be me.”
“If you were forty years younger, I’d have already beaten you to the punch, Peg.”
The color in her cheeks rose when she laughed again. “Quit makin’ old ladies blush.”
“You started it.” I turned for the door. “See you next week.”
“All right, and you tell Billy to come on by when he’s out for his walk.”
“Why, you gonna take care of him when I’m gone?”
She waggled her brows. “If I have my way.”
With an unamused shake of my head, I pushed the door open. “Bye, Peg.”
“Bye-bye, honey.” She waved a gnarled, old hand at me as the glass door closed behind me.
It was as hot as a frying pan, the sidewalk sizzling in the midday sun. But even the sweltering heat and a full smoke-free year couldn’t stop the itch for a cigarette. I gnawed on the stir stick between my lips to keep them occupied instead.
Poor substitute, if you asked me.
The familiar block was already bustling, but it didn’t look much like it did when I was a kid. So many of the old businesses were gone, bought out by fancy hair salons and cheese shops and hipster cafés and Starbucks as Hell’s Kitchen gentrified, but some of the old staples remained, holding out against the surge. Like Peg’s Laundromat, Gino’s Subs, the Fareedis’ liquor store—which didn’t have a name, just the word Liquor in big red letters over the door. The Li’s bodega was still up and running, but a developer was after them—I had a feeling they were ready to fold. And who could blame them? The kind of cash these developers threw around was more than any of us had ever seen in one place at one time. It’d be bad business to pass up that kind of opportunity, and everybody knew it.
But seeing the neighborhood change still sucked. Everybody knew that too.
Money changed things, changed people, and most of the time, not in a good way. The neighborhood was an easy example. I had my fair share of filthy rich friends, and though their extravagance frequently made me uncomfortable, they were old money—multimillion-dollar trusts was the life they knew. But through journalism, I knew plenty of people who’d been made, and they rarely stayed who they were before. Especially the ones who hadn’t had to really work for it.
It was hard to fathom. All I’d ever done was work for it, scraping and scrabbling for everything I had, even Billy.
I popped into Gino’s to grab Billy his usual and headed back out into the heat, adjusting the bag on my shoulder as I went over an unofficial list of things I needed to do this weekend. Grocery shopping for Billy, some meal prep tomorrow. Tidy up the apartment, vacuum and dust, since he didn’t see messes. Not that he saw a lot of anything—he refused to wear his glasses, preferring blindness to the indignity. He’d practically kicked me out in college, insisting after my mandatory dorm year that I live on the Upper West, near school. He also insisted he was able to take care of himself, which was mostly true, so long as he had somebody to run his errands and help with bills.
But with this article, I would earn myself a step up the ladder.
Just like Rolling Stone, Vagabond’s circulation had been in steady decline for years, and as such, we’d been pushing hard to rebrand over the last few years to make the shift from focusing primarily on music to reaching for a broader audience with politics. And not just national, but issues around the world. We were looking to make a new name for ourselves—an opinion-slanted culture magazine with an edge, the voice of young America.
An opportunity had opened up—a war correspondency in Syria—and if I did my job with the Bright Young Things, I’d land my dream gig covering the war. The money would take care of Billy for years—his city pension and Social Security checks barely covered his bills, never mind what would happen when he couldn’t live on his own anymore. I needed money in savings to pay for in-home care if he wouldn’t let me live with him.
Everything I did now was to pay into that future.
I’d been putting off finding someone to take my place when it came to Billy, not trusting anybody to care for him the way I did. But he’d threatened me with disownment if I didn’t take the job in Syria with the magazine, fueled by the astute assumption that I didn’t want to leave him. But he was pushing eighty, and his age, combined with an old gunshot injury—the same one that had ended his long career with the NYPD and left him hobbled—made me hesitant to go anywhere, even the next borough over. Hell, I’d move in with Billy if he’d let me.
Stubborn old bastard.
I trotted up the steps to the building, setting the laundry bag at my feet so I could unlock the heavy green door. The stairwell smelled like old paper and musty wood, the familiar scent following me as I climbed two flights and turned for the apartment.
When I entered, Billy glanced over with a crooked smile on his weathered face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, son, but you look like shit.”