20 #2
“Can I try your drink?” she asked.
“You sure? It’s disgusting.”
“I love disgusting.”
He passed her the can hesitantly. She sniffed it, then took a little sip. They were sharing a soda. Intimate, and gross.
“This is just Coke,” she said.
He shrugged.
“Why are you pretending to be drunk?”
“Because I’m nervous.”
There it was, the lurch in her stomach.
“The coat looks good on you,” he said.
“It’s kind of long.”
“Everything looks good on you.”
He shouldn’t have been allowed to say things like that, things that set fires inside her. Was it that easy? That simple a
compliment? It hit her so hard that she turned away from the river and back toward the streets. They were in the Twenties,
it seemed, so she drifted back toward the apartment.
People at nearby restaurants and bars were starting to scream out a countdown.
“Looks like . . .”
“Seven, six, five, four, three, two . . .”
Yelling from all directions. Noisemakers. Fireworks started going off, and the roar from Times Square was like a dull wave
in the distance.
“Happy New Year,” he said, bumping lightly into her side. He didn’t bounce back. They stayed there, pressed together.
If she wanted to kiss him, the invitation was clear.
Something was pulling her down, back to reality. Janelle’s disappointed voice in her head. Her own fury.
Not yet. Not until her brain stopped racing. She walked on toward the apartment. It began to snow—fat, wet flakes that melted
on contact. They were a block away when her phone shook her pocket like a trapped animal.
Janelle: I’m sorry
I love you
We’re back. It was gross. We left early.
“Who’s that?” he asked, casting his eyes down to her phone. “Who loves you?”
He tried to make it sound casual, but Stevie could hear an edge of something in it. Like there might be another person—someone who had already taken his place. Like he might be jealous. The idea made her shudder and sweat. Why was she sweating
so much?
“Janelle,” Stevie said, hearting the message and pocketing the phone.
“Did she like my letter? You haven’t said.”
“I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it,” she replied.
“It’s pretty simple. I got insecure. We were Detective Stevie and the Fuck-Up Kid. Because you are always going to be special.
I am always going to be the son of a terrible man, but someone who has enough money and connections to get somewhere.”
“Do you want me to feel bad for you?”
“No,” he said. “That’s the problem. I don’t want you to feel bad for me. I want to stand on my own feet, next to you. And
that’s hard.”
“So what do you want?” she said.
“A do-over,” he said. “Like I never said it. Like it never happened. Because it was the biggest mistake of my life, and that
is saying something. I am proficient at mistakes.”
A do-over. Like it never happened. The past would be papered over and things would move on, smoothly. She could live in the
warm and secure home of her own skin again, without the terrors in the night, without the void on the edges of the horizon
at all times.
“Stevie!”
It was Janelle’s voice, coming from right above them. She was leaning out the front window of the apartment, eight floors
up, waving. Looking straight up into the rapidly falling snow made Stevie dizzy, but she liked the sensation. The snow seemed
to move more slowly if you watched it from this angle. Everything was about angles.
“Hi, Janelle,” David called.
“Are you coming up, Stevie?” Janelle yelled down.
“Guess I’ll just go fuck myself, then,” David said under his breath.
“Coming.”
It was pointed enough that Janelle retreated back inside, but Stevie could feel her observing still.
“Does she hate me now?”
“She’s always hated you,” Stevie said.
He leaned over slightly and looked in the general direction of her boobs, which were well covered by the coat and the massive
Icelandic sweater underneath.
“Why do you have a Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway pin on my coat?” he said.
“It’s my coat. You gave it to me. Do you want it back?”
“No, but I may want that pin.”
He rocked back on his heels and gazed up at their apartment window.
“She’s not going to stop watching us, is she?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“That’s fair. And it’s fair that she hates me. But what about you? Do you hate me? Because that would be fair too.”
He had stepped an inch or two closer again and leaned down a bit, enough that the warm puffs of his visible breath landed
on her face like clouds.
This was all she wanted in the world. But Janelle was for sure right above. Janelle would not want her to do this, and Janelle
probably had a really good point.
“I made this for you,” she said, reaching into her bag and presenting David with the fruitcake. “And by made, I mean found.”
“Is this . . . a fruitcake?”
“It’s an underrated baked good.”
“You found it?” he asked. “This is a found fruitcake?”
“I’m not sure if I found it or it found me, but yeah. It’s a stray. A rescue. Who saved who, right?”
David picked at the plastic wrap thoughtfully.
“You know what they call fruitcake in England?” he asked.
“Disgusting?”
“Christmas pudding. They call all desserts pudding, but specifically they call fruitcake Christmas pudding instead of fruitcake.
It sounds better when you call it pudding but it’s still just fruitcake. They make it months in advance because I guess they
think it’s better the longer it sits. Then they douse it in brandy and set it on fire.”
“So they do know what to do with it,” Stevie said.
“Then they eat it. The English are mysterious.”
The cab circled. She didn’t want to talk about mysterious English people, because those people sat at bars and had no faces.
“So,” he said. “I guess you can think about things. Call me. Or text. Or, whatever.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice suddenly raspy.
“Thanks for this,” he said, holding up the fruitcake as he walked off. “I hate it.”
“I hoped you would,” she replied. She tried not to smile as she said it, but that attempt was not successful.