Chapter Three
Chapter Three
That’s how I spend my day in a princess tiara and a tutu Velcroed over my jeans. I’ve got gobs of fake pearls around my neck and a plastic gem on every finger. To my delight, Ainsley opted for a top hat and waistcoat (both way too big for her) and also has enormous jewels on her hands. We swan around MOMA and practice saying things to one another like “Positively smashing, darling.”
We watch a Pixar sequel and get hot dogs from a nearby stand for an afternoon snack.
Then, of course, we have to return to the land of Miles.
Ainsley is exhausted by the time we pile through the door, so I help her out of her dress-up stuff and she collapses on the couch for some videogame time while I make dinner.
Miles is reading the newspaper at the table, though now there’s a can of Coke in place of a coffee cup in front of him. He surveys me when I come into the kitchen. “You went out in public like that?”
“Yes. Is that a problem for you?”
“No.”
“Oh, it’s such a crime to make a kid’s day, huh?”
He blinks.
“Let’s have pancakes from Stavros!” Ainsley calls down the hall.
“The diner on the corner?” I ask when she arrives in the kitchen.
I’m beat, but who could say no to a smile like that. So I divest myself of the fancy wear and am just tugging my sneakers back on when a large pair of feet materialize in my line of vision, sliding into a correspondingly large pair of sneakers. I blink up at Miles. “Are you joining us?”
“Miles tags along whenever Mom and I go to Stavros,” Ainsley says, tugging at the tongue of her shoe.
My eyes cut back to his.
He shrugs. “I like pancakes.”
So ten minutes later we file into a booth. I’m just perusing the menu when the waiter nearly ends my life. With his face. He must be one of the prettiest men I’ve ever seen in my life. Eyes, hair, lips, even his ears are good-looking.
I can already see it. On our first date we’ll get drunk and wild and sober up over the Atlantic, on a last-minute red-eye to Madrid. Spain will suit us just fine, but after a few weeks we’ll meander to Italy, where his family surely has a villa. I’ll get fat and happy off olive bread and he’ll paint me like one of his French girls. I can’t wait to kiss this waiter’s ChapStick right off.
He must see me giving him the eyes, because his instantly scream Bedroom? Why not? to me. I blush and play with the end of my ponytail. Miles orders pancakes and slaps the menu into the waiter’s hand. Can’t he see that I’m having a moment with the man who will surely be the great love affair of my life? Can’t his dinner order wait a gosh-dang second?
Well, Ainsley’s can’t either because she’s ordering us both a short stack. I add a cup of tea to my order and try to breathe through the sexiest eye contact of my life. The waiter speaks, his voice like slow-spilling caramel I’d lick off the floor if pressed.
Miles gets up to go to the bathroom and by the time he gets back, our dinner’s arrived. The three of us eat in silence, but it’s more thoughtful than tense.
The bill comes and Miles hands his card up.
“Oh, you don’t—” I start to say reflexively.
“I always do.”
“He and Mom always have this argument too. But Miles always wins,” Ainsley informs me as she licks the last of the syrup off her fork.
I shrug and concede. Miles pays quickly and jets out of the diner. Ainsley and I are standing up and shuffling out of the booth.
And then I look down at the receipt…
My mouth drops open.
I turn to stare at Miles through the window of the diner, but he’s looking in the other direction.
He didn’t. Tip. The waiter.
WTF? Who does that?
I’m so shocked it’s all I can do to just scramble some cash out of my pocket, toss it on the table, and leave.
We walk back to the apartment in silence, but I can’t help but glance at Miles a few times. His profile is resolute, dour, inscrutable.
I can’t believe I ever had the hots for this man, no matter how briefly. Someone who doesn’t tip waitstaff is…I mean, is there even a word bad enough for someone like that?
I put it to the side and focus on Ainsley for the rest of the night. We read a few chapters of her Squirrel Genius book together, and somehow in the last day she’s made it all the way to #50 without me even noticing. She’s asleep before I even turn out the light, and I congratulate myself on a job well done. Miles stays at the kitchen table until Harper arrives. She’s baring her teeth at him in an attempt at politeness while I wave goodbye. I glance back to see Miles walk past Harper with barely a nod of acknowledgment. I’d put fifty bucks on her giving the door the finger the second she closes it. People do not like this guy.
He disappears up the stairs, the elevator doors close, and I collapse backward, burying my face in my hands. The performance is done for the day. I’ve done right by Ainsley, but now I’m dangerously depleted and can’t stand the thought of going home.
I wave goodbye to the doorman and start trudging down the block. I get to Broadway but don’t cross with the light. I am frozen, unsure of where to go. I reach into my pocket and involuntarily worry the edges of the laminated paper, always in safekeeping there. I can hear her voice in my head. I can hear the promises we made to one another. Live again.
But it’s dark and lonely in this land with no sleep and barely enough air. There’s no living here. There’s barely surviving.
The crosswalk light changes again and then again.
A sparkle catches my eye and I notice the gem-studded backpack of the guy holding his bike’s handlebars in front of me. The backpack is a constellation of twinkles in the city lights and—oh, shit—in the headlights of the car that screeches around the corner and nearly turns us into paninis.
I scream as the car skids so close that one tire clips the front wheel of the bike that Backpack Guy is holding on to. The bike rips from his hands, flattens, squeals, and drags against the blacktop.
There are more screams and I’m suddenly on my butt on the curb with an armful of backpack and guy. He scrambles to his feet and turns, helping me stand. He has medium-brown skin and a matching sparkly baseball cap holding his curly hair back from his face. His helmet that had been hanging on the handlebars of his bike spins on its back ten feet down the block. We stare into one another’s eyes in shock.
“Roadkill,” I say at the same time he asks, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“I think so,” I say. “You?”
He pats himself down, then turns and sees the pretzeled mess of his bike. He groans, covering his face with his hands.
The front door of the car slams open and the driver unfolds himself. All six feet or so. He wrenches the bike out from under his car and wheels around, his narrowed eyes focusing on Backpack Guy. The driver bares his teeth and tosses the bike in our direction, the bell making a sad little cry when it smashes on the ground.
“What the hell were you doing standing in the street?” he shouts, his pasty face turning red as he stomps up to us.
I blink and process this absurdity, welcoming a familiar surge of liquid adrenaline. “Wait a second. Did you just throw that bike at us?” I ask, stepping around from behind Backpack Guy. “ After almost hitting us with your car ?”
His eyes focus on me. “Drivers can’t see around the corner! What do you expect to have happen?”
“Silly me,” I say, my voice rising to match his as I toe up with him. “I expect a driver to, I don’t know, not take a corner at fifty miles an hour in the middle of Manhattan?”
“You totally fucked my bike,” Backpack Guy groans from behind me, dropping to his knees next to it.
“You totally fucked your own bike, kid,” the driver shouts.
I push up my sleeves. I’m wearing a sweatshirt with Big Bird on it and pink Converse, so he probably doesn’t see this coming. I’m a foot away from him now, pointer finger at the ready. “You think you’re going to blame him for getting hit by the car you were driving? Sir, how exactly do you think this works?”
He steps forward, his own pointer finger threatening to poke me between the eyes. “Somebody get this bitch out of my face.”
I laugh and it sounds bone-chilling even to my own ears. “Oh, buddy. You think you can embarrass me by calling me a name? Bitch, I regularly weep in public. There is nothing you can do that’ll scare me!”
I’m slapping his hand out of my area, stepping into his personal zone, about to do God knows what when suddenly there’s a very broad, semifamiliar chest blocking my view.
“Uh,” Miles says, looking down at me with a confused frown. He goes to nudge me toward the sidewalk but seems to think better of it and just makes a shooing motion instead. “Maybe let’s…”
Maybe let’s not accost a stranger in the street, I assume he means. Which, honestly, is pretty valid.
“Hey, asshole,” the asshole pipes up from behind Miles.
“You talking to me, asshole?” I shout. There’re a lot of assholes flying around. I try to dance around Miles but he gets in my way again. This time I’m barred by an uncrossable arm. I do what comes naturally and make it look like Miles is the only thing keeping me from permanently separating this guy from his toupee. “Because trust me, guy! You don’t want it with us!”
I’m gesturing at Miles and he’s looking down at me, seemingly extremely bemused to be lumped into an “us” with a woman attempting to pile-drive a gigantic stranger on the street. Miles is a conveniently large prop in my one-woman show right now.
I’m still flailing and Miles has me around the middle, gently but inexorably moving me farther from the driver.
“My friend is about two seconds from kicking your ass into next Tuesday!” I shout at the driver.
“No. I am not,” Miles says point-blank, his eyebrows pulled down toward his nose.
“Well, could you at least do me a favor and pretend?” I hiss.
Miles sighs and then looks back over his shoulder, down at the man, and absolutely disintegrates him with a glare. “I mean,” Miles says to him. “Do you want to fight?”
Which is, frankly, a brilliant question to ask someone who is pretending they want to fight.
Now that there’s another glowering six-feet-plus person in the mix, the driver is holding his palms up. He takes the opportunity to slam back into his car and peel away.
“Hey!” Backpack Guy shouts. “You gotta pay for my bike, you dick— damn it! ”
“I took a picture of his license plate,” Miles tells him. And then he bends down, picks up the bike, and starts clearing us off the street.
“Here, I’ll take it,” Backpack Guy says dejectedly.
We all start walking down the block toward a bench, the bike dragging forlornly along with us.
Backpack Guy collapses onto the bench, but when I just stand next to it, Miles taps my shoulder and gestures for me to take a seat.
I scrunch up my face at him. “I’m fine now. You can”—Igesture at his jogging clothes—“carry on.”
He obviously doesn’t believe me. Hands on hips, frowny skepticism, et cetera.
“You’re not going to run off and try to fight another potential WWE contestant?”
“No. I won’t. But he had it coming.” I plop onto the bench.
“He really did,” Backpack Guy agrees with me. “It seemed like you wanted to light-saber his head off,” he says.
“Good thing I left my light saber in my Elmo sweatshirt.”
He cracks up. “He had no idea he messed with the head of the Sesame Street gang.” This cracks me up too, but our laughing jostles the bike and one of the pedals clanks onto the sidewalk. “I built that bike myself,” Backpack Guy groans. It was definitely once a thing of beauty.
“Next time I see that guy…” I trail off, because the adrenaline is waning and everything is starting to make less sense, including me.
“You’ll what?” Backpack Guy prods.
“Honestly I have no idea,” I say, so genuinely befuddled that he laughs and that makes me laugh and then the bench is shaking again as we descend into hysterics. “I’m Lenny, by the way.” I hold out my hand and he takes it.
“Jericho.”
Miles, who has not laughed, is standing in front of us with his arms crossed. He texts the photo of the license plate to Jericho and then there goes that sparkly backpack, the bike squeaking and groaning as he waves at me and Miles and makes his way into the night.
Speaking of disappearing into the night…
“Okay…” I say. “Well, thanks for the assist back there. Um. Bye.”
I wave over my shoulder and start walking away from Miles because now that it’s just the two of us, well, it’s just the two of us and there’s an awkwardness that I have zero ideas on how to ford.
“Wait. Hold on.”
Miles catches up to me and I stop. He’s glowering down at me and my face reflexively glares back.
“Yes?”
“Are you okay? From that fall? It looked like Jericho knocked you down really hard.”
“Oh. I’m fine. It didn’t hurt.”
He tips back on his heels. “I thought I saw you hit your head.”
“I didn’t.”
I’m walking again and, unfortunately, so is he.
He clears his throat. “You don’t want to, ah, I don’t know, swing past an urgent care?”
I look up at him incredulously but I don’t slow down, desperate to get to the train stop just ahead. “Seriously, Miles. I’m fine.” I take two steps down the stairs toward the train and turn to look back at him. “You can go jog, or whatever. Have a good night.”
He eyes me for a second and then follows me down the stairs. “I…wasn’t going for a jog.”
I take stock of his running shoes, athletic shorts, sweat-wicking shirt, and yup, there is even a compression sleeve thingy over one calf. “Uh-huh. Sure. Then what were you doing?”
I swipe through the turnstile and talk to him, walking backward.
“I…was going to ride this train.”
I stomp my foot as he swipes through as well. “I’m seriously fine! No concussion!”
“That’s great.”
The train comes squealing into the station and I jump on. Miles does too, crossing his arms and sitting opposite me.
I glance up at the train information sign and realize wryly that in my hurry to get away from Miles I’ve jumped on the 1 train. Which means that once again the universe is chewing me up and spitting me out at the Staten Island Ferry.
We ride in silence and at my stop I stand up and spear him with my eyes. “Thank you and good night. ” Before he can say anything else, I jump off the train and run above ground. The August night is dense with heat but as I get closer to the water, a loosely cool breeze beckons me to the ferry.
Well, it’s a nice night to watch the Statue of Liberty pass twenty-two times in a row, I suppose.
I get settled in a seat away from the crowds and clutch my bag to my chest. To my utter shock, considering the altercation I’ve just had, sleep starts to descend. I nod off and then wake up back at Manhattan. I must have slept all the way through the Staten Island port and back. I nod a bit more while we head back to Staten Island. But then an interesting man catches my eye. He’s got a leather jacket and velvet pants. He’s leaning against the railing of the boat and tossing a baseball up and catching it. Tossing it and catching it. The fourth or fifth time, he fumbles it and it skips off his hands and over into the water. He and his friends burst out laughing. He’s got a charming smile. I bet it’ll look great on our Christmas card one day. We’ll put our twin girls in matching velvet pants, just like those, and in fifteen years or so, he’ll get down on one knee and ask me to renew our vows.
I close my eyes again when I feel the ferry leave the dock. A shadow darkens my eyelids as something blocks the overhead light.
“Why aren’t you getting off the ferry?” a man’s voice says from right in front of me.
“Oh, my God !” I jolt backward, scrambling my bag up to my chest. “ Miles? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
I’m clutching my heart attack. He purses his lips but doesn’t say anything.
“You scared the shit outta me!” I assert.
“Good,” he says, and crosses his arms over his chest.
“What?”
“I said it’s good that I scared the shit out of you.”
“Why would that be a good thing?”
“Because it shows that you’re at least partially sane if a man approaching you on the Staten Island Ferry in the middle of the night scares you. Now, why aren’t you getting off?”
I scrunch up my face and take a page out of his book by simply not answering his question.
He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, and after a moment he plunks into the seat beside me. “At first I thought you’d just fallen asleep and missed your port. But then I realized you were awake and riding back and forth.”
I lift my pointer finger into the air. “Hold the phone. You thought I was asleep and missed my stop and you didn’t wake me up ?”
He shrugs. “You seemed tired. I wasn’t going to let you miss it a second time. Tell me why you’re riding back and forth.”
I lay one cheek on top of my bag. “What do you even care?”
His eyes sweep across me and a change comes over his face. He’s making an expression I haven’t seen him make before. It almost makes him look like a human person with feelings and a backstory.
“Look…I know we’re pretty much strangers…but I’m worried…”
About me? He doesn’t elaborate.
I squeeze my eyes closed for a moment, cheek still on my bag.
I’m worried, he said.
Against my will I’m softening just a skosh.
“I really don’t have a head injury.”
“Okay, fine. Then why are you riding the ferry back and forth? You…you have a place to go, right?”
“I have an apartment in Brooklyn. I just…don’t want to be there right now. Recently.”
He’s squinting at me, an incredulous expression on his face. “Let me get this straight. You have an apartment. But instead of going home, you’re intentionally riding the ferry back and forth, making eyes at random men and planning to sleep on this bench?”
I sit up straight and gape at him. I feel like I’ve just been slapped across the punim. “How the heck do you know I do that?”
“Sleep on benches? You were counting sheep right here like two minutes ago.”
“No, no. Making eyes at random men?”
His eyebrows flatten like the answer is obvious. “You have a very expressive face. You did it with me the first time we met.”
I scoff. “ That crush lasted all of twelve seconds.”
“Next was the waiter at dinner. And then that dumbass who dropped his baseball overboard. Did I miss anybody?”
“Hey, you didn’t tip that waiter, by the way. What a dick move.”
“ He was the dick.”
“Why?” I cast back through my memory, trying to think of anything the waiter had done to deserve no tip.
Miles kicks at the back of one of his boots. “Doesn’t matter. Not important. Just trust me, he didn’t deserve a tip.”
I glare at his profile, but he doesn’t budge. Finally I sigh and settle back into the bench. There goes Lady Liberty again. “Why do you even care where I sleep? And why did you jump into that mess with that driver, while we’re at it? Like you said, we’re pretty much strangers.”
“You’re taking care of my niece. If you’re caught up in something…bad…or…look, I just want to make sure that Ainsley’s safe when she’s with you, okay?”
It’s sweet. Sort of. But I can tell there’s more he’s not saying.
“I’m fine. I always make sure that Ainsley is safe and well taken care of. I hope you’ve been able to see that in all of your—honestly pretty relentless—observation of me at work.”
He frowns and puts his elbows on his knees. He’s either considering my words or he’s coming up with another angle to argue with me.
“Hey,” I say meaningfully. “We’re almost back at Manhattan.”
Now he’s the one scoffing. “You honestly think I’m gonna leave you here on the ferry?”
“I’m twenty-eight years old, remember? I don’t require a chaperone.”
He crosses his arms again. “Fine. But if you keep looking at random men the way you first looked at me, one of them is going to decide that you’ll look better as the upholstery for his couch pillows.”
“Oh, my God !”
He ignores me. “So either you come back up to Reese’s place and sleep on her couch—”
“No way! Harper would think I’m a total weirdo for that!”
He quirks his face. “What do you care? You don’t even know Harper.”
“Oh, come on.” I wave my hand in the air. “I don’t care if the people who know me think I’m a weirdo. They’d be right anyways. It’s exactly the people who I don’t know that I’m trying to keep the secret from. I’m not sleeping at Reese’s.”
“Fine. Fine. Whatever. Then option two. You can sleep on my couch.”
I recoil. “Ew. Pass. You’re a strange man.”
He gestures around the ferry. “You are literally surrounded by strange men.”
“Were there other options?”
He groans and drags a hand down his face. “Option three. We both stay on the ferry all night, get absolute shit sleep, and drag our asses back up to Ainsley in the morning.”
“Well, option three is what I was gonna do anyways, so suit yourself, I guess.”
I lean back and pretend to get comfortable as I feel the ferry slide into the port at Manhattan.
The passengers start to disembark. The horn blows. Miles is still sitting there. When I peek at him, he’s staring at me but eye contact makes him quickly glance away. He frustratedly runs his hands over his short hair and then leans back with a sigh, crossing his arms.
I close my eyes.
“I saw the book,” he says in a low voice.
My eyes pop back open and he’s got dark eyes trained on my face. Grief and You. What an excruciatingly awful title. I can’t look away.
“I’ve read that book,” he continues, and my stomach drops out. Nobody reads that book for funsies. “I’ve been here…I mean, I know …Look, I’ve also yelled at a stranger or two in my time, okay?”
I don’t say anything.
He holds my eye contact and then sighs. “If you want me to get off the ferry and leave you alone, I will.”
I still don’t say anything. The ferry pulls away from shore, headed back out onto open water. His eyes go closed again as he situates himself against the wall. It’s a long time before I close mine.