Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
I’m nervous, pacing outside Madison Square Garden. I have a friend-date with a near stranger to go scream for barely legal boy banders while they shake their asses in glittery BDSM gear. What could go wrong?
Everything. Absolutely everything. This night ends with me writing an apology letter to Jericho’s mother, I just knowit.
The only thing that lifts my spirits are all my fellow fans as they excitedly laugh and shout their way into the venue. They’re dressed in band merch, toting handmade signs. Some of them are dressed up like members of the group, some in costume as inside jokes that only the most die-hard members of the fandom would understand. I love them all. I hope Jericho isn’t scared off.
I’m still pacing when I spot the best costume yet. It’s a full bodysuit, glitter lightning, OMG, this guy has re-created the killer lightning monster from their most recent music video. Amazing. I must speak to this die-hard fan—
“Oh. My. God.” My jaw drops, my finger points, I’m stock-still. “ Jericho? ”
He glares at me. “This is your fault. I looked them up yesterday just to learn their names and one thing led to another!”
“That’s how it always starts!” I shout, clapping and jumping up and down. “ Are you stanning with me?”
He loops his arm with mine and we start clomping toward the venue. “Let’s go. I’m not missing a second of this show.”
We spend the next three hours alternating between screaming, laughing, and dancing. I’ve sent approximately fifty selfies and blurry distant stage pics to Miles. Half of me is smeared with Jericho’s silver glitter from where we’ve been smashing faces together to take pics.
When the lights in the venue finally turn back on, we stumble outside and he tugs me through the crowd and to the other side of the street.
“Hey,” he says, glancing around for a nearby metro station. “My friends are at a bar a few stops away. Wanna join?”
I’m sure I’m technically exhausted. It’s one a.m. , after all, and I’ve been nonstop dancing and screaming and emoting for hours. But I’m buzzing with adrenaline and something else…I think it might be…friendship?
“Besides Miles and you, I haven’t made a new friend in years,” I tell him.
“You should call Miles!”
“Why?”
He shrugs, a prism of color under the streetlight. “It’ll be fun!”
So I do just that. It rings twice before Miles answers. “How was the concert?”
“I’m making friends, you tyrant!”
“That’s great. Where are you?”
“We’re headed to a bar in the West Village. Get off your ass and come down here!”
He says nothing and I remember my lesson outside the glasses store. Take him by the hand.
“Hey, Miles.”
“Yeah?”
“Will you come join us? Please?”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay. Send me the address.”
I hang up and text him the address, looking up at Jericho.
“Let’s go!” He tugs me on and off the train and then into the bar and it’s crowded, but the fun kind, not the bad kind.
Thirty minutes later I feel a dark presence at my shoulder and I jerk around. Miles is standing there, hands in pockets.
“Hi!” I tug him forward into the group. “This is Miles. You already know Jericho, of course. And this is Rica and Jeffy.”
Rica is Dominican, with light brown skin, over six feet tall, and she has the kind of makeup that makes a person look real-life photo-filtered. She’s got earrings the size of my face and a sleek black braid down her back. High heels so tall I could crouch underneath them in an unexpected rain. Her voice is devilishly soft and her smile is devastating.
Jeffy is small and wiry, his blond hair in a bun on top of his head and his eyes suspicious over the top of his beer. My guess is that Jericho brings newcomers more often than he’d like.
Jericho is drunkenly pontificating on Chris Evans’s brilliance as an actor.
Jeffy’s eyes are so narrowed he’s going to see the inside of his own skull soon. “Chris Evans is an absolute zero, ” he asserts.
Rica is bored.
“It seems like they’ve had this argument before?” I ask her.
She points. “Jeffy gets personally affronted when anyone conflates good acting with good writing.” She points again. “And Jericho conflates talent with hotness.” She pauses. “Only when they’re drunk, of course.”
I turn back to the group. “But don’t you think being super hot is a talent?”
Now I’m the recipient of Rica’s pointer finger. “Interesting. Continue.”
“It’s not a talent!” Jeffy insists. “It’s a trait.”
I consider this. “Maybe for a lucky few. But most people expend a lot of energy and know-how to be hot.”
“Facts.” Rica points at herself now. “This makeup represents…six years of YouTube videos? My outfit is…what, twenty years of fashion mags and fashion blogs and dating insufferable FIT students. You’re looking at some serious sweat equity right here.”
“Okay, fine,” Jeffy concedes. “It takes effort to be hot. But the point of him on the screen is not that he’s unbelievably hot. We’re supposed to be moved by his actual acting, no?”
“I think you’re supposed to think you’re moved by his acting,” I say. “But really you just want to lick whipped cream off his collarbones. It’s a switcheroo.”
“Wait a second,” Jericho shouts, throwing his hands out like he’s stopping an oncoming train, reality bearing down on him. “Are we saying that…effortless hotness doesn’t exist ? It’s a myth ?”
“Calm down.” Rica pats Jericho’s shoulder. “It obviously exists.” She gestures in Miles’s direction.
He turns and looks behind him, turns back, and then, in a state of clear dismay and disbelief, points to his own chest. “Me?”
“No offense,” Rica says. “But there’s an obvious lack of effort here.”
He scratches at the back of his neck and looks down at his faded sweatshirt and, yup, cargo pants. “I…showered.”
“Be still my beating heart.” Rica is fluttering long eyelashes at him.
“So I should have worn…a sweater?” he guesses.
“Oh, God bless him for trying,” I say as the group bursts out laughing.
Miles is still looking completely stymied when a harried waitress weed-whacks her way through the crowd with our tray of food and next round of drinks held high over her head. “Fries, fries, fries.” She slides each basket onto the table. “Beer, beer, Manhattan, martini.”
She forgot my beer but she’s already gone. Miles takes my empty glass and tips half of his fresh beer into it. He says something, but a group shouts with laughter behind us and I shake my head to show I didn’t hear him.
He leans down, pulls back, pushes my hair over my shoulder, and then leans back down. “I asked if you had fun tonight.”
His breath tickles my ear and I fight the urge to shiver. “I did. I can’t believe I got to see them perform live!”
“You’re happy?”
“Yes!”
He nods and pulls away, facing toward whatever Jeffy is saying, but there’s one slice of a second that I catch sight of the expression on his face. A briefly incandescent smile. And then it’s gone.
Before I stuff my face with fries I excuse myself and head to the bathroom to wash my hands. On my way out I bump into Rica waiting in line at the single-stall bathroom.
“Hi!” I say brightly.
She cocks her head and eyes me. “How did you say you met Jericho, again?”
I pause. “I was there when his bike got wrecked.”
“Right.” She’s still eyeing me.
“I take it Jericho brings a lot of newcomers around and it’s up to you and Jeffy to weed out the losers?”
She laughs and it surprises her. “There’s not that many losers. But yeah. He’s an easy mark.”
I raise two fingers. “I promise I don’t want anything from him but a concert buddy.”
She nods, casts a glance over her shoulder, and then sighs.
Whoever is in the bathroom is clearly setting up shop. Rica shifts from side to side on her heels. She unzips her leather bomber and underneath is a shirt advertising Dad’s Books and Wisdom.
“Oh, I like your T-shirt. That shop is so great. One of the best bookstores in the city. It’s a shame more people don’t know about it.”
“It’s the best bookstore in the city. My family runs it.”
“Oh, really? Wow. Wait…are you saying that Dad of Dad’s Books and Wisdom is your actual dad?”
She softens. “Yeah.”
“Wow. Your dad is everybody’s dad. Surrogate father to everybody who stops in. What’s that like?”
She shrugs. “I liked growing up there.”
“All the books and wisdom you could ever need.”
A lifted eyebrow: “The wisdom gets a little stale after a while.”
We both can’t help but laugh.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Miles?” she asks.
I stop laughing. “You interested in him?”
She shrugs. “Sure.”
“Oh. Well, there’s no deal to speak of between us.”
“Friends?” she asks.
“Yeah…” Why doesn’t that seem like the right word? “More like…Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster.” I point to him and then to myself.
She laughs in confusion. “Explain.”
“Well…He’s sort of taken it upon himself to…bring me back to life. Any day now he’s going to hook me up to electricity. It’s alive! ” I do the accent and everything.
“You’re not alive?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.
“My best friend died this year. It’s been…pretty hard.” I scrub two palms into my eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Miles is helping me do this, like, bucket list thing? It’s supposed to bring me back to life, I guess. That’s why Miles pushed Jericho and me to go to the concert together. He thinks I should try to make some friends.”
I look up at her and it’s hard to interpret her expression. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Anyways, yeah, you’ve got the green light from me. Pursue away.” I gesture toward Miles.
“No.” She shakes her head discerningly. “No, I don’t think I will. Bringing someone to life seems like a delicate operation. I better not get mixed up in it.”
My shoulders lower an inch and I’m suddenly much less exhausted. “Hey, what do you think they’re doing in there? A crossword puzzle?” I lean forward and knock loudly on the bathroom door. No answer. “Are you sure it’s not just locked from the inside?”
“I saw somebody go in.” She shifts from one foot to the other again.
“Hold on.” I duck into the ladies’ room and back out. “No presh. But it’s empty.”
She pauses.
“I’m happy to block the door for you if you want,” I offer.
Rica blinks, considers me, and then nods. I stand outside the door. Two minutes later, Rica emerges. We head back to the table, lively with conversation. They seem to be having a heated argument about dog breeds. I think debate might be Jeffy’s love language.
“Hey, so,” Miles says, his cheeks going a little pink when he gets everyone’s attention. “Does anybody like camping? Because, um, Lenny and I were thinking of going on a camping trip.”
My eyes grow round at this non sequitur. Number five on the list! I mouth to him. And inviting new friends while he’s at it!
Rica looks between Miles and me and then slings an arm around Jeffy’s neck.
“Jeffy’s obsessed with camping, you know.”
“What?” He laughs. “When did I ever say that?”
“Oh, come on. Aren’t you dying to smell the campfire smoke? Watch the embers mingle with the stars? Fall asleep to the sound of frogs? Think of all the poetry you could write.”
“Um,” he says, nonplussed.
“Wait, Rica,” Jericho says. “Are you saying that you’d go camping?”
She nods semicommittedly. “I’d wander into an REI if I had to.”
“Yes!” Jericho claps his hands once, twice. Then he turns to Jeffy, anticipating. “Come on, Jeffy. It’ll be so fun. Let’s doit!”
I’m open-mouthed, marveling at what Miles has just manifested.
“Oh, fine,” Jeffy grouches, smiling into his beer. “I’ll go camping.”
I’m laughing while Rica and Jericho cheer and pull a clearly happy Jeffy back and forth between them. There’s a tug on my T-shirt and I turn to Miles.
“Should have asked,” he whispers.
“No, it’s great,” I assert. “You just pulled a camping trip out of thin air!”
“Well.”
“Miles,” I say with a grin. “We’re, like, totally socializing. ”
He grimaces, but there’s happiness in it.