Chapter 5
Graham
“Well, hello Bronte! And you too, Graham.”
I looked up from my spot at the little bistro table in front of my favorite coffee shop, Morning Joe, and smiled at the owner, who had crouched down to give Bronte a scratch behind her ears.
“Mornin’, Joe,” I said, noting the older man’s clothing. “New sweater vest?”
“The missus surprised me last night with it,” he said, running a hand down the forest-green garment.
He pulled a dog snack from his front pocket and held it out to Bronte.
She didn’t even bother to sniff at it before lying her head down on her paw and closing her eyes. Joe looked up at me with a frown.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s uh… we’re…” My voice caught and I shrugged. Joe sighed and gave me an understanding smile.
“Time can be a kick in the pants, can’t it?”
I usually laughed at the sayings that came out of the old man’s mouth. But time was a kick in the pants. A hard one. Right in the groin.
With some effort he stood again and took the seat on the other side of the table.
“Loved your article last week. Went right out that afternoon to check out the ice cream parlor.”
“What did you have?”
“Coffee and Oreo. Didn’t sleep all night.” He patted his softly rounded belly. “Caffeine and dairy together are apparently not my friends.”
I laughed.
“Perhaps stick with something lighter next time?” I said. “They have some nice sorbets.”
“Eh.” He waved a hand. “Sorbets are boring. Humans are meant to live a little. Even if that means spending the night on the throne. Anyways, that segues nicely into the rest of what I wanted to say. Your article in yesterday’s paper had me laughing so hard I had a coughing fit.
Poor Nita thought I was finally gonna kick the bucket.
But, as the kids say – worth it. The meet-poop, eh?
” He grinned and glanced down at Bronte.
“I mean, after reading how that lady ‘lost her shit’, I felt she deserved a little poo on her shoe. I’m just glad she didn’t yell at our girl here.
If that had happened, I’d be out in that park with my pitchfork. ”
The responses to the article had started coming in within hours of the paper landing on people’s porches and in their inboxes, nearly every one of them asking if I knew who the woman was, or if I could post a description so people could be on the lookout.
I would never hand that information over though.
No matter how heinous she’d been, she didn’t deserve the whole of Brooklyn hunting her down.
And for some reason, I still couldn’t get those wide golden-brown eyes of hers out of my mind.
The dark hair with hints of copper thrown into a messy bun on top of her head.
Her tall, lithe figure covered by a baggy t-shirt and sweats that barely hid the curves beneath…
Fuck. I really needed to get laid.
Between daydreaming about a woman who had screamed at me in the park, and having nightmares about my ex-wife screaming at me to tidy the house – because Bronte’s dog bed and toys were ruining the aesthetic she was going for in her latest video – I was pretty sure I was going crazy.
So actually, maybe getting laid wasn’t what I needed.
That would involve another woman, and right now the only female I could stand had four legs, was sleeping at my feet on the sidewalk, and wouldn’t be on this earth much longer.
Fuck.
I pulled my attention back to Joe and smiled.
“If she had yelled at Bronte, I’d have shit on her shoe myself.”
Joe laughed, patted me on the shoulder, and started for the door of the shop. “Get ya anything?”
“Thanks but I’m just about finished and then it’s back home to get some work done on the book.”
“You’ll let me know if you need any help?”
I grinned. Joe Castelluccio, a soldier turned baker and coffee maker, was always offering to help with my writing.
“I’ve no experience,” he’d always say. “Just life experience. But that ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.”
“Of course,” I said now. “If I find myself in a bind, you’ll be my first call.”
“I’ll provide the sustenance,” he said and then gave me a little salute and disappeared inside, the smell of fresh baked pastries and coffee wafting onto the sidewalk behind him.
I made my way home slowly, my best girl ambling quietly beside me as I kept an eye out for any accidental bathroom breaks.
Thanks to the woman in the park, I was scarred for life.
But also: to be a pet owner was to be aware at all times.
I might’ve thanked her for reminding me, if she hadn’t publicly ripped me a new one.
Still… those eyes.
“Stupid poo shoe lady,” I said to Bronte, who looked back at me as if to say she agreed.
An alert sounded from my phone and I read the reminder I’d set for myself with an equal mix of happiness and dread.
LAUNCH PARTY. 7PM
My good friend, Jessa Reyne, was having a launch party for her new book tonight and, while I was excited to support her, I was not thrilled about having to dress up and be around some of the people who would likely be in attendance.
There was always a handful that were overly eager to hear about how my current work in progress was going.
The interest was lovely, but also oftentimes felt like pressure.
Add in their curiosity about how I was doing personally post-divorce, all up in my business about women I might be seeing or friends they wanted to set me up with - or just outright flirting with me - and I immediately wanted to send a text saying I wouldn’t be able to make it after all.
“Sorry Jessa, can’t make it. Turns out most writers are introverts.
Who knew?” Or maybe, “I’d love to but my dog shat on a woman today and we’re working through the trauma tonight with lots of behind-the-ear scritches (for me). ”
But Jessa and I went way back, our debut books coming out the same year and in the same genre, leading us to doing a number of panels at conferences together.
Our career trajectories had nearly mirrored one another’s, and we’d kept in touch over the years, meeting up when we could – as she lived on the West Coast – and cheering one another on from afar on social media.
There was no way I’d miss her event. She was worth the effort of changing out of sweatpants and throwing on some jeans.
“Gonna have to get out the good clothes tonight,” I told Bronte as I unlocked the front door. She blinked at me and then heaved her old body over the threshold and headed straight for her bed in the kitchen.
A half hour later I left the present world for the fictional one on my laptop, a timer beside me counting down the minutes of an hour-long writing sprint that would hopefully get me through the current chapter I was in and into the next. My allotted time was nearly up when my phone rang.
I tried to ignore it but since it rarely rang these days – most normal people not being monsters and just sending a text – I worried it was an emergency. Either that or a telemarketer.
It was neither and I grinned as I answered the phone.
“Hey!” I said into the receiver.
“What up, G?”
I laughed at my kid sister’s excited voice shouting through the earpiece.
She’d recently read a book set in the 1990s and had taken on a little (too much) of the slang.
I’d been subjected to “da bomb”, “yo, home skillet”, “as if”, and too many “booyahs” to fathom in the past month.
For her eighteenth birthday, which was right around the corner, I was planning to surprise her in person and gift her with a yellow Teletubby, a poster of Pearl Jam that had been signed by the band members circa nineteen ninety-two, and the rare and exotic banana clip for her hair – all found on eBay.
She was also getting tickets to a concert she was dying to go to with her best friend, but I wouldn’t give her that until after the other items.
Marley was my half-sister, born to my stepmother and father when I was sixteen.
Having been an only child until then, I’d been enamored with her from the first moment I got to hold her, her big blue eyes staring up at me while her little pink mouth worked itself into shapes as if she were already preparing for all the crazy stories she’d tell me over the years.
“What up, M?” I said into the phone, turning off my timer and leaning back in my chair. I would pause the rotation of the Earth for Marley.
“It’s not funny when you use my initial,” she informed me. “And yours doesn’t actually count because G is what people really said. Which… I don’t understand. What’s the G for?”
“Gangster,” I said.
“Ahhhh…”
She was quiet for a moment and I could imagine her face staring off into the distance as she processed this new information.
“Yeah. I’m not going to call you that anymore,” she said. “You definitely do not have gangster vibes.”
“Yo! You offend me, girl.”
“Please don’t. You’re embarrassing yourself. And me.”
“Fine,” I said, stifling a laugh. “So. What’s the happs?”
“For real, Graham. We have talked about this. You’re not allowed to try talking cool.”
“Okay, okay. I apologize for lacking the rizz.”
I could practically hear the face palm.
“I’ll give you a pass this once since I know you’re sad and I read your article about that crazy lady shouting at Bronte in the park,” she said. “Is B okay? Has she recovered?”
“I’m fine. B is fine. Everyone is good. I actually think Bronte couldn’t even hear the tirade. Lucky girl.”
“I’d have kicked that chick’s ass. Who even does that in public? I mean, I—”
Again an image of the woman’s molten eyes filled my mind….
“Marley Bird,” I said, using one of the roughly fifty-two nicknames I’d given her over the years to stop her own tirade. “Is everything okay over there? It worries me when you call instead of sending two hundred texts in rapid succession.”
“Oh! Yeah! Sorry. I just wanted to call and tell you…” She paused for effect. “I got my dorm assignment and roommate’s name!”