by Amelia Wilde
“Friend, huh?” he asked Brandon, who only sat there, stone-faced. I recognized the look. It was the look certain types of men get when they’re not willing to give first.
“Friend,” Brandon repeated with hardened eyes and tightened jaw.
“I hope so, I hope so,” Nick said before turning back to me. “You got a minute, kid?”
Brandon frowned in concern, but I shook my head at him as I stood up. “I’ll just be a second.”
“So, listen, honey,” Nick said as he took his place behind the bar. He leaned over the top so his big face was closer to mine. “I don’t want to worry you, but I thought you should know.”
My stomach dropped. There was only one issue that Nick would preface that way, and it was one I had hoped was done for good the last time it came up. I stared at the bar top, tracing a water stain with my fingertip.
“Is it Victor?” I asked quietly.
Nick nodded, his deep-set eyes creased with pity. He clasped a big paw over mine and squeezed. “I’m sorry, honey. He’s been showin’ up to Danny’s gigs the last few weeks. I see them talkin’. I don’t know what’s goin’ on, but I figure you oughta know.”
I squeezed back and sighed. “No, you did right. I definitely needed to know that.”
“Anytime, honey. You want me to let you know if he keeps showin’ up?”
Victor Messina, the man in question, was a small-time loan shark and neighborhood thug who was just big enough to be legitimately dangerous. It was bad enough that Dad was getting mixed up with him again. I didn’t want to get Nick into trouble if the guy caught wind someone was watching him.
“No,” I said. “That’s okay. I’ll check in with my dad first and see what’s going on.” I stood up on my tiptoes so I could kiss Nick on the cheek. “Thanks.”
“Anytime, honey. Don’t be a stranger, y’hear? And you let me know if blondie over there don’t treat you like absolute gold. Only the best for you, baby girl.”
I grinned and pushed off the bar. “You got it.”
Nick winked and turned toward a new customer.
“Everything all right?” Brandon asked when I approached.
I grabbed my coat. “It’s fine. He’s just an old family friend.”
Brandon cocked his head at me, not buying it. When it was obvious I wasn’t going to say anything more, he tossed back the rest of his drink and stood up too. I waved at my dad, but he was completely lost in his music, eyes still shut as he purred into the microphone. When I turned around, Brandon had bundled himself back up and was ready to go.
“Come on,” he said, holding out a gloved hand. “I said I’d walk you home.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Brandon’s expression, earnest and kind, stopped me. His previous arrogance hadn’t made a single return since he’d apologized. This was that same look I’d seen that night in the snow: only concern…and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something I suspected was in my eyes too. So, after a moment’s hesitation, I put my hand in his and let him lead me out of the club.
10
“I can’t believe you would have walked home by yourself in this neighborhood.”
Brandon gazed around the street where I grew up, looking at the Victorian houses as if they were made of cardboard and scrap metal. Okay, maybe some of their shingles were a little battered, but this part of Brooklyn was completely suburban. Six-story walk-ups and traffic signals morphed into gated single-family homes on tree-lined streets, complete with the occasional station wagon parked out front.
“Yeah, all of these minivans pose a real threat,” I replied. “Come on, you can’t possibly think this is a bad neighborhood. Not compared to the south end of Boston.”
In response, I received a grim look.
“It’s not the house,” Brandon replied. “It’s the emptiness. You grew up in the city, but you don’t seem that street smart, Red.”
I shrugged. If anyone else treated these streets with such willful ignorance, I’d probably be saying the same thing. I knew too many girls who had been mugged on a dark corner when they were walking home alone—even one who had been raped in Prospect Park.
“Okay, so maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “But this is home. I’ll never be that scared here. Not when I know exactly which way to run and have my pepper spray in hand.”
I pulled my house keys from my pocket and dangled the small bottle on the keychain before stuffing them back in my pocket. Stubbornly I omitted the fact that I likely would have taken a cab anyway if Brandon hadn’t walked me home.
“Don’t even joke about that, Skylar,” he said a little too sharply. The “r” on my name disappeared again, this time more overtly, and I tried not to smile. “You’re small and sweet. I’d hate to think what might happen––”
He cut himself off and turned his face away. As we kept walking. I pondered his comments. Men had called me a lot of things in my life, and sweet wasn’t one of them. Bubbe regularly told me that my sharp tongue was going to cut a man down before he could kneel for himself.
“I want to say I’m sorry,” Brandon interrupted my thoughts. “Again. About, you know, what happened.”
I blinked. “Yeah. Oh…kay. But…I still don’t understand why you thought you had to approach me like that.” I paused. “I guess…I’m not buying that you just didn’t know how else to go about it. You don’t seem that dumb.”
Brandon jerked to a stop, and immediately I wondered if my sharp tongue had gotten me in trouble yet again.
He gave a wry smile. “All right, then. I wasn’t lying before. My last relationship—my only serious one, actually—ended badly, and she was after…well…you know. The truth is, I’m complete garbage when it comes to women.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
Brandon chewed his lip for a moment while he measured his thoughts. “I…” he started again. “Why do I feel like you’d see through any of my bullshit?”
“Well, look at you. You’re basically Brad Pitt, for Christ’s sake.”
His sly grin made my insides flip. “You think I’m handsome, Red?”
I rolled my eyes and started walking again. “Don’t let it go to your head, pretty boy. You’re rich, you’re good-looking—yeah, I bet that makes it super hard for you to find dates.”
“Well, like I said, that’s not always a good thing.” He kicked at a rock. “I also wasn’t lying when I said I don’t really have any time to date. Between the firm, and Ventures about to go public—”
“Sterling Ventures is going public?” I interrupted in shock. This was major news, and it was probably illegal that he was even telling me.
Brandon darted a quick warning glance at me. “Ah, yeah. That’s privileged information, Skylar. You can’t tell anyone, or we could both be in major trouble.”
I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “You have your interns all sign NDA forms anyway. If I breathe a word, you can just sue me.”
I could tell he relaxed at the reminder.
“I still shouldn’t have said anything, but you…” He gave me that same sheepish smile, which made the butterflies in my belly speed up. “You seem to have that effect on me. Getting me to say things I shouldn’t.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve already made a fool out of myself twice with you. I guess…I thought it would be simpler, somehow, if I tried to keep it just to sex.” He smacked himself on the head. “Idiot.”
I wasn’t about to remind him just how close I had come to giving in. I remembered all too well the feel of his solid hands around my waist, the warm texture of his mouth on mine. He didn’t need to know how easy it would have been.
“Is that usually how you approach women?” I prodded him instead. “Propositioning them in your office? Suggesting standing sex appointments and real estate perks?”
Suddenly I wondered how many women might have been served tea in front of his fireplace; gorgeous an
d rich, he must have attracted women like flies. My stomach rolled.
“Ah, no,” Brandon said a little too loudly. “Which is probably why it went so god-awful. When I do, um, have that sort of company, it’s usually more of a ‘spontaneous accompaniment home from an event’ sort of thing.” He sighed. “I have to go to a lot of those things. They’re really boring.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I had little experience, but getting all dressed up to go to a glamorous benefit didn’t sound like a terrible Friday night. Especially if you had a happy ending waiting for you afterward. Suddenly the image of Brandon in a tux morphed straight into me taking it off him. The shoulders that strained against the seams of his overcoat couldn’t look anything but phenomenal uncovered. Except maybe by me, hoisted over one. And...there went my stomach again, flipping all over the place.
Our footsteps crunched loudly on the salt-covered sidewalk as we walked between the mounds of snow piled up on both sides from shovels and snowplows, encasing us in cold, white tunnels. A sneaky patch of black ice caused me to lose my footing. As I fell backward, Sterling shot out a quick hand and caught me by the elbow, yanking me upright again so that we were suddenly face-to-face.
He peered down, close enough that I could smell the sweet, minty flavor of his breath, laced with brandy. He sucked in a bit of frigid air and exhaled slowly through his nose. I, on the other hand, found it hard to breathe at all. His eyes shot down to my top lip, clenched between my teeth. He inhaled again, sharply.
Just as he started to lean closer, we were interrupted by the rumble and exhaust of a delivery truck passing by, accompanied by a loud whistle out the passenger window.
“Take her home, Romeo!”
I hastily stepped out of Brandon’s embrace with an awkward mumble of thanks. He watched me for a moment and sighed, but stepped closer as we started to walk again. When his hand brushed against mine, he captured it quickly and tucked it into his pocket with his as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
“So, your dad,” he said. “He’s younger than I would have thought.”
I nodded, trying to ignore the way his fingers were curled around mine, the pad of his thumb brushing my inner palm. I should have pulled my hand away. Should have, but didn’t.
“Yeah,” I replied slowly, finding it a bit more difficult to articulate my words. “He and my mom had me young. Like, high school young.”
“Was he a good dad?”
I sighed, more out of contentment. Thinking about Dad always made me feel that way. For all his flaws, I adored my father.
“He was—he is—the best,” I said emphatically. “I mean, he couldn’t be there all the time because he worked two jobs to support my grandmother and me, but he was always game for a hug, always made sure to be there to put me to bed. He always made me feel loved.”
“And your mom?”
I frowned. I didn’t particularly like talking about Janette Jadot née Chambers. I had no idea what she looked like now, but in my mind, I saw the same person who had last visited me when I was twelve: a tall, slim woman with light-brown hair, a turned-up nose, and the big green eyes I’d inherited. She was friendly and vivacious. She was also a complete flake.
“She took off about a year after I was born,” I said shortly. “She and my dad were never married, so that made things easier. To leave, I mean. She came from…well, she came from money.”
He didn’t respond, patiently waiting for me to fill in the gaps. I realized then I hadn’t ever really told this entire story to anyone, not even Jane, who had mostly deduced it on her own. It was embarrassing to admit that your own mother didn’t want you.
I sighed. “Why do I feel like you’d see through any of my bullshit?” I repeated softly.
Brandon chuckled and squeezed my hand. “Trust me, Red, I’m no one to judge. I ended up in a group home after my mother fell off the wagon a few, oh, dozen times. You tell me what you want, or just say you don’t want to.” He peered down at me. “We all have a few secrets, right?”
I blew out a slow breath, watching it plume white against the night air. “It’s not a secret—thinking about her is just a waste of time.”
He didn’t respond as I decided what parts of the story to tell.
“She and my dad met at the School of Performing Arts. She’s an ‘artist.’” I held up my free hand to mime quotation marks around the word, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “She used to do these ridiculous installations. Man Ray-style stuff, if you know who that is. Like, hanging strings of glue all over someone’s office to insinuate the constrained web of capitalism.”
I rolled my eyes. That particular stunt had ended her first marriage, considering the office belonged to her husband’s boss and cost him his job. We heard about it when she turned up on my father’s doorstep and stayed with us for three months. That time. I kicked a hard tuft of snow, which exploded against my boot.
“Anyway,” I continued. “She left way before that. She said she hadn’t earned the right to be my mother. That she needed to find her path in life before she could lead me down mine. That’s what her letter said, anyway.”
I looked up and was surprised to find anger on Brandon’s face, rather than the pity most people offered when they learned about Janette.
“When was that?” he asked tightly.
“I was four when she wrote that letter.”
“There were more?”
I snorted. “I’ve got a shoebox of them. Let’s just say my dad was kind of her rebound every time a relationship—or maybe her latest marriage—ended. But she never stayed, and every time, she’d send me an apology note for leaving. Or for missing my birthday. Forgetting Christmas. You get the picture.”
My face twisted with the disgust that I felt every time I recalled those stupid letters, still sitting under my childhood bed. Some of them were written on hotel stationary—usually from someplace swanky, like the Plaza—but most of them were scribbled on her personal stationery, engraved with swooping cursive initials at the top of each page. The last one, sent just after I graduated high school, contained a bank account number and the legal documents for my trust fund, which I had only ever used to pay for school. I’d considered sending that one back, but in the end, I decided not to force my dad into debt for my education. I figured she owed me—and him—that much.
I was twelve when he turned her away for good. She offered to put Bubbe and me up at a hotel for a week so she and my dad could be reacquainted, and he tossed her out and told her not to come back unless she wanted to see me. So, she didn’t. But I always got her letters.
“What a bitch,” Brandon pronounced, enunciating each word carefully as the anger gradually dissipated from his face. “I’m sorry, but there’s really no other way to say it. You’re lucky you have your dad.”
“I am,” I agreed, although my stomach dropped a little thinking of Nick’s comments at the bar. “Plus, there was my grandmother too. I would get a little jealous from time to time when my friends would have their moms cook them dinner and pick them up from school, but honestly, I got just as many hugs, and Bubbe made just as many meals. I had a good home.”
Brandon smiled. “Bubbe. You’re Jewish, then?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Bubbe attends synagogue and sometimes my dad and I go with her on special days, but that’s it. My mother’s not Jewish, so to a lot of Conservatives, technically I’m not either.”
“So, do you know where your mom is now? Is she still hanging glue in people’s offices?”
I chuckled. “Not that I know of. She lives outside of Paris, with her fifth husband and their two kids.”
It was hard to talk about her new family without that familiar ache in my chest. For so long it had seemed like she just wasn’t the family type, that my dad and I had nothing to do with her issues with commitment and devil-may-care approach to relationships. But she had been with Maurice Jadot for almost a decade.
“Do you talk to her much now?
”
I darted a sharp look his way. Why was he so interested in my relationship with Janette?
“Like I said, no,” I said, maybe a little too sharply. “My dad and Bubbe are all I need.”
I was being defensive. Years of unwelcome pity for the little girl without a mommy did that to a person. People started to look for the things that were wrong with me when they found out. They searched for my scars. But there was no pity in Brandon’s eyes, only acknowledgment.
“Of course,” he said kindly. “But then again, you don’t seem that hard to love. That’s why…I suppose that’s the real reason I made such an ass of myself.”
I gulped, my heart stopping in my chest. “Because you love me?” This guy was even crazier than I’d thought.
“No. No! Jesus, here I go again, right?” He pulled our hands from his pocket and shook mine back and forth. “Skylar, no. That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” I asked, ignoring the drop in my chest at the word “no.” What was going on with me?
“I just meant…” Brandon stared up at the sky, covered in its usual halo from the streetlights and buildings. He grabbed my other hand and pulled me to face him. “I just meant that you’re special, all right? That much has been clear, since the second I saw you. And it makes me…I didn’t know how to react to it. What do you do when just looking at someone renders you completely and totally awestruck?”
His words made my breath catch in my throat, and I was relieved when I found we were standing outside the familiar drooping eaves of the house that would always be home.
I pulled my hands reluctantly from his grasp and gestured toward the house beyond the weather-worn, chain-linked fence. “Here’s the castle. Chez Crosby, if you will.”
The two-story Victorian wasn’t anything impressive. The dark-brown paint hadn’t been resealed in my lifetime, causing it to flake in several spots. The front door had swollen after some flooding last spring, so it stuck when opened and closed unless you pushed with your whole body. The small lawn, currently covered with snow, was bound by a chain-link fence and a faded black mailbox perched crookedly at the gate.