The Brooklyn Book Boyfriends

by Kayley Loring

  His eyes are a warm tea brown, comforting and energizing all at once, and I am already hopelessly addicted.

  He whispers in my ear, “I left my card by your bed. Call me whenever you want. Okay?”

  I nod and watch him go until he gets to the stairs, and then I shut the door and sigh. He made cheesy jokes to charm my parents and shower-sexed me. He is perfect.

  “Well,” my mom says. “Russell who? Am I right? Holy duck, he’s handsome.”

  “Yes, his resemblance to me is uncanny,” my dad says, straight-faced. It sends my mom and me into another fit of laughter.

  “What? Just wait until I get that hair putty and an arm tattoo. You’ll see.”

  “It’s called a sleeve.”

  “That too.”

  “I’m so glad you met such a fine man so quickly.”

  “Yeah, it’s…he’s not my boyfriend or anything, Mom. Calm down.”

  “Oh, but I saw the way he looked at you, honey. That fella has got it bad for you.”

  “Okay, okay. So did you tell me how much time you have before you have to get back to the airport?”

  “Not long, really.” She gives my dad a look. “Actually, we came because we wanted to bring you something.” She signals to my dad to get something from one of the roller bags.

  “You didn’t bring me a present, did you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  My father carefully places a small box on the coffee table in front of me and then gently pats the lid of the box.

  I stare at it, suddenly feeling a little sick. “What is it?”

  “It’s Bun Affleck,” says my mom. “His ashes. He died six months ago. We didn’t tell you because we didn’t want to upset you. You’d just gotten engaged, and you seemed so happy.”

  I cover my mouth. I don’t even know how to feel. “He died and you didn’t tell me?”

  “He wasn’t sick or anything. He just died of old age while he was sleeping.”

  “We had him cremated at that place that did Sully. They’re very nice. There’s a little card inside with the crossing the rainbow bridge poem. He had a very nice long little life.”

  I shake my head. I will deal with my feelings about the death of my bunny rabbit later. Right now, I just can’t believe my parents think I’m so fragile that they can’t even give me news about my pet’s passing. It’s ludicrous. I don’t want to think of myself as fragile, either. I don’t want to be so protective of my own heart anymore.

  On my way back to Brooklyn, after seeing my parents off at JFK, I pull Vince’s business card out from my purse. Devlin Commercial Realty Group, Vice President, Investment Sales

  He looks almost as good on paper as he does in a towel.

  I put the number in my phone and send him a text.

  ME: Hi. It’s Nina. My parents are gone. My dad wants the name of that hair product. When can I see you again?

  12

  Nina

  I don’t know if Vince Devlin is a Catholic or not, but I have started thinking of him as St. Vince, patron saint of girls who haven’t had enough fun in their lives yet.

  I’m lying here on his big amazing bed, in his big amazing loft in a very cool neighborhood called DUMBO, watching him plate the dinner that he just had delivered. My body is both ravaged and revitalized, my brain carefree and racing. It’s probably because he plowed away at me until I was hanging upside-down off the edge of the mattress.

  When he had called to tell me that he’d be coming to pick me up to bring me to his place, I thought he meant in an Uber. He didn’t. When I came down from my apartment, I found him casually leaning against a motorcycle, a helmet resting between his arm and hip. Every fantasy I’d ever had of Maxwell Caulfield from Grease 2 had done nothing to prepare me for the reality of such holy hotness.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said.

  “Would I kid you?” He kissed me and then grinned as he handed me the helmet. “I won’t go very fast, don’t worry. But it’s easier than driving from here to DUMBO.”

  I can’t say that it was on my bucket list to ride on the back of a motorcycle, with my arms clasped tight around the waist of a sexy man and a warm summer night breeze through my hair…but now that I’ve done it, it is way at the top of my list of things that I am so glad I finally did.

  His loft is beautiful and warm in a masculine way, and it smells like him. There is one huge stylish fiddle-leaf fig tree in a corner, leaning toward the light of the oversize industrial window that looks out over the rooftop of a smaller renovated factory/loft building. His living room furniture is spare but exquisite and comfortable. Next to the antique leather sofa are five plastic buckets, one much smaller than the other four. Four of them are overturned; one is a container for drumsticks.

  “Is the little bucket for your little brother?”

  “What’s that?” he asks, all chipper as he brings two plates and silverware over to the bed. He is shirtless and wearing only a pair of sweatpants and Vans.

  “Those are for bucket drumming, right? Is the little one for your brother?”

  “Why yes, it is. You wanna try?”

  “Uhh, maybe later.”

  “You ever seen someone bucket drumming?”

  “In the subway station once, yeah. It was so awesome.”

  “I wonder if I know the guy.” He puts the plates down on top of the sheet.

  “We’re eating in bed?”

  He waggles his eyebrows. “Second course of the night.”

  I shake my head, feeling my cheeks get warm. “So you’ve given lessons to kids?”

  “Yeah, why? You want me to teach your class sometime?”

  The thought of him doing anything for me after September makes me excited and nervous and sad, but I just shrug my shoulders. “I mean, I’m sure the parents will hate me if I introduce my students to bucket drumming, but I know the kids would love it.”

  “Yeah, they would. I’m kind of awesome, myself.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Well, don’t just take my word for it.” He strides over to pick out a pair of drumsticks from one bucket, twirling one of the sticks between his fingers while he uses one bucket as a stool and brings another between his feet. Then he pulls two more buckets in front of that one.

  I sit up, covering myself with the sheet, careful not to disturb the plates of food.

  Slouching, he taps on the edge of the bucket between his legs, warming up, and then starts into a beat. He’s using his feet to move the bucket in different angles and banging on all three buckets, including the one that has a bunch of sticks in it. It’s not just the primal energy and rhythm or the fascinating way that he manipulates the buckets to change the sounds, or the muscles and veins that are bulging on his arms. It’s the easy physicality of the performance, the confidence and focus with which he makes this noisy music—every cell of my body is vibrating because of him.

  After the finale, after playing for about ninety amazing seconds, he tosses one of the sticks up in the air and then catches it. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind before, but now I know for a fact that he is way too cool to be hanging out with the likes of me. My heart is pounding, and there’s no way that I can digest food after that. I slowly place the plates on the floor so they won’t fall off the bed…

  “Wow. Where’s my purse? You can just have all of my cash. That was incredible.”

  “That one was on the house.”

  When he saunters back over to me, he is only slightly out of breath and completely capable of taking mine away again as he pulls down the sheet I was using to cover myself and presses himself down on top of me.

  When we finally get around to eating dinner, it is room temperature, but we have worked up too much of an appetite to care.

  I watch him eat, like an athlete after a game. He has so much energy, but he usually seems so cool and controlled. I can’t help but wonder if any of it’s an act, but he always seems so authentic. Maybe that’s why he’s such a good salesman. I want t
o ask him, but I don’t. I want to ask him if there’s anything he can’t do, but I don’t. I want to ask him if he’s ever been a butt model, but I don’t. Instead, what comes out of my mouth is: “Has Sadie been in touch with you since the weekend?”

  A deep crease forms between his brows as he shakes his head. “No. I blocked her on my phone, and she hasn’t emailed me or anything. Why? The principal been in touch with you?”

  “No. Not since I tossed his clothes out my window and yelled at him. He would see that as encouraging my bad behavior.”

  Vince rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

  I do love that Vince is so uncritical of my freak-out that day. Whether he was watching from across the street or not. I was deeply ashamed of myself because I was still seeing myself through Russell’s eyes. It’s a lot easier to feel good when I look at myself through Vince’s. I just can’t imagine why Sadie would want to walk away from that.

  “Did you love her?” I whisper.

  He freezes for a moment before going back to chewing and swallowing what he was eating. He wipes his mouth with a napkin and angles himself so that he’s facing me square-on. I wipe my fingers and get ready for his answer because I can tell it’s not going to be a flippant one.

  “I’ve thought about this a lot. Almost as much as I’ve thought about you, since last Saturday. I thought I loved her at first. I guess I wanted to. That feeling I had in my gut, I thought it meant I was in love with her because I was afraid of it. But I think my gut just knew it was wrong and I was trying to justify the choice that I’d made to be with her. Now…I think I loved who I was trying to be, when I was her boyfriend. Does that make sense?”

  “Oh my God.” I push my plate aside and hold my hands up over my head. “That’s it.” I reach out to pat his knee. “That’s exactly it! I’ve been trying to articulate how it was for me with Russell—and that’s it. I loved the person I was trying to be when I was with him. But that’s not me… No, that’s not true. That’s always going to be part of me. It’s how I was raised. But it’s not who I am.”

  “So why were you engaged to him? I mean, you could have said no.”

  I curl my legs up into my chest. “Yeah, I guess. I think I’d just given up on love and it seemed like since it all happened so easily that it was right and fine and why not?”

  “You gave up on it? You’re what…twenty-seven?”

  “Yeah. Is that one of your party tricks? Like guessing shoe sizes?”

  “Hey, I don’t guess. I have a gift.”

  “Right. You have soooo many gifts… No, I just…Well, I fell in love with my first boyfriend when I was sixteen.”

  “Oh.” He seems surprised or maybe disheartened to hear this. “In Bloomington?”

  “Yep. And it was first love, you know. It felt so big and beautiful and forever, and I thought I was so lucky to have met the person I’d spend the rest of my life with when I was in high school. And we went to IU together. I studied education, and he studied creative writing.” I look up at Vince’s face, and his expression and body language is so puzzling to me. It’s like he’s ever so slowly deflating. “Anyway, after we graduated, he decided to move to LA to be a screenwriter, and he didn’t want me to go with him.”

  He wrinkles up his face. “Without discussing it first?”

  “Not really. We had always talked about staying in Bloomington. I’d teach and he’d self-publish books until he got a publishing deal. And then he just…told me. He had already made all the plans to go out there on his own.” I know what Vince is thinking. “I really don’t think it had anything to do with another girl. It was just that he wanted to start over without me. And I took it really hard. And I didn’t want to get hurt like that again.”

  “Have you seen him since then?”

  “No. Not at all. He sent me an email when he got there, and I didn’t write back. That was it. I got off Facebook because I didn’t want to see any pictures of him or know what he was doing.”

  “So…you’re still not over your first love?”

  “I don’t know if anyone ever really gets over their first love. Do they? It’s not the person I had trouble getting over. It was being in love for the first time. And then, finding out that you can fall out of love. Or maybe I’m just an overly sensitive big baby… I’ve just never been cheated on before. I don’t think.”

  “Me neither. That’s the part of all this that I can’t wrap my head around. I can’t believe I was so busy not paying attention to her at that point that I didn’t see any signs. I can’t believe she cheated on me with that guy. I can’t believe that guy would cheat on you with anyone.”

  “Even her?”

  “Especially her. Have you seen her?”

  “No. I don’t think I want to.”

  “Yeah, it’s probably for the best.”

  Uh-oh. I do not want to know what that means.

  He lies down across the mattress, as if this conversation has exhausted him. I reach out to touch his hand. He plays with my fingers, before saying, “At least you’ve been in love.”

  “You haven’t?”

  He shakes his head. “Not yet.” He presses his hand up against mine. “I may be an insensitive big baby.”

  I lie down beside him. “I think you’re so much more than that.”

  He snakes his arm around my waist as he rests his forehead against my arm.

  There’s a silence growing between us, but it’s not a question mark, it’s an ellipsis… We both know there’s a connection. We both know what’s going to happen next. And we’re both hovering here in the remaining space between us, before the amazing idea of he and I becomes something real. The real thing will either be incredibly beautiful or beautifully terrible, but I am willing to let this man break my heart. It’s a given that it will happen eventually. But at least I know that the journey to this heartbreak will feel good enough to make the pain worth it.

  All those feelings I tucked away years ago for safekeeping? I’m unlocking the chest, and it’s up to Vince to decide if he can handle what’s inside. But he’s the first, and I secretly wish he could be the last man I ever open it up for.

  How could I not?

  13

  Vince

  Nina’s fingers are combing through my hair, and I’m resting my face against her naked breast, tracing little circles around her belly with my fingertips. It’s the calmest I’ve felt in years. I could spend the rest of the summer in this bed with this woman and not have any regrets. That’s not true. I’m already starting to regret telling her she can go back to dating boring men in September.

  “Hey?” She gives me a little pat on the shoulder.

  “Yeah?”

  “Should we go somewhere? Someplace in public where we can talk and get to know each other, without the potential for engaging in sexual activity?”

  “That place doesn’t exist in my world, darlin’.”

  “I mean, if you don’t want to be seen in public with me…” Her voice trails off.

  My head pops up. “What? Are you insane?”

  “Well…”

  I sit up and stare down at her. “Why wouldn’t I want to be seen with you?”

  “Because you’re cool and I’m not.”

  “Oh right. Meet me by my locker at lunch and we’ll walk to the cafeteria together. We can hang out by the brass doors after school, but my cool friends will probably ignore you.”

  “Yeah, I wish I hadn’t said that out loud.”

  “If you’re free on Saturday night, I’d like to take you to a party. My partner, Eve, is having a big birthday party. She’s turning thirty-five. Should be a rager.”

  “Oh gosh. I don’t know if I can handle a rager.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, reaching around to grab her sweet ass. “I’ll be the one doing the handling.”

  I get an arm punch for that.

  “All night long, baby.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good. It’s a date. Come on.” I take h
er hand, lifting her up so we’re face-to-face. “I wanna show you something.”

  She gives me a look, like…again? Already?

  “It’s not my dick, dirty bird. Get your mind out of the gutter and put your clothes on.”

  Watching Nina’s face as she takes in the view from my building’s roof terrace is almost as fulfilling as watching her take in the view of my body. You can’t fake that kind of appreciation. I don’t think. I’m so glad the hipsters aren’t up here tonight—it’s just us and the café string lights and the moon and the stars and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. And the street noise and the voices of people shouting from the building across from me.

  “Wow.”

  “Not bad, huh? I never get tired of it.”

  “So this is what people do, huh? Ride their motorcycles around Brooklyn, have sex in their awesome lofts, and then come up to their roof decks to enjoy the view?”

  I grin and pull her to me, stand behind her with my arms wrapped around her waist. “We do. Sometimes.” I kiss her neck. “Other times we’ll stroll around Cobble Hill and go to the flea market and then have sex in my loft.”

  “I’d like that. What about other times?”

  “Other times we’ll take a drive out to Connecticut and then have sex in the back seat of my car like teenagers.”

  “You like Connecticut?”

  “I like driving. And I’d like to have sex in the back seat of my car with you like teenagers.”

  “That’s a lot of sex.”

  “You’re a lot of sexy.”

  She giggles, lowering her head and shaking it. She really has no idea how hot she is. I’ve met exactly zero other girls like that around here.

  “Have you lived in New York all your life?”

  “Changing the subject, huh? I’ve lived in Brooklyn my whole life.”

  “Really?”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “No, I guess not. But most people I know here moved from somewhere else.”