by Staci Hart
“Try.”
I thought about it for a second. “Have you ever felt alone in the world? Like you don’t belong anywhere? To anyone?”
Something flashed behind his eyes, a certain sadness or regret. “I have.”
“So have we. So has everyone. These parties are proof positive that we have a place to belong and people to belong to. It’s not … it’s not purpose—that’s too productive a word. More like family.” I looked over the crowd, greeted with faces I knew so well. “And we’re just like any family. There are squabbles and scandals, but in the end, we always have each other’s backs. Most of us don’t have anyone else.”
When I met his eyes again, they were sharp with cynicism even though his smile was light.
“A sad pack of poor little rich kids? Must be tough.” He took a drink.
“Probably looks like that from the outside. But not all of us are rich. And money doesn’t solve anyone’s problems.”
“But it sure can’t hurt.”
I cut him a look, not bothering to hide the offense. “Shows how much you know.”
But then he laughed, his face softening. “That’s fair enough. I’m sorry. As an orphan raised by a cop and someone who went to college on an academic scholarship, seems like money is the answer to just about everything. All of this”—he gestured to the crowd—“is the exact opposite of what I know.”
“Then maybe it’s time to visit the other side and discover its merits,” I challenged with a smile. “Keep coming and you’ll see for yourself that it’s not so simple.”
“And duke it out with Ash’s dates?” he scoffed. “That’s no easy task, and the odds of me landing an invitation of my own is pretty slim. I don’t exactly fit in, do I?” There was the slightest bite in his voice, and I hated the sound of it.
“I figured you were cynical, but I didn’t take you for a snob.”
Unaffected, he shrugged again. “It’s all right—I don’t feel the need to fit in. But the divide between your kind and mine seems a little deeper in a place like this.”
“Maybe it only feels deeper because you dug it that way.”
A chuckle. “Maybe. It makes me wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“If there’s any merit to that. Especially since you’re so adamant that I’m wrong. I’m not usually wrong. I wonder if you could change my mind.” He turned his molten gaze on me, and it weighed a thousand pounds, not at all lightened by that crooked smile of his. “I have to say, this is not how I thought tonight would go down.”
“No?”
He shook his head, casting a glance toward the bar. “I figured I’d come once or twice, see what it was about, and that’d be that. But I find myself surprised.”
“These parties will do that,” I said on a laugh.
Once again, he looked straight at me, into me, through me until I was hot and cold all over. “It’s not the party. It’s you.”
Something pulled at me, some wicked desire that lived on his lips, in his mouth. I took an unknowing step closer, close enough to feel the heat of his body even though he was still feet away. “You’re not like the rest of them.”
“Neither are you.”
I laughed, not knowing how I’d gotten closer or even when his hand had first cupped my hip. “Where did you come from?”
“Hell’s Kitchen,” he answered with an uptick of his smile.
“Do you ever take anything seriously?” I asked with a smile of my own.
“Not if I can help it.”
My hand rested on his chest, a solid plane of muscle. I stood between his legs, felt the bulk of his thighs outside mine. When I leaned into him, pressed the length of my body to the long stretch of his, another bulk greeted me.
“I came to find out about the party,” he said as his hands charted the curves of my hips, the words brushing my lips. “But now I have another intention entirely.”
“Oh? And what’s that?” I breathed.
“To find out how you taste.”
A hot shudder slid through me. I inched closer. “Then shut up and find out.”
For a heartbeat, he savored the anticipation.
And then I saw stars.
Utter blackness and flashes of light and his lips against mine. Hands, hands on my face, my neck. His noisy breath, or maybe it was mine, the sound of his stubble rasping my palms, louder than the music or the crowd. But those lips, demanding and insistent, devouring, consuming, swallowing me up as if part of me belonged to him and he wanted it back.
It wasn’t until I nearly climbed up his body that one of us regained our senses, and I realized it had to have been him. Because although the kiss slowed, the rest of me didn’t, my body stretching to cover as much of his as I could and my hands fisting his shirt, bringing us as close as we could get without getting arrested.
We popped apart, lips parted and chests heaving and eyes wide, like we’d seen a color neither of us had laid eyes on before.
A crack like a gunshot whipped our heads in the direction of the sound as a wave of laughter rose, followed by more cracks and snaps as the crowd grabbed balloons and popped them, though some were left bouncing over the crowd, kept afloat by a bodiless hand here and there.
I stepped back, needing and hating to put space between us. My smile said more than I wanted it to.
“You’ve had your taste,” I said blithely, ignoring my racing heart. “Now what?”
“I’ll take the bottle.”
He reached for my hand, but I drifted back, my fingers sliding through his.
“Come to the next party and maybe you’ll get a glass.”
“And if I can’t get an invite?”
But I smiled at him over my shoulder as I turned. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
The determination on his face told me I was right.
3
Something Else
LEVI
“You’re a sweet boy, Levi.” Peg smiled at me from behind the fluff-and-fold counter at the Laundromat.
“Don’t tell anybody.” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “You’re gonna ruin my street cred.”
She laughed that husky sort of laugh only achieved with the help of fifty-some-odd years of Marlboro Reds. “Taking care of Billy like you do? You could be off, having fun. Living it up. Chasing tail.”
“Who says I’m not?” I took the offered laundry bag full of my foster dad’s clothes and slung it over my shoulder.
She waved a hand at me. “I mean it. I don’t know what Billy’d do if it wasn’t for you.”
“Eat microwave dinners and bowls of cereal for sustenance.”
“Nilla Wafers for dinner.”
“Only on Tuesdays.”
That earned me another laugh. “How come no girl’s locked you down yet? If I were forty years younger, it’d be me.”
“If you were forty years younger, I’d have already beaten you to the punch, Peg.”
The color in her cheeks rose when she laughed again. “Quit makin’ old ladies blush.”
“You started it.” I turned for the door. “See you next week.”
“All right, and you tell Billy to come on by when he’s out for his walk.”
“Why, you gonna take care of him when I’m gone?”
She waggled her brows. “If I have my way.”
With an unamused shake of my head, I pushed the door open. “Bye, Peg.”
“Bye-bye, honey.” She waved a gnarled, old hand at me as the glass door closed behind me.
It was as hot as a frying pan, the sidewalk sizzling in the midday sun. But even the sweltering heat and a full smoke-free year couldn’t stop the itch for a cigarette. I gnawed on the stir stick between my lips to keep them occupied instead.
Poor substitute, if you asked me.
The familiar block was already bustling, but it didn’t look much like it did when I was a kid. So many of the old businesses were gone, bought out by fancy hair salons and cheese shops and hipster cafés and Starb
ucks as Hell’s Kitchen gentrified, but some of the old staples remained, holding out against the surge. Like Peg’s Laundromat, Gino’s Subs, the Fareedis’ liquor store—which didn’t have a name, just the word Liquor in big red letters over the door. The Li’s bodega was still up and running, but a developer was after them—I had a feeling they were ready to fold. And who could blame them? The kind of cash these developers threw around was more than any of us had ever seen in one place at one time. It’d be bad business to pass up that kind of opportunity, and everybody knew it.
But seeing the neighborhood change still sucked. Everybody knew that too.
Money changed things, changed people, and most of the time, not in a good way. The neighborhood was an easy example. I had my fair share of filthy rich friends, and though their extravagance frequently made me uncomfortable, they were old money—multimillion-dollar trusts was the life they knew. But through journalism, I knew plenty of people who’d been made, and they rarely stayed who they were before. Especially the ones who hadn’t had to really work for it.
It was hard to fathom. All I’d ever done was work for it, scraping and scrabbling for everything I had, even Billy.
I popped into Gino’s to grab Billy his usual and headed back out into the heat, adjusting the bag on my shoulder as I went over an unofficial list of things I needed to do this weekend. Grocery shopping for Billy, some meal prep tomorrow. Tidy up the apartment, vacuum and dust, since he didn’t see messes. Not that he saw a lot of anything—he refused to wear his glasses, preferring blindness to the indignity. He’d practically kicked me out in college, insisting after my mandatory dorm year that I live on the Upper West, near school. He also insisted he was able to take care of himself, which was mostly true, so long as he had somebody to run his errands and help with bills.
But with this article, I would earn myself a step up the ladder.
Just like Rolling Stone, Vagabond’s circulation had been in steady decline for years, and as such, we’d been pushing hard to rebrand over the last few years to make the shift from focusing primarily on music to reaching for a broader audience with politics. And not just national, but issues around the world. We were looking to make a new name for ourselves—an opinion-slanted culture magazine with an edge, the voice of young America.
An opportunity had opened up—a war correspondency in Syria—and if I did my job with the Bright Young Things, I’d land my dream gig covering the war. The money would take care of Billy for years—his city pension and Social Security checks barely covered his bills, never mind what would happen when he couldn’t live on his own anymore. I needed money in savings to pay for in-home care if he wouldn’t let me live with him.
Everything I did now was to pay into that future.
I’d been putting off finding someone to take my place when it came to Billy, not trusting anybody to care for him the way I did. But he’d threatened me with disownment if I didn’t take the job in Syria with the magazine, fueled by the astute assumption that I didn’t want to leave him. But he was pushing eighty, and his age, combined with an old gunshot injury—the same one that had ended his long career with the NYPD and left him hobbled—made me hesitant to go anywhere, even the next borough over. Hell, I’d move in with Billy if he’d let me.
Stubborn old bastard.
I trotted up the steps to the building, setting the laundry bag at my feet so I could unlock the heavy green door. The stairwell smelled like old paper and musty wood, the familiar scent following me as I climbed two flights and turned for the apartment.
When I entered, Billy glanced over with a crooked smile on his weathered face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, son, but you look like shit.”
“You should talk. Brought you Gino’s—don’t get up.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he said as he used what looked like a vast amount of his strength to haul himself up. “How’s Peg? She ask about me?”
“Always does.” I set the bags on the table and moved to the cabinets for a plate. “Said you should come by on your walk.”
“Heh.” He shuffled over, leaning on his cane. “I don’t brave two flights for the fresh air, that’s for damn sure.” He pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it. “What’d you do last night? Looks like you got two black eyes and liver disease.”
I set his lunch in front of him, and he licked his lips as he unwrapped the sandwich. “Went out with a buddy of mine, one of those Bright Young Things parties.”
One of his brows rose. “Those kids Warren is all bent about?”
“The very same.” The sink full of dishes called, and I answered, flipping on the water. “I’m writing a piece about them. Nobody will really talk about what goes on or how any of it works, so I’ve been sent in to infiltrate.”
“Some code of ethics you’ve got,” he snarked with his mouth full.
“Don’t act like you never went undercover.”
“Different.”
“Is not. And anyway, it’s not an exposé. Just an opinion piece.”
“So you’re not covering Warren’s part in the whole thing? He’s out to light those kids up.”
“Not officially, no. It’s just about the parties and the culture. But I won’t lie and say I’m not itching to find out what his beef is and, if I can figure it out, who Cecelia Beaton is.”
“Got any leads?”
A smile tugged at my lips. “One, and she’s something else.”
“So much for objective journalism.”
“Hey—there’s a reason I’m a literary journalist and not a reporter.”
“Authority issues or truth issues?”
I shot him a look. “I tell the truth as I see it instead of a cold regurgitation of facts. How I obtain that truth is at my discretion, which is the sum total of my code of ethics. Why, you callin’ me a liar?”
“You tell this little bit of something else what you were there for?”
My brows furrowed.
“Didn’t think so.” He took a spectacular bite of his sandwich.
“I’m leaving, Pop. It’s just a fling. An interesting diversion and an inside look at the group as a whole. One that’s not Ash—getting him to help with anything is like trying to put pajamas on an octopus.”
“So lemme get this straight,” he said when he swallowed. “It’s all right to lie, but only if lying gets you the information you want?”
“You act like I don’t do this all the time. All I do is lie about my last name and my job. Jesus, nobody ever gave Hunter S. Thompson shit for it.”
He gave me a look.
“Okay, fine, he caught some shit over it, but he was a genius, and everybody knows it.”
“You might do this all the time, son, but not usually when a girl’s involved. I’m just sayin’, it changes the game, and pretending it doesn’t will only get you in trouble.”
“I got it under control—don’t worry.”
“The line you ride between being honest and lying for the sake of your work makes you a contradiction in boots. I just want you to admit it.”
My brows stitched together. “It’s a necessary evil in pursuit of visionary truth. That is the truth that trumps everything.”
“All right, all right.” He raised his palms in surrender. “Don’t shoot.”
“I’m just going to a few parties so I can give the public some sort of insight into what the group is like, and then it’ll be done.”
“Buncha rich kids with no jobs.”
“You’d think, but there’s maybe more to it.”
“Out all night on a Thursday? Working people don’t party like that.”
“The young ones do. It was a real spectacle though—whoever’s running it has a disgusting amount of disposable income.”
“Rich kids with no jobs,” he said again before taking another bite.
I stood a plate in the drying rack. “We’ll see. If I can convince Ash, I’m going to another party next week.”
“So who’s this somet
hing else? Think she’ll come to the next party in the buff?”
A single laugh shot out of me. “Dirty old fucker.”
“I know it defies your sense of space and time to believe I was once as young and vital as you, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
I set the last glass in the rack and turned to face him, leaning against the counter as I dried my hands. “Stella Spencer.”
He swallowed hard. “Dean Spencer’s kid with that model? She’s got more money than God, if the rumors are true.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“Kiss her?”
“Yup,” I answered as my smile tilted.
“Anything else?”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
“You just told me you kissed, dipshit.”
I shrugged. “Fine, I don’t fuck and tell.”
He rolled his eyes so hard, I think he saw Jesus. “Youths.”
“I know, we’re the worst.” I pushed off the counter. “Want me to put your clothes away?”
“Do I look like an invalid?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“Wiseass. I can do it myself.”
“Fine, but I’m taking them into your room at least. Last thing I need is you bustin’ your hip.”
Ten years ago, he’d have punched me in the arm as I passed, but as it stood, he just glared at me, maintaining eye contact as he took another bite of his sandwich.
The apartment hadn’t changed since I’d moved in twenty years ago—same old couch, same old curtains, same old everything. In fact, I didn’t think it’d changed since his wife died in the ’80s of ovarian cancer. They’d never had any kids, and Billy never remarried.
He was part of the DCFS crew that had picked me up when I was eight. I didn’t know how long my parents had been gone at the time—off on a bender, I figured. It was summer, so there wasn’t any school, no way for me to measure time, but Billy said they figured it had been at least three weeks. I’d been living on cereal and ramen noodles, wondering when they’d be back. Wondering if they’d ever come back.
They hadn’t.
I didn’t know what it was that had inspired Billy to take me home. But who knew where I would have ended up if I’d been put in the system. Certainly not where I was now, with an Ivy League degree and a highly competitive job in journalism.