With a final dark glare, he left me standing on the sidewalk in front of his building. I wasn’t about to chase after him, and the earlier buzz of the wine had faded, leaving me slightly headachy and drained. I decided to walk home to try and clear my mind, but by the time I entered my building, a full-blown headache played a conga inside my head, and my feet hurt.
“Night, Jimmy.”
I waved without really seeing the nighttime doorman and went up to my apartment. I tossed the keys into the bowl by the door, toed off my loafers, and headed for the bedroom. I stripped and let my clothes fall to the floor, my only wish to douse myself under a steamy shower. Once under the stream of water, I let the heat pound into me. I should have been thinking about the book I’d secured the movie rights for earlier that morning and all the hype it would get, especially with Hollywood’s two hottest young actors DMing me, asking for a chance to read for the parts.
I should have been thinking of all that success.
Instead, Roe’s face popped up whenever I closed my eyes. Why was he so angry with me? We were each other’s first loves, and when I left, we promised to keep in touch, but we were young. That kind of thing happened in movie scripts, not in real life. I shut off the water. He’d forgotten me, and I’d moved on.
Dry and in sweats, I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. At one point, seeing New York spread out before me, ripe for the taking, would’ve been enough of a high. I pressed my hand to the glass like an outsider looking for a way in.
My phone buzzed, and it was Pasco, another agent with whom I’d done some deals. We’d also hooked up a few times.
“What’s up?”
“Me. I’m bored and horny. Can I come over?” He proceeded to tell me every filthy thing he wanted to do to me.
Pasco was fun and hot as hell. Hearing him talk dirty in his Italian accent was usually enough to turn me on, but not tonight. I felt sluggish and out of sorts from Roe’s snappish behavior.
“I’m not feeling well. Maybe something I ate.” I placed my forehead against the cool window and shivered. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“Okay,amore. You take care, and maybe tomorrow, eh?” His throaty chuckle hummed in my ear. “You’re worth waiting for.”
I ended the call, Pasco’s words sending a chill through me. The night before I left for LA, Roe and I said the same thing to each other.
“I’ll always be there for you. You’re worth waiting for.” Monroe held me close, and I wrapped my arms around him, wanting to never let go.
“I wish you were coming with me. Are you sure…”
He pulled away and put his hands on my shoulders. “I can’t leave. My family needs me. And after graduation, you know I’ll have to go to night school so I can work and help them out.”
“But after. You can get a job and come out to California.”
“Or you could come back to New York.”
“I will,” I said with all the foolish conviction in dreams only a seventeen-year-old could believe true.
“Then it’s a deal. I’ll see you in three and a half years.”
“I promise.” I kissed him hard. “I’ll be back. And we’ll write. You’ll see. Nothing has to change.”
Lights glittered across a city much denser than I remembered. So many more buildings, people, dreams…but only one person occupied my mind. I turned away from the multimillion-dollar view, Monroe’s face the only thing I saw.
Did he remember our promise, or was it forgotten, like the letters never written and the calls never made? I wondered what Monroe was doing tonight and why he was so angry with me. He was the one who stopped writing.
Everything had changed, and I had no idea why.
Chapter Two
“Fucking hell.”
I stood under the wheezing shower, only to have the water turn from hot to freezing cold so quickly, I jumped and struck the shower nozzle with the crown of my head. It left me dazed for a moment. I knew seeing Ezra again would lead to nothing good.
Gingerly, I shampooed around the sore spot, rinsed off, then rubbed myself dry and dressed in a worn pair of jeans and a CUNY sweat shirt. Pushing the damp hair off my face, I walked down the hallway to join my mother and grandmother in their apartment.
“Grandma, isn’t it late for you to be up?”
At ninety, my grandmother, Nettie, had outlived two husbands and her son, my father. Tiny and fragile in appearance only, little escaped her bright, inquisitive gaze.
