“I meant what I said?—
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
I try to get it together and almost manage it.
“Andrew. We’re standin’ on a giant fuckin’ clock,between two bridges, in New York City…” I say, arms wide. “A seventy-year-old sex-deprived woman named Dolores screamin’ at us from her window. On a first date. At five in the mornin’.”
I point between us.
“You and me. Andrew and Allison.
“Tipsy on champagne. Publicly shamed.
“Probably gettin’ booked before breakfast.”
Andrew’s mouth twitches.
And then that grin?—
thatAndrewgrin?—
spreads across his face.
“You said Andrew and Allison,” he murmurs. “Shit… that just got to me.”
I breathe in, all of it at once.
“So what’s the story you wanna tell people years from now? That we called security and got locked up for trespassin’? Or that your date had to call her stepdaddy to bail us out?"
I another breeze takes my hair,
and I hold it back from my face.
“‘Cause I can get us outta this if you want.”
His grin deepens, dangerous now with the city lit up behind him.
I want to burn the image into my mind
and keep it forever.
My spine softens.
“I’m down for either. Both are pretty hilarious.
“So whatever you pick, don’t matter to me.
“This is still the best night of my life.”
15 /BELL BOTTOM BLUES
DEREK & THE DOMINOS
// 6:34 AM - THE ASTOR CLOCKHOUSE — ASTOR PLACE, NYC //
I don’t hear songs first, I feel them.
It starts in my body?—
