A man in a leather bomber jacket and a beret accidentally backs into Reid, which sends him colliding into me. My face presses against the buttons of his shirt. On an inhale, I take in his up-close scent: Underneath the pine, there’s something quieter, like laundry detergent rolled in a bed of musk.
This, I think,is what a man smells like.
Two big, warm hands wrap around my upper shoulders. Reid is righting me again. “Should we go somewhere we can actually hear each other?”
I gesture to the chaos around us. “Do you think that exists?”
“If you want it, I’ll find it.”
I nod. He takes my hand and coaxes me through the crowd, eventually leading me to a tiny bedroom in the back of the apartment. It’s oddly austere: a twin mattress made up in hospital-cornered maroon sheets with aReservoir Dogsposter hung over it. The only other furniture is a complicated-looking boombox that takes up an entire wall. Miraculously, the room is empty.
“Do you want to keep this open?” He puts his hand on the door.
“You can close it,” I nod, but he still leaves it ajar.
There’s a window over the flaking radiator. I open it, letting in a gentle rush of humid air and summer city sounds—promise, in audio form.
The window leads out to a fire escape. I’ve lived in New York for my entire life but somehow have never been out onto one. It’s always just felt easier to play it safe. Among other dangers (taper candles, the invisible filth on hotel bedspreads), my mother raised me to believe that you must have a death wish to traverse a fire escape voluntarily. Terrible things are always going to happen, so why make it so easy for them to come to you?
Now I can practically hear her yelling at me as I climb out onto the landing, my platform sandals clanging on the metal.
Reid stays inside the room, leaning cautiously against the windowsill.
“Heights aren’t my thing.” He reaches out a hand toward me, seemingly on impulse. It brushes the ends of my hair, as if to make sure I’m really there, sitting on a sort-of-sturdy surface and not tumbling five stories down onto the sidewalk.
“Didn’t you say you’re a screenwriter? You’re missing out on some good material here.”
“Ididn’t call myself a screenwriter. My cousin did.”
Clearly, though, he takes this as a challenge. Behind me, I hear a lowfuckand feel the metal underneath me vibrate with his added weight.
When he sits next to me, he folds his long legs into his chest and loops his arms loosely around them. He takes a deep inhale and closes his eyes, steadying himself.
“Not so bad, right?” I say.
“Not if I can’t see that we’re fifty feet off the ground.”
“If you keep your eyes closed, you’ll miss the little community garden down here. Also the people having sex in front of their window.”
It’s not an unheard-of thing in New York, to see people having sex in full view of the street, but the timing of it adds something surreal and cinematic to the moment. Reid’s eyes are closed, but I still motion across the way, to where a woman’s bare breasts are on display. Even from here, I can make out the sated glaze in her eye, her wet mouth half open. I feel a slickness between my legs. I’ve never considered voyeurism a turn-on, but I’ve also never had Reid beside me, the coiled promise of his body within reach.
He opens one of his eyes to squint at me. “You’re fucking with me.”
“I’m not the one fucking right now.”
He braves a glance across the street, then turns to look at me again.
“Well, you’re right about the material.” He rasps a hand over his face. In the failing light, I can see a layer of stubble coming in across his jaw.
“Why are you still looking at me,” I say, “and not the woman spread-eagled in plain sight thirty feet across from you?”
He laughs. “Because I don’t know her.”
“You don’t know me either.”
“It feels... weird. To watch them without their permission. I don’t know, I think I need to have more of an emotional connection with someone before anything sexual happens with them.”
“That’s suspiciously noble of you.”
