“Sounds very Coney Island.”
“I once had a dream that a tsunami wiped out Blackpool and I was so heartbroken I cried for the whole day.” Elliot frowned and I hurried to explain. “In my defense, I was seven.” Nana Kath had had to lie in bed with me to calm my sobs. She’d stroked my hair, this no-nonsense woman, and reassured me Blackpool was safe, that I was safe. She’d folded her body into my cramped little bed to hold me, filling my head with her familiar scent of menthol cigarettes and Imperial Leather soap. And in her arms, I’d believed her whispered assurances. Although not enough to immediately wipe out the visual of Blackpool Tower crumbling under the onslaught of relentless, uncaring waves, but she’d held me for what felt like hours. Fuck, I missed my nan. “Can you imagine if a tidal wave took out Coney Island – how would you feel?”
Elliot let out a sigh so intense his hair flipped. “I’d do whatever it took to rebuild it. Hmm.” He let out big huff. “Kindalike the way the script ends, the rebuilding of New York City. And on that note … we should get back to the office.”
My stomach let out a big rumble and I checked my watch. It was a long way past lunchtime. “Okay, but I am literally about to devour my own face,” I said.
“Right,” Elliot said. “We need to get you fed and less irritating. What do you want?”
“Anything,” I said. “Pizza. Pasta. Scabby horse.”
“Scabby what now?”
“It’s an expression,” I said. “It means you’re so hungry you’d eat—”
He lifted a hand. “Okay, okay. That’s so grossly British.” He pursed his lips in thought, then brightened. “I know just the place. Are you able to manage a walk? Twenty minutes max.”
I groaned. “I might actually die.”
“The best hot dogs you will ever have. Guaranteed.”
“Hot dogs?” I repeated as we followed signs to the exit.
“It’s a little place in the East Village,” he explained. “It’s awesome.”
I didn’t want to offend him, but my experience of hot dogs were those rubbery sausages you got in a jar of brine shoved in a dry bread roll and slathered in ketchup. Hardly appetizing.
Elliot clocked my face and tutted. “Oh my God, you’re not even talking and yet somehow I know you’re dragging my choice.”
“I’m really not!” I rushed to reply. “It’s just, I mean, how exciting can hot dogs be?”
Almost forty minutes later, I had my answer. I sank my teeth into a chili-maple-bacon-wrapped hotdog, layered with sour cream, scallion and chili flakes in an exquisite brioche roll.
“Is that exciting enough for you?” Elliot grinned wolfishly as he scarfed down his own guacamole-slathered hot dog.
“So much that I forgive you for lying about how long it took to walk here,” I said through a mouthful of food. Brekdogs wasan unassuming fast-food place in the East Village, its grungy sign almost obscured by political stickers and graffiti. Inside the exposed-brick interior, there was barely enough room for a few high tables, all of which were busy.
“Man, I gained like ten pounds when I first discovered it. It took a lot of work to correct that.” He rubbed his belly, accidentally flipping his shirt to reveal a glimpse of rock-hard muscle.
I couldn’t help it. The sight of his chiseled abs sent all my blood down south and I gasped, accidentally inhaling crumbs of bread bun down my windpipe and causing a coughing fit of epic proportions.
Elliot slapped my back. “You okay?”
Red-faced and hacking, I nodded, reached for my root beer. “I’m alive.”
“What is it with you and choking to death on baked goods?” Elliot wondered.
“It is a skill of mine,” I said as I soothed my throat with sweet, delicious fizz. God, I was hard up. It took the smallest sight of bare skin and I was wheezing all over him like a perve.
“I’m honored to have witnessed it in action twice then,” he said with a grin.
I blushed, grateful for a mouth full of root beer preventing me from saying anything. Did he ever look back on our first meeting, the way he’d flirted with me when he didn’t know who I was? Did he regret that I became his colleague, what else I might have been?
I sighed. There was no point even dwelling on this. He was my colleague and anything more than that was out of bounds.
Elliot checked his watch. “Yikes. We should head back to RJF.” He looked pointedly at the remaining hot dog in my hand. “You ready to go?”
I shoved the last morsel in my mouth. “Mmmph.”
