“He asked about you, actually.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Scotch guy?”
“Mhm.”
“When were you planning on mentioning that?”
“I didn’t want to juice up your ego any higher than it needs to be. He asked if you’d be here today.”
“Cute. He’s fucking obsessed with me.”
“Chase,” my brother warns me, narrowing his eyes. “If you’re considering some sort of gay exploration, you really shouldn’t do that with a Bellwood hotel guest.”
“I never said I was considering shit.”
“Good. You’d break that poor fuck’s heart.”
I smile and give Julian a shove. “I’m not going to do anything with him. He’s too rich and boring anyway.”
“Are you coming to the party after our shift?”
“Fuck yes. They’re going to have someone doing stick-and-poke tattoos there. I’m getting something on my thigh.”
“You’re going to let someone tattoo you at a party? Do I even need to explain how unsafe that is?”
“It’s very safe. This girl is trained, and last time I saw her doing tattoos at a party, she had every precaution in place.”
Ever since I moved into the city after high school, I feel like I actually started tolivemy life rather than dream about it. It's even better now that Julian’s here, too. New York is expensive enough that I need to live with him and two other roommates, but I don’t give a damn that our apartment is small.
All I care about is that Iescaped.
I got out of the suburban neighborhood in Queens Village where we grew up, where I knew I didn’t fit in. Sports were king at my school, and I was no one, because I never played.
My father tried to mold me in his image and it didn’t stick. He put everything in my hands when I was a child: basketballs, footballs, baseballs, hockey sticks. He was never impressed when I showed him a completed painting or drawing, and he’d stare at them like art was a language he didn’t understand. He didn’t care that I won first place in a photography competition when I was thirteen, where the prize was five hundred bucks and free private art classes for the next year.
He didn’t get physical with me until just before high school.
When I told him I was kicked off the flag football team that he signed me up for, the summer before freshman year, he shoved me in the short hallway of our house. I hit the wall, my shoulder knocking against a framed picture of our family smiling at Coney Island. It fell, shattering on the floor.
My gut reaction was to laugh. Even at fourteen, I saw the bitter irony of our happy family photo getting ruined because my father couldn’t handle his son disliking sports.
But when I couldn’t bite back my laughter, he doubled down and gave me bruises on my ribs that lasted until fall. My behavior had made him look bad, he said. Who getskicked off aflagfootball team? There was something wrong with me.
When I was little he called it “tough love.” Then I quickly got old enough to know it was just his own misplaced rage.
I realize my thoughts have turned to the past again as Julian comes back out from the back, carrying freshly washed dishes and plopping the rack behind the bar.
I pick up pint glass after pint glass, using a clean cloth to wipe each until it’s spotless.
You’d approve, Scotch guy.
Neat and orderly.
I narrow my eyes, looking out at the city block outside, all stone and concrete.
“I need to fuck someone,” I tell Julian.
“TMI.”
