grass like well-dressed starfish. We chose a spot along the edge and I fanned myself, wishing I had a sun hat.
“This is what…the sixth summer in a row that’s the hottest on record?” I eased the lid off my salad.
“I know. You feel especially bad when you’re here, surrounded by, like, hundreds of floors of energy consumption.”
“Oh, the buildings around here are probably mostly LEED-certified by now.” We looked around, chewing thoughtfully. “My dad’s a civil engineer and he says the reason he retired is that everyone was making him build, quote, buildings for fearmongering, tree-hugging hippies, unquote.”
“Yikes. I always forget you’re the product of gun-toting right-wingers.”
“That’s me.” Why had I brought them up? Picturing them, I felt an arrow of unease.
He leaned back against a step. “I love the idea of you as a teeny six-year-old pointing a loaded shotgun.”
“Rifle,” I corrected. “A twenty-two-caliber rimfire rifle. Single shot.”
“And you were actually six? I was being cute.”
“Sixth birthday present. Every little girl’s dream.” I’d wanted the Totally Hair Barbie, but eventually I came to like shooting with my dad. He was calm at the shooting range, predictable. Unlike at home.
“Remember when I met them and they kept asking me where my accent’s from?” Damien said. “Took me forever to realize they just couldn’t detect gayness.”
“Oh god, that was awful. And hopefully that was the only time they’ll ever come to New York.” Damien was likely one of the first black men they’d encountered socially, and they’d said plenty of unintentionally racist things—“That’s really great that you’re educated, that you got your degree!” I couldn’t imagine how awkward things would’ve gotten if they’d picked up on his sexual orientation as well.
He kept laughing. “They were sweet. You’re still not talking?”
“I mean, we get further and further apart on our political stances with each passing year. To the point where it’s hard to have a conversation. We’re basically down to obligatory phone calls on birthdays and major holidays.”
He shrugged and sucked on his straw. “It’s family. You only get the one.”
“Yeah, and my family voted directly against my well-being and safety. And yours.” It was a convenient excuse, though not the real reason. It’d been a little easier avoiding them the last few years—so many fellow New Yorkers were outraged with their own red-leaning folks and I could just follow suit.
“But they raised you!”
“And I didn’t…I didn’t have the greatest childhood with them. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Damien shrugged easily and I envied his mellowness, how he could always make me feel like the hysterical woman by contrast. We gazed out at the grass. A pigeon was plodding closer and closer to the head of one of the supine businessmen. He had his eyes closed, unaware.
I tried a joke. “My dad’s an amazing shooter,” I said. “When he’d go to retrieve his target, with all the holes in the bull’s-eye, he’d always say he was gonna put it on the front door for any guy taking me on a date to see.”
“Did you go on a lot of dates?”
“Ha! No.”
“No high school boyfriend?”
A ping of shame: Even after years of friendship, Damien didn’t know that the answer was no, not then, not ever. “Nah, definitely not cool enough for that. I was a weird kid. And I was chubby.”
He laughed delightedly. “Oh my god, you must have been adorable!”
“No, it was just bad-chubby.” Once or twice I’d awkwardly asked the nerd clique if I could be in their all-female dinner-and-photo-taking group for homecoming, but that was the extent of my social life. In college, too, I’d made mostly drinking buddies, other girls in my dorm who partook of the cheap whiskey I procured from a junior and stored under my bed. I’d availed myself of the university gym and Madison’s legendary party scene, discovering in alcohol and the occasional Klonopin all the mood-lifting effects I hadn’t in SSRIs. But close friends hadn’t come until I moved to New York, far away from my parents, the ones who only occasionally wanted to claim me. Far away from my whole sad youth, really.
“Hey, did you ever find anything in those emails?” he asked, as if hearing my thoughts.
“Not really. Just a reminder that I was twenty-three to the max.”
He laughed. “Weren’t we all?”
* * *
That night, I kneeled on the floor and pushed dusty boxes around under my bed until I’d found what I was looking for: old photo albums, anachronistic even then, cute ones with bikes and planets