instead of the brakes, and beneath an umbrella I could just make out a lifted hand, the middle finger held high. I blinked away the tableau of what would’ve happened if the jaywalker hadn’t gotten out of the way in time. Supine on the ground, a limb crushed flat. Bystanders circling up stupidly. A scarlet pool rippling outward from his body, mingling with the rain and—
My watch and phone and laptop all vibrated at once from different parts of the apartment. I squinted at my computer, and it took me a minute to make sense of the incoming message. Three letters, all from Josh: Hey.
At seven forty-five on a Thursday morning. Was he still out partying or something? It’d been more than two weeks since I’d seen him, since we’d sat on a bench and said stoner-y things about moving around in time, in the fourth dimension. I knew I should make him wait a bit, punish him for the unanswered texts and the fortnight of silence, so I puttered around, cleaning up the living room and brewing coffee and putting away clean dishes and it’d still only been eight minutes and I’d run out of things to do, so fuck it: Hey!
“What’s up?” he typed back.
“Not too much,” I wrote. “You?”
“Same.”
“Big plans for tonight?” I said, because I was suddenly bored, because this was boring and some bizarre cocktail of boredom and fear was making me reckless.
“Still figuring it out. You?”
“Same.” Then: “Let me know if you want to meet up later.”
“Yeah, def!” he said, right away, and I glared at the phone for its succinctness, for being the conduit for an answer that could either mean yes, we’ll meet up, or yes, I’ll let you know if I feel like it.
* * *
Alex updated his Facebook photo that day, a beaming picture with his perfect wife, and I glared at them both. After work I showered and shaved my legs, just in case, and as the sun sank behind neighboring buildings and nobody contacted me to do anything, I slipped into a robe and reopened the old email archives. I poked around without a clear plan, knowing I should be more systematic about this, I should at least be recording my search terms. I cringed my way through a few email exchanges with Edie where I clearly wanted to ask about Lloyd; I hadn’t known they were sleeping together and still saw her as my connection to my crush. I brought him up with faux casualness, begging between the lines for an update. I’d finally broken down and sent him a text, laboriously composed to strike the proper breezy tone, and he hadn’t responded, which filled me with a wash of shame.
Dating sucks. Fuck Josh; I didn’t want to see him anyway.
But he did text, a little after ten, and I was immediately nervous, looking around like a trapped animal.
“Hey! You out?”
“Just finishing up dinner,” I lied, then instantly regretted it: He could ask where, he could fact-check me.
“Come hang out!” he replied. “I’m at Jimmy Rhoda’s.”
I looked it up: a dive bar in Bed-Stuy, a gritty, gentrifying neighborhood that reminded me of the Bushwick I’d known.
“Will you be there for a bit?”
“I’ll wait for you,” he said, and, unsure what else to do, I sent him a smiley face and ducked into the bathroom, heart pounding like the circa 2009 playlist I put on the speakers.
* * *
I was about to leave when I turned around, stepping back to the cabinet over my fridge. The scotch was still there, next to the fire extinguisher. In case of emergency. I thought of Josh’s gleaming smile, then of Alex’s soft lips, fringed by a five o’clock shadow. I froze like someone at the top of the high dive and then took a swig straight from the bottle, chasing it with water and then swishing some mouthwash so I wouldn’t smell like a damn alcoholic. I coughed at its golden burn, and as my cab coasted along Myrtle Avenue, I felt the forgotten, familiar sensation—booze prickling outward from my belly. I was going to meet Josh’s friends, which was strange but somehow casual, a hurdle I’d never crossed with Michael but that I’d sail past with Josh before we had any reason to think it mattered. I wondered how many of them would be sitting around with him. I wondered, too, if they’d think I looked nice, clad for more or less anything in tight jeans and a