a total party animal now—that’s why you wanted to go in the first place?”
I sighed and shook my head, trying not to meet his eyes, trying not to be all weird and watery-eyed, and totally failing.
“God, you really like this guy, don’t you?”
I bit my lip so hard it almost bled. “I do.”
I waited for him to joke how it was about time I got a boyfriend or to make a loud fart noise or something else terrible, but instead he nodded, studying me carefully, his eyes taking me in like I was something new.
“All right. I was saving this for myself, but . . .” Eph pulled his wallet out from his back pocket and dug through the billfold. His hand emerged with a small, round piece of metal, the center cut out.
“An old subway token?”
He nodded, pleased with himself.
“Thanks, I guess?”
“You ‘guess’?”
“Sure?”
“Pen, I won that in a game of cards with the Bearded Lady at the Coney Island freak show. It’s full of totally sick magic.”
“The Bearded Lady? Oh, please.” I studied the token in my hand.
“It’s true! We were playing a round of five-card draw, and Rufus the Sword Swallower and Serpentina had already folded.”
“You are so full of it.”
“My sketchbook was up for grabs, and now that you’ve seen my latest stuff . . .” He raised an eyebrow. “You know it’s worth millions.”
“Um-hmm. So now we get to talk about it?”
He ignored me. “So the Bearded Lady had her lucky subway token on the table—the one you currently have in your clammy hands. Turns out she had never been beat, thanks to that very token. And of course she was winning—she was crushing me. I thought me and my dinosaurs were toast. And I was convinced she was fucking stacking the deck. Her beard? Huge. There could have been a whole deck of cards hidden in there. But no way could I accuse her with Rufus there—I mean, his lady’s reputation was at stake. I would have ended up with a sword through my spleen.”
“The Sword Swallower and the Bearded Lady were a couple?”
“Totally head over heels in love with each other.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, and to be honest, I probably could have gone home with Serpentina. She was giving me sex eyes.” He wiggled his tongue, snakelike, at me.
“Gross.”
“Occupational hazard of being a tall, handsome hottie. Anyway, so she puts down a straight flush, all smuglike, and I can see her, practically reaching for my notebook, when bam, I crush it with a royal flush.”
“I don’t know what any of this card stuff means, you know.”
“The Bearded Lady was mega pissed, couldn’t believe I had won, especially with all her cheating, and I grabbed the token, right as Rufus shot his sword down into the table, only fucking millimeters from my hand. My life flashed before my eyes—sort of like when you pushed me off my skateboard? Or tried to give me a deviated septum by ramming your skull in my face? Or broke my nose?”
“I was ten!”
“But Serpentina held up her hands. ‘Rules are rules; the wager was made; promises must be kept.’ Damn, she was hot.” He sighed wistfully. “So I shoved the token in my pocket and got the fuck out of there. And now I’m bestowing it on you. I mean, the Bearded Lady landed Rufus with the magic in that token, Pen. That’s some powerful shit there.”
I unfurled my fingers, studied the totally average-seeming old subway token.
“Not that I’m comparing you to the Bearded Lady,” he added hastily.
Eph was so full of it.
But he was waiting, expectant, and I felt a trace of the things you can’t hold glowing around me: glimmer and potential and maybe.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I said, and slid the token into the pocket over my heart.
• • •
As we climbed the stoop to Keats’s brownstone, I patted the token against my chest for reassurance. The thump of the bass on the other side of the door was so loud I felt it in my ribs. I reached for the doorbell, but Eph pushed in.
The first person we saw? Cherisse.
Not an auspicious start.
Her blond hair was curled in feathery seventies waves, held back by a terry-cloth headband, and she was wearing a white tennis dress—the pleated skirt so short I worried about potential hygiene issues for her lady parts. Nestled deep in her cleavage was a gold charm on a gold necklace, all glittery in the light.
“Ephraim!” She pulled him into a hug, giving him a kiss on