My grin returns. “To fucking up.”
We clink glasses and drink ourselves to sleep.
9
YOU’RE A FUCK UP, CHARLIE BROWN
Dorian.Now.
This is a terrible idea. I should know. I’m an expert in terrible, no-good, self-destructive ideas. And yet, here I am.
Getting up to no good.
I should be at work, doing end-of-year accounting and inventory, wrapping and sending last-minute Christmas gift packages.
Instead, I’m freezing outside a bar called The Hideaway, waiting for the woman who regularly pushes me on my knees and shoves her fingers in my mouth.
Mom, I hope you’re proud.
Despite my black fleece coat, I’m freezing. Conveniently, I live just down the street. Unfortunately, that means I’m early, and I’m not going to head inside without Dove. I shove my hands in my pockets in an attempt to revive the feeling in my fingers.
This is insane. She probably won’t even show. Maybe she’s testing you. Sending you on some wild goose chase justto see how devoted you are. Just to make you wait in the snow for hours. And like an idiot, like the absolute simp you are, you will, you’ll wait here all night just to please her, just like you did withyou-know-who, you never learn from your mistakes, you pathetic piece of?—
The subway rattles underground. It coughs up steam through the grates which crystalizes into white smoke. From the bowels of New York City, Dove climbs the subway steps and the smoke clears for her.
Waves of auburn hair spill down and touch her shoulders. She’s clutching a green, thick duffle coat. Her head tilts and I get a vision of her profile, haloed by the subway lights—a small, flat nose, thick lips that I constantly crave all resting on a sweet, round face.
Then her eyes find me—a deep emerald that matches the green glow of the twin orb lanterns heralding the subway exit, as though the very spirit of New York City lives inside of her, some restless and carnivorous demon. The instant her gaze settles on me, a smile crosses those perfect, kissable lips.
My heart punches through my chest, and any reticence I had about coming vanishes like so much city steam.
I’d do anything for this woman. Crawl across hot coal. Lick the snow from her boots. Let Santa sit onmylap?—
“You came,” she says.
“You’re surprised.”
“Well, yeah. It’s kind of a crazy ask.”
“I honor my commitments. Even the crazy ones.”
She side-eyes me. “Especially the crazy ones?”
“Perhaps.”
“Thank you,” she says.
She sounds so genuine, so truly relieved that she doesn’t have to go through this night alone, that I want to tell her that I would’ve done anything to be here, but instead what comes out is a terse: “Don’t mention it.”
Long ago, I enclosed my emotions inside a block of ice in my chest, and it’s going to take more than her sweet eyes to thaw it.
“Are you going to tell me I look good?”
“Did you skin a Muppet to get that jacket?”
“Oscar the Grouch is chained to my radiator as we speak.”
“Kinky.”
