by Anna Martin
The best part about it, though, was that I’d never once gone there with Oliver. It had been around for years, but Meg had taken me there while I was in the middle of the splitting-up process and in dire need of a break.
I pushed open the red door, which jingled cheerfully from the bell attached to it, and headed straight for the counter to see what food was left. Thinking back, I wasn’t quite sure when I’d eaten last—probably the slice of rye toast I’d had for breakfast while attempting to get Harrison to eat his own.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I said, leaning over the counter to give Naema a kiss on the cheek. “How are you?”
“Good,” she said, smiling, and she wiped her hands on the red apron she had tied around her waist. Naema was an artist. A great one. “You look well, Ellis.”
“Thanks,” I said, flashing her a grin. “Have you got any food? I think my stomach is trying to eat itself.”
She laughed and shook her head. “You’re a nightmare. You know evening service doesn’t start until seven.”
I pouted and gave her a wounded-puppy look. “Please?”
She resisted for a few moments, then sighed and reached under the counter to the fridge and pulled out a couple of sandwiches.
“Okay, we’ve got brie and grape, chili avocado, and a vegan carrot and hummus wrap.”
“Sounds good,” I said, pulling out my wallet. “And a beer, please.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
I watched the corners of her mouth twitch as she tried to figure out if I was serious or not. Then she shook her head again and got my regular beer from the fridge.
“For you, if you show me a picture of that adorable kid of yours, eight bucks,” she said.
“You’re an angel, Nae,” I said. I handed her a ten as I pulled my phone out to find the album of photos I kept of my son.
She cooed at the phone as she flipped through the pictures, and I waved away the change, unwrapping the first of the sandwiches while I waited to get my phone back.
“You should bring him in again sometime soon,” she said when she finally passed it back. I swallowed around the weird sandwich flavor and nodded.
“I will,” I promised. “We’ll try and come by for breakfast one day.”
“Sure. That would be good.” She frowned at me. “Are you sure you’re eating properly, El? You’ve lost a lot of weight.”
I shook my head. “Not weight, I’ve lost bulk,” I said regretfully. “I don’t get the chance to work out nearly as much as I used to.”
The ’roid-pumped gym bunny wasn’t quite my style, but my lifestyle BC—before children—contained more protein shakes than formula. My diet had gone to hell in the past few months as well. Being the only parent, cooking for myself was at the bottom of my list of priorities. I still managed to work out at home, but my workout routine had slowly dissolved away.
Nae gave me a small smile. “I finish at seven. I’ve got my stuff out back ready to get changed. Then I’m coming out with you.”
“Awesome.”
The others still hadn’t arrived, so I found a big table at the back of the cafe with my one and a half remaining sandwiches and opened up a stupid game to play on my phone while I passed the time. There was a bookcase in the corner of the room with a variety of different paperbacks, and I looked longingly toward them, then went back to my phone. If I picked up a book, I was likely to get absorbed in it and refuse to talk to the others once they arrived.
Luckily it was only a few minutes before the bell over the door chimed again and a whole bunch of my favorite people walked in. I waved at Meg, who flipped me a finger, then burst into a big grin.
Suddenly I was looking forward to what the night might bring.
It was like being transported back in time by ten years, when we’d all been students. Sure, there were some people who’d joined our little posse since then, but the core of the group was still the same.
Me, Meg, Naema, Lupe and Azriel, Ben, and Levon. We’d lost Oliver, and good fucking riddance. I didn’t even notice he was missing anymore.
Although my mind regularly wandered back to wonder how Harrison was doing, I managed to let go, trust my mother, and enjoy myself for the first time since he’d been born.
As soon as everyone arrived, we ordered enough tapas to feed a small army, and they assured me that the cafe’s strictly vegetarian/vegan cuisine during the day didn’t apply at night. A man could not live on hummus alone.
The second beer helped me to relax properly, and I leaned back in my seat, one arm slung around Nae’s shoulders, occasionally whispering dirty stuff into her ear to make her laugh. The tinkling of the door’s bell had blended into the background, among the smells from the kitchen and the bass of the music and the hazy warmth, but when a new guy walked over to the table and greeted Meg with a kiss on the cheek, I sat up and paid attention.
Someone shifted up to make room for him as he pulled a brightly colored necklace from his pocket and tied it around Meg’s neck with fingers blackened by ink or charcoal. The necklace was insanely beautiful and just the sort of thing she liked. For some strange reason I felt a spike of jealousy for this guy who knew my best friend so well.
“Who’s that?” I asked, leaning over to whisper in to Naema’s ear again.
She gave me a knowing look. “Zane.”
Ah, the infamous Zane.
Before I got a chance to stop her, she waved over the table to him, and I felt a flush of embarrassment rise in my cheeks.
“Zane,” she called. “This is Ellis, who I was telling you about.”
“Ah, the infamous Ellis,” he drawled. I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said and leaned over the table to shake his hand. The warm smile he offered me said that he was joking, and I was glad. I liked his smile.
I settled back into my chair, prepared to ignore him now that I’d been polite. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I settled back to watch him.
For a guy, he was simply beautiful. There were few men in the world whom that term applied to, but Zane was definitely one of them. I couldn’t guess at his heritage but he definitely wasn’t a fellow Irishman. No… family from somewhere else had given him the warm skin tone and inky black hair that fell in disorganized waves over his face.
His eyes were big, endlessly brown and expressive, framed with long lashes. He had a nose ring, rooster feathers in his ears, several necklaces with odd pendants, and cords around his wrist.
Nae looked at me and grinned. “Bar?” she asked. I nodded.
We picked our way around the room, which was now packed with people sitting at low tables on stools and beanbags, and I leaned against the bar with a groan, rubbing my hands over my face.
“You’re in love,” she said matter-of-factly.
I shook my head. “Where the fuck did he come from?”
“Egypt, apparently, by way of Brooklyn.”
“I didn’t mean that.” But it was useful information, nonetheless. “I meant, where did you find him?”
Nae shrugged. “An art class. I think he was in a group with Lupe, and she brought him out one night.”
“Two beers, please,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.
“You should talk to him,” she insisted as I waited to be served. I tried to shrug it off, but Nae was nothing if not persistent. “Seriously. He’s a really nice guy.”
“I’ve already done the really nice guy thing,” I told her. “And look how that worked out.”
She threw her hands up in frustration. “You can’t remain a hermit for the rest of your life, Ellis,” she said. “Sooner or later you have to wake up and rejoin the world. Things aren’t going to wait for you to get your shit together.”
“I need time,” I started, but I stopped when she glared at me. “I need time,” I pressed on, regardless. “It’s not easy. I’m trying to balance a business and a child and getting used to being divorced. It’s not exactly a good time
to be me.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” she snapped. “Get over yourself. Go talk to him.”
I would have been annoyed if it was anyone other than Naema calling me out. She’d been my brother’s friend first—they’d been in the same classes in high school—so I’d known her for what seemed like forever. Both bottles of beer were pushed over to me, and she pulled a bill out of her bra.
“Take him a drink,” she said. “I’ll get my own.”
“Nae—” I started, but then I thought better of it. Instead of protesting, I kissed her cheek and took the two beers back to the table.
There was a space next to Zane now. I wasn’t sure who had left, but I didn’t question it and just sat down, pushing the second bottle toward him.
“Naema didn’t want it,” I said.
“Thanks, man,” he said, tipping his existing bottle up to his lips and draining the remaining liquid. I tried not to stare at the muscles in his neck.
“So, Nae said you’re an artist?” I asked, attempting conversation.
“Mm,” he hummed. “I’m still trying to decide on a medium, but yeah.”
“That’s cool,” I said, rolling the bottle of beer between my palms. “I’ve got a graphic design business. I know it’s not the same….”
“No, that’s great,” Zane said with enthusiasm. “It’s not often you can turn an artistic career into a viable business.”
“Well, I’m trying,” I said with a laugh.
Up close he was even more beautiful than I’d first thought. I wanted to pull his hands into mine to explore his knuckles and suck on his earlobes and listen to that husky voice read… anything, really. Plato. Shakespeare. Tolstoy. Twilight. It didn’t matter.
“You’ve got a kid, right?” Zane asked after a moment.
“Yeah. Harrison.”
“I’ve heard a lot about him,” he said with a little smile.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed the button to make the background image pop up—it was a more recent shot of Harrison with his hair stuck up, laughing at something or other, his two tiny bottom front teeth on clear display.
“He looks like you.”
“You think? I don’t know,” I said, putting my phone back. Zane wasn’t like the girls. He didn’t want to spend ages flicking through the hundreds of images I kept stored. “Sometimes I think he does….”
“For sure. He’s obviously got your coloring.”
I shrugged. “When we were picking a surrogate, it was quite easy to find someone who was physically similar to both me and my partner at the time. I suppose that makes it easier to see me reflected in him.”
He didn’t press, and I wondered how much Meg and Nae had already told him about Oliver and the divorce. It wasn’t exactly a secret, but it felt weird to think they had been discussing me when I was out of the loop.
By the time we reached the hour I’d decided, before leaving the house, that I was going to be back at my mom’s, sleeping next to Harrison’s crib, Zane and I had moved round the table to the booth and were taking up most of the back wall. His legs were draped over my lap as he lay back on the seat, and my fingers played absently with the frayed rip in the knee of his jeans.
We were both buzzed and on our way to getting drunk.
“I like telling people I’m African-American and watching their faces as they try to get it,” he said.
I laughed. “Really?”
“Yeah. You’d be amazed how many people don’t know where Egypt is.”
“Do you go back at all?” I asked. “It’s one of those places I’ve always wanted to go to.”
“I’ve been,” he said. “But it’s not like we have family there. My mom cut most ties with her parents when she married my dad and moved here, and we don’t really know anyone in my dad’s family. When I went there with my brother Cass, it was as a tourist.”
“A stranger in your own country?”
“No,” Zane said. “This is my country. I’m American. I was born here. I have no ties to Egypt.”
Somehow my fingers missed the end of a thread, and I stroked the bare skin of his knee instead. Zane shivered.
“Do you smoke?” he asked, sitting up abruptly.
“No.”
“Oh. Well, I’m going outside. Won’t be a minute.”
“Do you want company?”
He nodded, his expression still serious. “Sure.”
The night was cooler than I’d thought, and I wrapped my arms around myself as Zane pulled a tin of tobacco out of one of his pockets and rolled a cigarette. It seemed a lot quieter out here too, compared to the noise spilling out of the cafe.
“Are you going on to a club later?” Zane asked.
I shook my head. “Nah. Even if I don’t go back to my mom’s tonight, I’ll still have to go get Harrison in the morning. I don’t want to roll into bed at four, then get called at six to pick him up.”
Zane laughed. “Shit, man. I don’t think I’d cope that well with the early mornings.”
“I don’t,” I said, grinning. “At all. So, no. I’ll probably head out in a bit.”
I couldn’t tell from his expression what his reaction to that was. I hoped it was disappointment dancing behind his eyes, but I was probably projecting.
Leaning back against the wall, I didn’t feel the need to fill the night with any mindless conversation. Zane didn’t either, and it was a comfortable silence, not awkward at all. When Meg stumbled out the door, she looked between us with an increasingly lascivious grin, and I shook my head at her.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt…” she said.
“You’re not,” Zane said quickly. “Do you want one?”
“It’s fine. I’ve got my own.”
He still held out the lighter for her, and Meg inhaled deeply from the cigarette, then blew the smoke out.
“So, tonight wasn’t a total waste, then, El?” she asked.
I glared at her. “No, I suppose not.”
“Does this mean your long run of self-induced social hermitry is finally coming to an end?”
“Fuck off,” I told her without venom. Zane laughed.
When he stubbed his cigarette out against the red brick of the wall, I turned to go back inside with him and opened the door to let him through. If he was surprised by this, he didn’t say anything. I liked being chivalrous.
We both had beers to finish, and I tried to interact more with the rest of the group instead of making big moon eyes at Zane. Lupe was already on the tequila, insisting on buying a drunk dozen and making us toast all sorts of deities before knocking back the bitter liquor.
I still ended up next to Zane, whether by my design, his, or someone else’s, I wasn’t sure. He was warm and smelled a little spicy and didn’t mind when I put my hand on his knee under the table. Instead of licking the salt from the back of my hand, I wanted to pour it on his neck and lick that instead.
When that thought rolled through my head, I decided I was drunk and it was time to leave.
Before I could actually escape, Meg pulled me into a slow dance in the middle of the room, her head resting on my chest rather than my shoulder. Not because she was short, but because I was a full head and shoulders taller.
“He’s only twenty-two, you know,” she said, putting her chin on my chest so she could look up at me.
“Fuck,” I said succinctly and wound a lock of her hair around my finger, tugging it at the roots.
“Yeah. But he’s gorgeous, right?”
“Beautiful,” I murmured without thinking, correcting her.
“Yeah. Beautiful. Shame he’s gay, otherwise I would have been right in there. Are you going to take him home?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you should.”
I nodded and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Happy birthday, darling.”
Zane caught my eye as I went to leave. I nodded toward the door, and he held my eyes for a long moment, then slid out of the booth.
K
nowing that if people saw us leaving together they would jump to all sorts of conclusions, I waited outside for him to join me.
“Can I walk you home?” I asked as the bell jingled and the door shut behind him.
He nodded and smiled. “Sure.”
For some reason we both started walking in the same direction, without any discussion about where we lived. My fingers twitched toward his hand, and I forced myself to shove them in my pocket, just in case I did something stupid like try to hold it.
“I, uh, live just off Lorimer,” he said as we walked up Union Street.
“Really? I’m just up the street from you, then.”
He glanced up at me and smiled.
“Nae mentioned that you’re a student,” I said.
“Yeah. Well, part time. I need to work to be able to afford rent around here.”
“Sure. What do you do?”
“I work with kids,” he said. “It’s an art program, mostly for kids with physical or learning disabilities or who have a difficult home life. We try to teach them different ways of expressing themselves creatively.”
My heart stuttered in my chest. He was gorgeous, artistic, and he worked with kids? I was done. Gone. Drunk.
“That sounds really awesome,” I said gently.
He smiled. “Thanks. I think so. I’m part of an art program. I’m in my final year, actually.”
“What school?”
He gave me a shy smile. “The School of Visual Arts.”
“Wow,” I said softly. “SVA is really hard to get into.”
I wanted to slap myself. He knew that; he didn’t need me to tell him. Zane just nodded, possibly unwilling to talk about his work. He certainly wasn’t forthcoming with details about his studies.
“What do you want to do when you graduate?” I asked, hoping to move the conversation along. It was a fairly short walk—I wanted to make the most of it.
“Make a living?” he said with a laugh. “That’s my first priority. We’ll see, though. I’ll figure something out, I’m sure.”
Zane stopped suddenly, and I almost walked right into him. “This is me,” he said, looking up at an apartment building.
“Oh.” I chewed on my lip for a moment, wondering exactly how far I was allowed to take this. “It was really good to meet you.”
