I waved as I always did to mess with her. I knew she wasn’t going to wave back, and I knew what was coming.

In her strong Jamaican accent that had become like music to my ears, she said, “Go fuck yourself!”

Right on cue.

I smiled. “Fuck you too, Mrs. Ballsworthy.” I meant it in the nicest of ways, and that exchange with my neighbor was always oddly comforting.

Walking up the stairs to my apartment, I shook my head in laughter and repeated to myself, “Fuck you, too.”

Yup. I was home.

CHAPTER 3

Past

Desiree brushed her ass up against me and curled into my pillow. She wanted to cuddle. That meant I needed to get her out of my room as fast as possible.

I immediately got up and disposed of the condom before throwing some pants on. Turning on some music to drown out the guilt in my head, I grabbed a cigarette out of my nightstand and walked over to the window to light it, blowing the smoke outside. Plumes of smoke mixed with my visible breath in the cold air.

I always felt like shit after this, namely fucking someone I didn’t care about.

“Jakey, you want to come down to the restaurant for some lunch?”

I turned around to a glimpse of Desiree’s bare ass as she rolled off my bed. When she bent down to put on her thong, my eyes caught sight of the purple rose tattoo on her ankle.

Her father owned Eleni’s, the Greek restaurant underneath our apartment. I’d gone in there countless times over the past few months, and Desiree always made sure she attended to my small table in the corner. We flirted heavily for a long time, but I resisted making any moves because she gave off a vibe that she was the type of girl who would want more than I could give her (or at least the type that would pretend she didn’t and then change her tune).

One afternoon about a week ago, she came right out and told me how attracted to me she was and asked if she could come upstairs with me. She was a beautiful girl with long, dark hair and big brown eyes, and she seemed sweet enough. I hadn’t been with anyone sexually in a while, so it was hard to resist a direct offer.

When she started practically attacking me before we even got to my bedroom, I came right out and told her that I couldn’t do anything with her if she expected more from me. She assured me that at twenty-one, she felt she was too young for a relationship and just wanted to have some fun. So, I relented.

Twice.

This was our second afternoon rendezvous.

She came over to the window and waved a hand in front of my face. “Earth to Jake.”

I looked at her without saying anything and threw my cigarette butt out.

“What’s that?” I asked, still lost in my own head.

She wrapped her arms around my torso, and my body stiffened.

“I love your body, Jake. Seriously, it’s like a work of art.”

I didn’t respond, just continued looking at the traffic below. It might have been strange, but I didn’t like it when she—or any woman for that matter—touched me outside of sex.

“Did you want to come downstairs for lunch? Are you feeling okay?”

Kind of dead inside, actually. Thanks for asking.

What the hell. I was hungry.

“Yeah. Sure. Let’s go downstairs.” I put on a shirt and grabbed my keys.

On the way out, I noticed a pink scarf on the floor in the living room that hadn’t been there on the way in. It wasn’t Desiree’s, and my roommate Tarah was at work. Someone else had been in the apartment. Then, it dawned on me that we were supposed to be getting a new roommate today, some chick named Nina from upstate New York. Picking up the scarf, I threw it on the couch and followed Desiree out the door.

***

I’d gone back into work for the rest of the afternoon after lunch. The shit hit the fan when a major flaw was discovered in one of my designs. The rest of the day was spent trying to save my ass. To make matters worse, Ivy had called me in the middle of it to complain that I hadn’t gone to see her the previous weekend when, of course, I’d spent the entire two days with her. My head was spinning.

On the way home, I stopped at the market on the corner and picked out two bunches of bananas. I fucking loved bananas. They were my comfort food. They had to be just right though: yellow with a greenish tip. That meant they’d be sweet, creamy and on the firmer side. An old lady was giving me a dirty look while I made my selection. From her expression, you’d think I was fondling my junk instead of inspecting the fruit. I decided to mess with her, so I took one of the bananas to my mouth, kissed it and winked at her. She clutched her purse, scowled and walked away. That had been the highlight of my day.

When I got to the apartment, I was relieved to find that my roommates weren’t home. Given the day I’d had, talking to people was the last thing I felt like doing. I lived with a guy named Ryan and a girl named Tarah. Ryan interned for the district attorney’s office and Tarah was a hairdresser for a high-end salon in Manhattan. They were nice enough, but we didn’t exactly socialize together. The fact that I took off for Boston every weekend didn’t make it any easier to get to know them better. I was pretty sure the two of them were hooking up, actually. I’d be up sketching late at night and would hear him leave his room to go into hers, but I never asked them about it. If I didn’t want people getting into my business, I’d stay out of theirs.

I arranged the bananas in the fruit hammock I’d bought a while back then ripped one off the bunch before heading to my room.

Needing to blow off steam, I took out my sketchpad and started drawing yet another variation of my father on his motorcycle. Whenever I felt down, I liked to draw my dad. It made me feel closer to him. My father died in a motorcycle crash when I was five. I’d probably completed hundreds of images of him over the years: riding his motorcycle into the clouds, riding into the sunset. Drawing was my outlet, where darkness spun creativity. It was both a therapy and an expression of sadness at the same time.