LITMIR.BIZ

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back where?”

      He was quick, I’d give him that. I just made a face. I really wanted to possess this guy. I’d felt like crap without him all day. Jason Macinlay, savior of the world. Well, of my world at least. I was glad he’d come along last night, and taken me home, like a stray. I was a stray.

      “There’s that closed lip look again. I get it, you don’t want to say. But you can’t pretend what happened didn’t happen, and talking about stuff is better than holding it in.”

      I shook my head. I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to think about it ever again.

      He shrugged.

      We walked in silence for a bit. He had his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Mine kept a hold of his arm. I felt like we were perfectly paired; he was only a little taller than me.

      I’d never walked anywhere with Declan, in all the time I’d been with him.

      When we reached the mall, Jason Macinlay held doors for me, and then watched quietly as I picked what I liked, encouraging me not to fret over the money. I flashed the skimpy satin underwear I picked at him to wind him up, but he didn’t seem the sort of person who could be wound, he was so easygoing.

      I chose the cheap stuff though and only what I needed. A black skirt and white shirt, in the hope I’d get some work somewhere. A pair of black cotton jeans, two long sleeved tops, a white blouse, one jumper, and he insisted I bought a coat, a scarf, hat and gloves. I hadn’t wanted them; I liked wearing his, it made me feel wrapped up in him.

      We stopped at a pizza place on the way back, piling my bags into the spare chairs and then shared one large thin-crust Hawaiian. We laughed. He told me more about his home town, and what the magazine he worked for did, how his parents helped him get his apartment here, and what Lindy was like, when I asked.

      I had an ulterior motive. I watched the look in his eyes when he spoke about her, trying to spot love. I saw affection, and thought, and a little indecision, but, love, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t doubt he was close to her, or that he cared for her. Caring seemed ingrained in him. I did doubt that she was right for him. I had an itch to meet Lindy.

      When we got back to his apartment, he put coffee on and then said he needed to call Lindy, and asked me to forgive him if he went outside.

      I did forgive him, I understood––he was nice. He’d been giving me his attention for a couple of hours and now he needed to straighten things out with his girl.

      I began pouring the coffee, while he disappeared.

      “Hey, Lindy.” I called her on my cell when I got back down to the street, and then walked toward Manhattan Bridge.

      “Hi. You just got back?”

      “Yeah, she got some clothes and I took her for a pizza.“

      “Then you’re a fool––”

      “I’m not a fool. She needs someone to help her out.”

      “So she’s tagged on to you––the gullible guy from Oregon.”

      Rachel had asked me about work, Lindy never asked. “Look Lindy, that’s enough, it’s awkward when you run her down. She bought some clothes so she can look for a job. She’s not taking me for a ride. She’s just hit a tough time. So, shut up, don’t keep condemning her.”

      She was silent for a bit, then she said, “You’ve never told me to ‘shut up’ before.”

      Maybe I should have done––it worked. “Don’t take it personally. I’ve just got too much stuff going on here. I don’t need you dragging me down.”

      “Dragging you down?” She sounded hurt, like she hadn’t known that’s what she did.

      “That came out wrong. Just tell me what you’ve been up to today. Did you see anyone at work?” She worked in Dad’s store, the business he had built up for me to take over and run. The place where I was supposed to settle down and work. I’d never been enthused about selling hardware. But the store was like a second home to me. I’d grown up running around it.

      “Billy came in.” That sounded like she wanted me to wish I’d been there. “He asked how you were doing.” Billy had been my best friend since school. We’d gone to college together, too, all of us.

      “And you said…”

      “You were doing okay. He asked me to say, hi, to you. I said I was going to visit you soon. He said maybe he’d come and see you, too, sometime. If that’s okay?”

      “It’s okay. Get him to call me.” I could have suggested he travel with her, but I knew she wouldn’t welcome my attention being distracted by Billy when she was here. She’d always wanted all or nothing. No wonder she hated me leaving her behind. But she was the one who’d chosen not to come. She’d said she’d follow, once I was sure about staying in New York. Every day I doubted more and more, she ever would.

      “Yeah.” She drifted into silence again.

      I climbed the steps which led from the street up to the opening on to the footpath across Manhattan Bridge, and thought of Rachel standing there last night. Where the hell had she come from? Why had she wanted to jump?

      “Jason? You’ve changed, you know that.” It was half statement, half accusation. But she was right, I had. Leaving her behind was giving me the chance to find out who I was––not who Lindy and Jason were. Since school I’d done nearly everything because she wished me too. I’d picked my college because it was where she wanted us to go. I bought clothes because she liked them. We ate what she wanted. We did the stuff she wanted. Now I couldn’t even remember what I did or didn’t like.

      You pick, Rachel had said in the pizza place, before going off to the restroom. Like it didn’t even matter if I picked what she hated.

      “Possibly, it’s different living here.”

      “But you don’t have to live there.”

      “No, but I want to.” I wasn’t even sure I did want to anymore though.

      “And what are you going to do about this girl?”

      I sighed. “I’m going to let her get back on her feet and then she’ll find somewhere to live, and I’ll know she won’t be tempted to jump off a bridge again. She was standing out here, in twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit last night, Lind, in a t-shirt, and she didn’t even notice the cold.”

      “Just be careful, Jason, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

      Ah, Lindy did still care, then, in some way. “I’ll take care. You don’t need to worry about me.”

      “Well I do. I worry a lot. I wish you were home.”

      I rested my hand on the cold stone and looked along the bridge and then down to the black shifting water. I didn’t know what to say to that, I didn’t wish I was home. But I wasn’t sure what I did wish right now. “I love you.” The words slipped from my mouth, out of habit, yet there was no feeling of love in my chest anymore. I wasn’t even sure there ever had been.

      “I love you too. I can’t wait to see you.” She could wait. She didn’t even want to come here for Christmas. We’d had a long argument about that too. She’d wanted me to go back there. I’d refused.

      “I’ll call you tomorrow evening, alright?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Say, hi, to Dad in the morning.”

      “Yeah.”

      “Night.”

      “Night.”

      ~

      “Everything fine in paradise?” Rachel mocked when I walked in, her hesitant smiles of earlier now transformed into a wide teasing grin, after a couple of hours shopping. I smiled.

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