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“Um, okay,” I said. “I’ll call Sara and see if she can watch Macy. I can’t stay out late, though.”
“Sure,” said Alex. “Great. Let me, uh. Let me know.”
He vanished up the stairs.
***
“It’s no big deal,” I said to myself. “No big deal at all. He just wants to go out as friends. It’s not a date. Not a date. You hear me, girl?” It’s not a date.
“You talking to yourself in the mirror?” said Sara. But as I fussed with my hair in the mirror, and adjusted the straps of my dress, I realized that while Alex Lowe was not taking me on a date, I certainly wasn’t acting like it.
“Crap,” I said. “I think this thing is from my pre-baby years. It’s definitely a size too small.”
“Baby,” said Sara, in the bathroom doorway. “Get out of here! You’re gonna be late!”
“Okay,” I said.
“Besides, you look beautiful! He’s gonna besoimpressed! And if he isn’t, I’m gonna knock his block off.”
“Itoldyou,” I said, for the thousandth time. “We’re just going as friends.”
But Sara wasn’t having any of it. “Honey,” she told me. “When I go see my friends, I don’t spend an hour getting ready.”
“Well, wearefriends, but still. Is Macy going to be okay?”
“She’s fine, sweetheart.”
After finishing my shift, I’d run home to pick up Macy and give her a snack. Then I’d got dressed and sent her over to Sara’s. I’m not sure I could have dragged myself away from her, except for the fact that she loved it there. Sara’s spicy home cooking and the music she played in her apartment. And Raul, her kid, who was Macy’s best friend and classmate. They loved doing their homework together and drawing on anything and everything with colorful crayons.
“GO!” Sara said, shooing me out of the door of her apartment.
She shut the door, and I sighed.
Alex had sent a car to pick me up, of course. But I was surprised when I got into the back of the silver Bentley that had been waiting for me downstairs for the last ten minutes. Because Alex wasn’t there.
“Where’s Alex?” I said.
“Mr. Lowe asked me to pick you up and take you to Ferry Point. That okay, ma’am?”
Ferry Point? That was the park at the tip of the South Bronx, just over the bridge from Queens. It was a weird place to meet. South Bronx wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I decided to say yes to Alex’s invitation.
“All right.” I shrugged.
We drove over the bridge and past the park, to my surprise. There, we turned off to the right and drove. I couldn’t imagine where we were going, until we got to the marina. We turned off and drove through a gate that automatically locked behind us.
I got out. It was evening, and the sun was a burnished bronze over the water.
“He’s just over there, ma’am,” said the driver. “You have a good night now.”
“Thanks,” I said, and tottered over in my best pair of heels. I prayed Alex hadn’t decided to put me on a sailboat. I wasn’t going to fare well in my shoes.
But when I turned the corner, I gasped.
I could see Alex—the dark shape of his shoulders, in a dark suit. He was standing, looking out over the sea.
And right behind him, was a helicopter.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Is that…”
