AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She hesitated, then nodded.
The Jag slowed and pulled to a stop next to a brick building on 116th Street in Harlem.
“This is me,” she said.
“I’ll wait,” he said. “Then I’ll take you to your sister’s.”
She blinked. “That’s… oh, no. That’s okay. I can take the subway. It’s not far.”
“Then it won’t take me long to drop you there.” Their conversation had been simple, and yet he found that he didn’t want it to end.
She glanced at the building, then back at him. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t say anything unless I’m sure, Ruby.” He liked the feel of her name in his mouth, wanted to keep saying it, wanted to keep looking into her deep-sea eyes.
She hesitated. “Okay. Why don’t you come up while I get my daughter’s stuff together?”
He nodded, feeling like he’d won the lottery, then slid from the back seat of the car and held the door while she did the same.
He didn’t have to say anything to Max. Where Roman went, Max went. Max would be waiting when they returned to the car.
The building was old, like most of the buildings in Harlem, and he followed her up a narrow staircase to the second floor. She stopped at a door at the end of the hall, and he waited while she dug in her bag for a key.
“It’s not much,” she said, stepping inside and waiting for him to follow. “But it’s home for us.”
She shut and locked the door behind him, then dropped her bag on a table near the door before moving into a small living room adjoining an even smaller kitchen.
“Can I get you anything while you wait?” she asked. “I have water, seltzer, and juice boxes.”
He smiled. “No, thank you, although the juice box is tempting.”
She hurried around the living room, removing a small blanket and stuffed animal from the couch, picking up a cup that had been left on the coffee table. “I’m sorry it’s such a mess. Mornings before school and work are always a bit hectic.”
“Please don’t apologize.” He took in the apartment. The sofa looked perfect for napping, a blanket laid across the back. It sat on a patterned rug, and plants hung from the ceilings and rested on shelves near the windows. “I like it. It looks… lived in.”
She laughed. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
He thought of his parents’ formal traditionally furnished house in Brighton Beach, his own nearly untouched loft in Brooklyn, expertly designed and immaculately furnished despite the fact thathomewasn’t a word that came to mind when Roman thought of its large rooms and big windows. “It is.”
“Feel free to sit,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
She disappeared into one of the two adjoining bedrooms, and his gaze was drawn to a series of canvases leaning against the old bricked-up fireplace. They weren’t paintings exactly, more like collages, a mixture of paint and images that seemed to be cut from books and magazines.
He combed the images for clues. At a glance, they looked chaotic, but the more he looked at them, the more he started to understand: one canvas with streaks of red and orange, photographs of people laughing and smiling, the wordsI LOVE YOUscreaming at him in newsprint, another washed in gold, images of trees and flowers and children, the wordsstop itin lowercase letters, hidden in a corner.
He moved on, feeling like he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to see, and found himself staring at a shelf lined with books and picture frames, photographs of Ruby and a dark-haired girl with a wide smile and Ruby’s mischievous eyes. There they were on the ferris wheel at Coney Island, laying on the grass in the park, eating hot dogs next to a street cart.
And then, a picture of Ruby and her daughter with the cop from the alley. He had his arm around them both, one word shouting from his eyes:mine.
The fuck you say, Roman thought, then tried to shake the words from his mind.
“I keep them for Olivia,” Ruby said behind him.
Roman turned to look at her. “Excuse me?”
“The pictures of my ex. I keep them for my daughter.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” he said.
