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I set it down on the top stair and filled my paper cup. “Relax. It’s only thirty.”
He choked on something that wasn’t really a laugh. “Christ. What the hell happened to you?”
I scrubbed my free hand over my face and raised my cup to my lips with my other hand. “It’s a long story, Carl. You don’t want to hear it.”
“I actually do.”
I had my head tipped back, my eyes on the sky, pouring the coffee down my throat, but I sensed that he was staring at me with fascination.
“Listen man, I know I say this a lot but youactuallylook like shit right now.”
“That’s how I feel, Carl.” I swallowed and felt it in my scalded throat. “Let’s talk about you.”
“Nah, man. This thing is supposed to go both ways, right? You’re supposed tomentorme and tell me how to grow up to be an outstanding citizen.”
“Anupstandingcitizen. And what’s your point?”
“My point is that you can’t just show me your baller car and flash your Platinum card. You’ve got to tell me the ways you’ve fucked up, too, or this situation is just some aspirational bullshit.”
I was surprised that Carl used the word aspirational. I was impressed he was making this argument at all. Again, I got that glimpse of him in a courtroom. “What makes you thinkI’vefucked up?” I muttered, squeezing the flimsy cup in my hand.
“My two fucking eyes, okay?” Carl depressed the button on the carafe and filled his own cup. “Now let’s hear it. Tell me a bedtime story, old man. Then maybe I’ll show you my progress report and let you tuck me into a new pair of shoes.”
I lowered my head and stared at the weeds pushing through the cracked cement. It was almost November and a cold snap had it feeling like the holidays. Didn’t these scrubby plants know when to give up and die?
It appeared they didn’t, and Carl wasn’t giving up either. I gave in and told him the basic outline of what had happened in New York. It didn’t feel good–every word felt like someone was pulling it out of my mouth with pliers. Uprooting each one. I kept going though, because future lawyer Carl was right. He should know about how I’d fucked up. How I nearly lost everything.
How maybe I still had.
At the end of it, I expected a loud guffaw. Some disbelieving scoffing. You didwhat?Over apu–I mean agirl?Man, you’re even stupider than I thought. I’m gonna call up this program and ask for a new mentor. One who isn’t dumb as a brick fucking wall.
I got what I expected. Carl had to walk away for a few minutes. I watched him as he walked all the way to the end of the sidewalk and then came back, his head shaking furiously like one of those doggy dashboard ornaments.
But after he was done doing that, he sat back down and said, “So what are you going to do now?”
I crumpled my cup completely. “I’m going to go back to work.”
Carl’s eyes flickered and he waited a beat, like he thought I wasn’t done. “And?” he demanded.
“And launch a counter offensive to make sure everyone has seen the news–that I’m not the asshole in this story.” I was already strategizing that with Maureen. I thought that with Blake’s statement about reflecting on his actions, it stood a good chance of repairing my reputation.
“What about the bit–girl?”
As always, at the thought of Layla, my heart wrung painfully. “The girl is gone, Carl. That’s how it is sometimes.” I heard the hard, bleak shell coating each word. “She’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
Carl regarded me with the most disdain he had ever managed to fit on his narrow, angular face. It filled his eyes, changed the shape of his forehead, hung off the curve of his sneer. “Man, I was kidding before, but now I’m serious. I don’t want your quitter ass as my mentor.”
I sneered back at him, but it dropped off my face when he began unlacing his shoes. The ones I’d bought him for his first report card on which he got AB honor roll for the first time in his life. He’d kept them pristinely white even though they were always on his feet, every time I saw him. Even now, as he yanked them off his feet, he took a moment to buff out a smudge on the toe.
“Here,” he said roughly, slapping them down on the step beside me and half turning his body away, like he couldn’t bear to look at them. “Now take your giant ass box of coffee and get gone.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, boxing my temples between my palms and squeezing. “Are you serious?”
“I’m dead ass serious. I agreed to this program because I need someone to teach me how to be aman. Not a little bitch.”
Despite the rough tone, it was the most vulnerable I’d ever heard Carl. Any other time I asked him why he was in this program, he made a joke about the free shit or how he’d always wanted a clown at his birthday party. Lucky him, he got me every Saturday. He wasn’t joking with me now though. He looked pathetic and defiant and somehow badass climbing the rotting wooden steps in his white socks.
“Jesus, Carl. Put your fucking shoes back on. If it’s so important to you, I’ll call her.”
