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He took my hand and helped me to the curb. David nodded, but stared fixedly at the sidewalk. After he drove away, I turned to Brandon.
“You’rethe incorrigible one, you know that?”
Brandon wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me tightly against him, forcing me to stand on my toes.
“You just make me do things I wouldn’t normally ever do,” he said as he leaned in for another kiss. “Like scandalizing my driver.”
A brief peck turned into another several minutes of mingling lips and tongues before we broke apart, breathing heavily.
“Come on, Red,” Brandon said, yanking me up the steps. “Let’s go inside where I can make you do some things too.”
Thirty
Iwas late.
It had been a long week of studying and midterms. After completing my hours at the clinic, I had gone for a swim and ended up falling asleep after my shower when I got home, a towel still wrapped around my wet hair.
Brandon had tickets for a play to celebrate the end of exams and the fact that he could see me for more than a few hours again. Exams had forced me to cut short several dates and cancel our last weekend completely. If his eager texts were any indication, he wasveryready to have me to himself again.
We were supposed to meet at the theater at six forty-five, but I’d woken up at five after six. In record time, I had thrown on one of my many black dresses and a pair of ballet flats, pinned my towel-twisted hair up as best as I could manage and dashed out the door to catch the train downtown.
I was just emerging from the Downtown Crossing station with ten minutes left to get to the theater when my phone rang angrily in my purse. Thinking it was Brandon calling to see where I was, I pulled it out.
“I’m almost there, I promise,” I said as I skipped over the cracked downtown sidewalks.
“Skylar? Skylar, are you there?”
Bubbe always had a tendency to scream into her phone, convinced that no one could hear her through the tiny microphone. This time, however, her voice was laced with frenzy.
“I’m here, Bubbe. What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
A car horn blared as I jaywalked across Winter Street. The theater was still three blocks away; I couldn’t be bothered to obey traffic laws if I was going to make it before the curtain rose.
“What’s that?” I asked again as I weaved around other pedestrians and turned toward the theater. I hadn’t been able to hear her over the traffic.
Just over a block away, Brandon’s blond waves were bright like a beacon among a sea of gray and black overcoats. I waved my hand high, but I was too short for him to spot from this far.
“It’s your father,” Bubbe repeated. “He’s in the hospital.”
The words rang out cold and clear, causing me to stumble. My pace kept me moving forward, but I slowed so I could focus.
“What? Why? What happened?”
“Something happened at the track. It’s that woman he’s been seeing. She’s been taking him there again, I think. I don’t exactly know what happened, honey, but he came home the other night with a black eye, you see—”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” I snapped uncharacteristically at my grandmother. It had been nearly two months since I’d last been to Brooklyn, but Bubbe hadn’t mentioned anything like this in the several times we’d talked. There had been no more mention of Katie Corleone; I’d assumed she was out of the picture.
Ahead, Brandon caught sight of me and waved, pointing at his watch to indicate the late time, but I ignored him. This was too important. Curtain could wait.
“He said it was nothing!” Bubbe insisted. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Okay, so what happened?” I demanded, willing myself to stay calm.
“Well, he stormed out of the house this evening when I confronted him about it, all up in arms about it. Next thing I know, I’m getting a call from Maimonides Hospital, telling me my son is in the ICU with his liver beat to a pulp, half his body broken, and unconscious. I don’t know what happened, Skylar, and that’s the truth.”
At the words “ICU” and “unconscious,” I stopped moving, unable to feel sensation in my legs. Brandon watched as I grabbed for a mailbox, barely able to catch myself before my knees buckled completely.
“Skylar!” he yelled and ran toward me.
