Truly (New York Trilogy #1) Page 4

“What do you think it is?”

  “Dinner.”

  “Just dinner, and not …”

  But how could she say it when she could barely even think it? She was an infant. She didn’t belong in New York. She belonged in Manitowoc, where she knew all the rules and where nothing ever happened to her that caused her to wonder whether she might accidentally be stumbling into the exchange of dinner for sexual favors.

  “Just dinner,” Ben said. “And not some kind of perverted thing where I clock you on the head when your back is turned and sell you into white slavery.” The rogue side of his mouth curved all the way up into a close-lipped smile.

  He looked safer when he smiled. Almost normal. Not remotely like a man who would be so crass as to think she’d be selling herself for dinner.

  And really, who was she kidding? She wasn’t the type to inspire that kind of offer.

  “Are there still white slavers lurking around the streets of New York?”

  “In Manhattan, they have everything.” Ben shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie. “You like tacos?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s get some tacos, and we’ll see if we can’t find a way to get you sorted out.”

  May nodded her assent and let Ben lead her from the bar.

  Maybe he wasn’t a dick, after all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The pedestrian traffic on Christopher Street had picked up since she went into Pulvermacher’s, and now there were all sorts of people meandering around Greenwich Village.

  May felt strange trailing along in Ben’s wake. Naked and innocent, like she’d just been cast out of Eden, and she found herself on a guided tour of life after Paradise.

  Not that Dan had been Paradise. Far from it. He’d only been comfortably familiar, and suddenly nothing was. Not the man she was with or the city he led her through. Not the way her heart pumped whiskey through her veins, making her feel like she was floating an inch or so above her feet.

  She needed to eat.

  “How far can you walk in those?” Ben aimed a look of pure contempt at her feet.

  May looked down to see what her toes had done to piss him off, but all she saw were her flats. Not the best shoes for walking in, but they could be a lot worse.

  “I don’t know. How far is it?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe? We could take the subway. It wouldn’t be faster, but you could sit.”

  “I can walk for ten minutes.”

  They stepped off the curb at a crosswalk, and May watched her feet, hyper-vigilant lest she give any sign of how hard the whiskey had hit her. It seemed important to be sober and smart—but she’d already failed at that. She could at least appear to have her shit together.

  Then she remembered to look around for landmarks. If anything awful happened—if Ben suddenly decamped, say, or violent criminals attacked and kidnapped him, leaving her behind in the streets—she should have some idea where she was located.

  At the next corner, the signs said WASHINGTON PLACE and SIXTH. They were near Washington Square Park. She’d been here before on one of her weekday outings while Dan was in Cortland for training camp.

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a place by NYU with good tacos. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  He pulled her out into traffic against the light, ignoring the onrushing lights of a car barreling toward them.

  “I don’t think—”

  “It’s fine. Keep moving.”

  She did, but she didn’t like it. Crosswalks had signals for a reason.

  In the park, they moved rapidly toward the fountain in its middle, then past it and through the massive marble arch on the far side. Ben walked at a brisk pace, and May had to concentrate to keep up. A novel experience at her height.

  After a few minutes of elegant brick NYU administrative buildings came a neighborhood of student-centered businesses that grew seedier with every block they walked. May noted three tattoo parlors on one, along with a pile of garbage bags waiting for pickup, and a discarded twin mattress. A delivery truck was parked halfway onto the curb, hazard lights blinking. She was so preoccupied with being annoyed at its intrusion, she nearly walked into an open set of cellar doors.

  “Watch it.” Ben yanked her away.

  “Sorry.”

  Chastened, she wondered if she was the only one who felt assaulted by New York as she moved through it. Smells. Sounds. Disorder. The streets were so messy and chaotic, the result of all these people crammed so close together.

  Manitowoc was far from glamorous, but the sidewalks were clean, and there was none of this patchwork asphalt or garbage bags awaiting pickup in the street.

  For all its lack of sophistication, Manitowoc was so much more civilized. She missed it, the pain a sudden chill in her blood.

  I made a mistake, moving here to be with Dan. The relationship was over before I even got here, and somehow I still managed to convince myself the move would be the glorious beginning of the rest of my life. It took the world’s worst drunk marriage proposal to clue me in. What does that say about my judgment?

  She needed some time and space to figure it out. New experiences always had something to teach, even when they sucked. Someday soon, she’d be ensconced back in her tiny ranch house in Wisconsin, and she would wrap herself in a fleecy blanket, stare at the fire she’d laid in the tiled fireplace, and determine what the Lessons of New York were.

  Tonight, all she had to do was endure some more of them.

  Distracted, she stumbled over a crack in the pavement. Ben’s arm came over to steady her. “Easy there, champ.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You apologize for tripping?”

  “Maybe? I’m not having my best day ever.”

  They passed yet another tattoo parlor, and Ben pulled her hand off his elbow and moved around to her other side, pushing her to the curb and away from a man engaged in a screaming argument with a woman hanging from an upstairs window.

  The shouting man turned as they passed, but Ben fixed him a withering look, and he turned back around.

  It reminded her of what he’d said at the bar. You’ve got blond hair and nine-mile-long legs. If a strange man is nice to you, he wants to get in your pants.

  So what did that mean, in relation to Ben?

  Not that she’d ask him. Plus, it wasn’t as though he’d been nice to her. Nice wasn’t in his repertoire.

  He pulled her across the street on a diagonal, toward a restaurant with a ragged green awning that said TACOS.

  The restaurant smelled like hot meat, the atmosphere steamy and spicy and too close after their walk. Ben led her to a wobbly table in the back corner.

  “How many do you want?”

  She wasn’t sure she was quite up for tacos that smelled like that—not after the day she’d had. “Where’s the menu?”

  “The steak tacos are good. Everything else is crap. How many do you want?”

  Gah, he was pushy. “Are they big?”

  He exhaled, impatient. “They’re the size of tacos.”

  “Two.”

  “I get five.”

  “Okay, three.”

  He nodded and turned his back. May sat down and touched something sticky. Would it be rude if she asked Ben to borrow a rag from behind the counter so she could wipe it clean?

  Probably.

  The Formica had a deep pit in it. She ran her fingertip over the satiny exposed wood. Raucous Mexican pop music played over the kitchen’s radio.

  The clock on the wall said it was 6:30. In ninety minutes or so, Dan would return to the apartment and find her note. He would assume she was already on a plane.

  So would her family. She’d sent a cowardly email to let them know she didn’t feel like talking but that she would see them in the U.P. tomorrow afternoon.

  She’d so looked forward to joining them for the annual trip—Mom and Dad, May and Dan, Allie and Matt. Card gam
es, beer, and her father’s winterization checklist. One last bit of normalcy before next week’s frantic preparations for Allie and Matt’s wedding.

  May had hoped to be making her way toward them tonight. Thinking about what she’d done on an airplane, in her car on the long drive north. Bracing herself for the future.

  Instead, she was here. With Ben. Getting tacos.

  He came to the table with a tray covered in small plates—one for each of eight soft tacos. He set it down and retrieved a second tray, containing bowls of guacamole, grilled onions, chopped jalapeño, and cilantro, as well as two small napkin-wrapped packets of cutlery.

  She took a plate and watched as he unwrapped his silverware and used the fork to load his taco with some of everything.

  “Eat,” he said. Half of his taco disappeared with his first bite. Steak juice ran down his chin, and she quickly handed him a napkin before he could do something awful like wipe the juice off with his sleeve.

  May opened her taco and looked at the meat. It didn’t appear infested. Probably it would be fine. The guacamole seemed a little untrustworthy, so she skipped it and the rest of the toppings.

  “Do they have salsa?”

  “They have pico de gallo, but you don’t want it.”

  “I don’t?”

  “It’s not any good.”

  May wished for some cheese, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask for it. She closed the taco and took a delicate bite.

  “You can’t eat them like that.”

  She swallowed. The meat tasted charred but juicy. Not bad, but nothing special. “Why not?”

  He took her plate, opened her taco, and loaded it with toppings. “This is how you’re supposed to eat them.” When he had the taco dressed to his satisfaction, he lifted it and shoved it at her—not toward her hand, so she could take possession, but directly at her face.

  May recoiled. Had no one ever told him that people hated having things shoved in their faces? Or that no one liked being told what to eat? It didn’t even occur to him that she might have allergies, or preferences, or some kind of aversion to—

  “Trust me,” he said.

  Well, that got right to the heart of the matter, didn’t it?

  Remembering the way he’d pushed her to the outside of the street, away from danger, she decided he deserved at least this small gesture of trust.

  She opened her mouth. Steak juice ran over Ben’s fingers as he pushed the taco onto her tongue. She closed her lips and chewed.

  The steak tasted different now—its grilled charcoal overtone perfectly balanced against the sweet caramelized mush of the onions and the creamy citrus taste of fresh guacamole. Mellow and satisfying, with the pop and crunch of chopped jalapeño making the whole thing lively and interesting, hotter than she’d been prepared for.

  “Ogh muh gaad,” she said. It was the best thing she’d ever eaten. The best taco in the history of tacos.

  Or maybe she was just hungrier than she’d thought.

  “Good, huh?”

  May nodded, eyes wide, and reached for her taco. Ben handed it over, another one of those almost-smiles flirting with the corner of his mouth.

  So almost-attractive, when he almost-smiled. But it was hard for her to focus on whether that meant anything, because on the next bite she had to close her eyes to keep from moaning. It was so good.

  So good that she wanted to savor it alone, without interruptions, forever. So good that it brought tears to her eyes. She kept them closed, not wanting Ben to see.

  “Told you.”

  May had nothing to say to that. She was too busy devouring her tacos. She kept eating until she’d plowed through all three, and then she stared wistfully at Ben’s fifth, which lay unclaimed on its plate. Beckoning to her.

  The sight of that fifth taco filled her with a lust far greater than anything she’d felt for Dan in a very long time.

  May lifted her glass to her lips and drank a sip of water, trying to be cool while simultaneously mourning all the steak tacos she would never get to eat.

  When she raised her eyes, Ben was watching her intently.

  “What?” she asked.

  But of course she knew what. She’d just practically had sex with a tray full of tacos, and now the postcoital embarrassment set in. He saw me naked! With tacos!

  “I was hungry,” she said sheepishly.

  “You love food.”

  She could hardly deny it now, not after what he’d witnessed. But she wasn’t supposed to love it this much. Not in public, not with people watching, and certainly not in front of Ben.

  She had been a chubby adolescent, taller and chunkier than the other girls. Not the easiest thing to be, especially in comparison to her whippet of a little sister. But by her freshman year in college, May had figured a few things out. For starters, if she stayed competitive on the swim team or took long walks a few days a week in the off-season, she could eat pretty much what she liked and maintain the same weight. She was built like her father, so she would never be shopping in the petite section of department stores. But intellectually, May came to a place where she could understand that there was nothing really wrong with her body. It was exactly the size it was supposed to be. And while the size it was supposed to be was a good thirty percent larger than the average woman’s, well, normal was a mirage anyway.

  Even so, it had been such a relief to start dating Dan.

  Here was a guy who had three inches and sixty pounds on her, with biceps that bulged even beneath a sport coat. He was huge, and his friends were all giants who made her feel downright small.

  In bed and out, Dan had cast a shadow over her. Covered her. And she’d liked it, because Dan’s shadow kept the constant attention off her plate. For once she could eat a second serving of mashed potatoes at a family dinner without feeling like she was bathed in red neon light, shameful and exposed.

  Now that she’d left Dan, was she really going to return to the days of constantly hearing her mother in her head telling her to put that cheese back in the fridge and eat some frozen grapes?

  She’d never wanted to eat the stupid grapes. Who picked grapes over cheese?

  Not her. Not if she could help it.

  “It’s true,” she confirmed. “I love food.”

  “Have the last taco.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “I’ve had enough already. I’ll just throw it away.”

  That was all the convincing she required. May reached for the taco, loaded it up with condiments, and dug in.

  Ben leaned back in his chair and watched her eat. The last bite sent a cascade of steak juice between her fingers, and she licked it off with relish, finally full enough to say goodbye to the tacos with something approaching contentment.

  She smiled at him, steeped in taco bliss.

  “I love a woman who eats,” he said. And he smiled back.

  A real grin—big, unrestrained, kind of goofy. His incisors were crooked, his whole smile just a little unbalanced. No expensive orthodontia for Ben.

  But his teeth were white, and hiding behind that three-day stubble was a pair of creases too deeply carved to be considered dimples. They were more like crevasses. Geological features in the landscape of his craggy face.

  Oh crud. His craggy handsome face.

  Ben had a long, straight nose and those Slavic-looking eyes, hooded and expressive. He had dimples and nice teeth and shoulders that hinted at an excellent view beneath that hoodie. Had she really not noticed before? Was she blind?

  “You want a Popsicle?” he asked.

  Something inside of May tripped and landed hard on its ass.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’d love one.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She went to town on the Popsicle.

  The woman could eat. On a good bite, her eyelashes fluttered like she just might moan, but she was too polite. The last time Ben had met a woman he liked to watch eating this much, he’d married her.

  And look how that turned out
.

  His leg jittered under the table. He was grateful for the Spanish ballad that came on the radio for being so terrible that it provided a distraction.

  “This song sucks,” he said.

  “You think?” She drew the top four inches of the Popsicle into her mouth, her cheeks hollowing.

  Ben looked away. Then back at her.

  He couldn’t stop looking.

  “So,” he said. She turned her Popsicle upside down and sucked juice from the bottom. “You have somewhere other than Dan’s you can sleep tonight?”

  She stiffened. Her eyes jumped to his, then past him to the closed door of the restaurant.

  A nicer man wouldn’t find that so entertaining, but he liked keeping her on her toes. She relaxed over whiskey, then flipped out when he asked her to dinner. Started to mellow on the walk, then went all deer-in-the-headlights at the mere mention of where she would sleep.

  Probably his fault for making that crack about the cop wanting to get in her pants, but legs like that would get any man’s attention. And while the jersey she wore left everything to the imagination, Ben had a pretty good imagination.

  He wasn’t trying to get her into bed, though. That would foul up the whole situation. Turn it into some kind of crass exchange, rather than what it was, which was …

  Damn. Which was a completely self-centered experiment in humanitarianism, performed for the purpose of discovering whether he had it in him to be not-a-dickhead for a few consecutive hours.

  Crass didn’t begin to describe it.

  “I was thinking maybe I could check in to a hotel,” she said.

  “With what money?”

  “I could get a credit card number from somebody back home.” She sucked the Popsicle into her mouth with a slurping sound that hollowed her cheeks.

  Not a visual he needed. He looked away. “You can use my phone.”

  “Thanks. The thing is, though, I don’t know anybody’s phone number.”

  “Not even family?”

  “Sure, I know my mom and dad’s, and my sister’s. Her fiancé Matt’s, too—we’ve been friends a long time. But they’re all up north, or on their way, and there’s no cell service there.”

  “You can’t reach them at all?”