2. BRUNO

It was a summer afternoon, but late. It was not quite evening, it was still light. I was sitting at my work desk in my apartment right on Avenue C. The window looked straight out over the Lower East Side. Outside, I could see the neighborhood's graffiti-adorned walls juxtaposed against trendy cafes and vintage boutiques. Nowadays, the area is called hip. When I moved here years ago and started renting this place, it was just straight-up sketchy.

My landlord must have known what was going on around here, even if his family had owned the place for generations, and so he kept on putting up the rent. The subject of rent is a tricky one. Money was weighing heavily on my mind as I juggled freelance journalism, specializing in the cool end of lifestyle writing for the millennial hipster crowd (which had no end of trust-fund babies really happy to work for Vice magazine for nothing, whereas I had tax and utilities to pay). However, recently, things had been particularly tough. Magazines had shuttered, online publications scaled back, once plentiful commissions had dwindled to a trickle. In other words, that rent wasn't always getting paid.

Despite the challenges, I was determined to make ends meet. I worked the deadlines and the pitches, scouring job boards for opportunities, poring over emails sent out to ten thousand freelancers just like me, all chasing the same ten gigs.

But my financial situation was more precarious than that of most who lived in these apartments around here. I was a co-parent to my son, Evan, and providing for Evan's needs was my top priority, but I was also finding myself increasingly stretched thinner and thinner.

The beeping of a text interrupted my thoughts. I glanced at the caller ID – Kelly, my ex, Evan's mom, who lived uptown.

ARE YOU FREE TO TALK?

About what? I wondered.

SURE

CAN I CALL NOW?

COOL

The phone started ringing, and I picked it up.

"Hey, what can I do for you?" She had Evan that night, and just for a moment, I wondered if she was going to tell me something was wrong.

"Hey, you good? How have things been?"

That was unusually personal for her. Ever since we split, Kelly had been strictly business.

"Yeah, all good. Just trying to do some work."

"Huh," she went, and I could hear her truer idea of me. "You never could manage 9-to-5, Bruno."

Kelly had always thought that I should give up any dreams of being a writer and just score some office job. When we split up, she said she was tired of "carrying" me financially, although she never had. We had always split everything. I looked back at those days as a golden age of income, in fact. I wished I earned that much now!

"So, what did you want to discuss?" I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.

I heard her take a breath.

"I'm moving to London for two months," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"Yeah, my job asked me to go for two months. It's cool, right?"

Her announcement was delivered politely but crisply, but before I could voice my concerns, Kelly's tone turned icier. "You'll look after Evan, won't you?"

We split our parenting four days/three days.

"I thought for a moment you were going to say you wanted to take him with you."

"Oh, no," she said. I felt relief.

"Sure, that's cool. I can juggle things so he can stay full-time for a while."

She sort of hummed to herself, satisfied.

"I knew you'd say yes. You can never say no."

Her tone surprised me. I paused and thought about how it had once been between us. But then I wondered if it had ever been good, if it had ever been real. I had gone along with the relationship, I think, looking back now. Maybe I was never good at going after what I really wanted.

"Was there anything else?" I asked.

She took a breath.

"No. I don't need anything else."

Then she hung up.

I decided to go out for a run. I laced up my running shoes and ran down the stairs, out into the bustling streets of New York, letting my building door slam behind me. The rhythmic pounding of my feet on the sidewalk formed a rhythm for my thoughts.

I pondered the dilemmas I was facing. Work was not going well. Now and then I wondered whether to stay in New York or move to a more affordable city. Thus far, co-parenting Evan had kept me here – plus, I love the city. But I had to be realistic about how long I could go on. But how could Kelly and I co-parent living any distance apart? That was now an ironic question, given that was precisely what we were doing.

I needed more practical solutions, perhaps. Abandoning freelance journalism flitted through my mind in search of a more stable career path. Money had been really tight lately, and the jobs were so intermittent. But being a writer was my dream. My real dream was to publish the novel I had been working on for a couple of years, but I was nowhere near that.

"You live in a dream world," Kelly had said to me more than once. Maybe she wasn't wrong, but isn't it good to have dreams? But when do dreams crash into reality?

I ran for forty-five minutes, right around East River Park and back. By then, it was past seven, still light outside in summer. Once I was back in the apartment, I pulled off my running gear and stepped into the hot shower, still wrapped up in thought. As I was toweling myself off and getting dressed again, I could hear a text beeping on my phone. Still naked, I went to pick it up and saw my sister's name:

NICOLE

And then the message:

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO I AM WITH

DANNY WEST FROM HIGH SCHOOL

I was stopped. I hadn't even thought of Danny for years. Handsome, sporty Danny West, one of the cool jocks who ran my high school but not quite like the others, always different.

Danny West was so confusing to me back then, sometimes just one of the athletes who had girlfriends and cars and, you know, power, and then sometimes someone who was easygoing, friendly, and clever, who asked me about the book I was reading as I was sitting alone at lunch. Catch-22. Wide Sargasso Sea. Things Fall Apart. And then he would grin and smile at me, with his dark eyes on mine, and say, "Wow, cool, you have amazing taste." He seemed to be genuinely interested. Then he would break into a wide grin and look so directly at you, you felt your stomach flip.

Nicole was typing…

HE IS MOVING TO NEW YORK

CAN WE CALL YOU?

I loved my sister, but this was typical of her. Set me up with some situation that she thought was great, but I thought was…what? What did I think this situation would be?

Now I typed too…

I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO HIM!!!!

Now Nicole…

WHY NOT?

COS IT'S BEEN YEARS. HE'S PROBABLY SOME CORPORATE DUDE NOW WHO WILL MAKE ME FEEL BAD

DON'T BE AN IDIOT. YOU KNOW HE WORKS AT MY OFFICE. I TOLD YOU BEFORE. DON'T YOU REMEMBER? JUST TALK TO HIM

I remembered. When she had told me, I had thought of Danny for a moment, grinning at me, touching my novel to see the cover, saying, "Cool," always "Cool." I thought of Danny on the sports field, Danny naked in the locker-room showers, laughing with his buddies in the white steam, Danny with his towel around his hips, just momentarily catching me staring at him, and that wide, handsome grin. Some arousal sparked through me, electric.

Now, I was not typing, but Nicole was.

brUNO!!!! RIGHT, I AM CALLING YOU

And then my phone started ringing.

As I stood in the solitude of my apartment, the ringing of my phone cracked the stillness of my evening at home. I pressed Answer.

"Hey," I said, my voice tinged with a hint of my nerves.

"Hey, Bruno!" Nicole was using her "I am with someone and not pretending I am mad at you" voice. "How's it going?"

"Is he there?" I asked.

A beat.

"Sure!"

"Why are you making me talk to him?"

Another beat. How can silence be both cheery and fake? God, she was infuriating.

"Do you wanna speak to Danny?"

"No."

"Great! I'll put him on!"

The sound of Danny's voice – deep yet soft, just as I remembered – entered my ear.

"Hey, Bruno."

"Hey, Danny," I greeted, my voice betraying none of the turmoil within me.

"Sorry about this. Nicole is being ferocious and insisting we speak."

Danny's voice carried a warmth and familiarity that washed over me like a gentle tide, and then he laughed.

"No, it's cool. Nicole said you're moving to New York?"

Shit, why did I ask that? That was bound to lead to some kind of offer of meeting up.

He started to talk about how he was only moving there part-time for work. His voice – deep, masculine – slipped into my ear. As he spoke, memories of our past flooded my mind. In high school, Danny had been the embodiment of everything I might have desired – his confidence, his charisma, his effortless charm – but was totally unreachable.

I was not in love with Danny back then, nothing like that, but he was this strange mix of things – he was hot, but he was clever; he was one of the jocks, but he could be attentive, kind. He was an image of a guy you might like to be in love with. Once, I heard Chad Matthews say to him in a corridor when I was standing behind them, "Why do you talk to Bruno Burgess? He's so weird and fem." They didn't know I could hear them talking. And I remembered Danny just shrugging. "He seems cool to me."

My mind raced. The possibility of reconnecting with him, which I knew was what Nicole was hinting at, filled me with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

Danny sighed, and I returned to the conversation. "It's been too long, man. I heard about your sister from Nicole, and she mentioned we should catch up when I'm in New York."

My pulse quickened. "Yeah," I replied, noncommittal.

"You know, it'd be great to see you again," Danny continued, his words carrying a warmth that washed over me like a gentle wave. "We could grab a drink and catch up on old times." Then he paused. "Only if you want to. No offense if you don't want to. It's been a long time."

Caught off guard, I hesitated, unsure of how to respond.

"No, sure, that sounds good," I finally managed. Did it sound good? I wasn't sure. I felt apprehensive.

"Cool," he said. "How should we be in contact?"

"My sister can give you my number. You can call or text me when you arrive in New York."

"Awesome, man! Looking forward to it," he exclaimed, his enthusiasm infectious even over the phone. "Thanks, Bruno. Catch you later!"

And that was how Danny came back into my life.