When I close the door behind me and enter the living room, Snake’s no longer sprawled across the couch, though the football game is still playing. I make my way toward the kitchen and suddenly a head appears from behind the refrigerator. Snake holds up a bottle. “Do you want a beer?”
“A beer?” I repeat. His Boston accent isn’t the clearest.
“Yeah, a beer. Do you or don’t you?”
“Sure,” I say. I extend my hand and wait, but I’m half expecting him to retract his offer. However, he yanks a bottle of Corona out of the pack and slides it into my hand. It’s my first night in New York City, so a celebratory beer won’t do any harm.
“Wait, let me get that for you.” Grabbing the bottle opener from the counter, he spins back around and pops the cap off my drink. He fetches his own bottle from the counter and takes a sip. “I didn’t take you as a beer kinda girl.”
“And I didn’t take you as a guy with much hospitality,” I shoot back, but we’re just playing. “Thanks for the drink.”
He clinks his bottle against mine as though to say, “You’re welcome,” and then takes another swig as I make my way into the bathroom, my clothes in one hand and the beer in the other.
“Don’t you wanna leave the door open so that I can get a good view?”
I turn back around and narrow my eyes at him. I’m not sure we share a similar sense of humor, but I’m sure I’ll get used to him eventually. “Definitely not.” I knee the door shut and lock it.
It doesn’t take me long to get ready, mostly because I don’t wash my hair, and once I’ve freshened up and washed off my makeup, it’s really only a matter of pulling on my clothes. I leave my hair down and step into my pink skater skirt, slipping a denim jacket on top of a white tank top. I’ve consumed almost the entire bottle of beer in the time that it takes to get ready, so I take the remainder with me as I carry my belongings back through to Tyler’s room. He’s spraying cologne when I enter. The Bentley one.
“Did Snake give you that?” he asks, nodding to the bottle in my hand. For a second, I think he’s about to frown, but he keeps his expression neutral.
“Yeah.” I place the beer on top of the bedside table and throw my clothes into my suitcase, not bothering to fold them. I’ll sort it all out later, but right now, all I need is my makeup bag, which I pull out from beneath a pile of sandals. I glance around the room quickly in search of a mirror and spy a small one above the chest of drawers that Tyler is standing by. “Can I get in there for a sec?”
“Sure,” he says. Stepping to the side, he allows me to position myself in front of the mirror, watching me as I do so. “Did you do something different to your hair?” he asks after a moment.
“My hair?” I lift my head and look back at him in the mirror. “Just some highlights.” He only gives me a single nod back, so I drop my eyes back to my makeup bag as I rummage through it. I don’t want to keep Tyler waiting, so I only apply mascara to make my eyes pop a little more.
I don’t know what it is about the two of us, but suddenly it feels awkward. It wasn’t awkward at the airport and it wasn’t awkward on the ride to Manhattan, but now something feels different. I’m starting to worry that perhaps it was my inappropriate suggestion earlier that’s made Tyler feel uncomfortable. The suggestion about sleeping together. Or maybe it’s just awkward because he no longer cares about me in that way, the way that he shouldn’t.
“Ready,” I say quietly, forcing a smile on my face as I spin around. I didn’t notice it when I was looking at him in the mirror, but he’s wearing his brown boots, which only makes me sigh. I wonder if he knows how much I love it when he wears them.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I bite my lip in an effort to stop me from blushing and quickly grab my Converse from the floor, slipping them on and standing upright. “Let’s go.”
I follow him back into the living room, and Snake is by the refrigerator again, fetching himself another beer, which I think could possibly be his third. He tells me to enjoy Times Square, despite the fact that the whole thing is just “overrated bullshit,” in his words, and then Tyler finally guides me out of the apartment building.
It’s still extremely hot when we get outside onto Seventy-fourth Street, and I can hear that buzz of noise again. There are still a lot of cars honking, but I quite like it. It’s almost relaxing, in a weird sort of way. Tyler doesn’t say anything as I follow him across the street, and then I linger by the passenger door of his car. The truck and the Honda haven’t moved.
“We’re not driving there,” Tyler informs me, laughing as though I should have known we wouldn’t be taking his car. He stares at me from a few feet away, smiling, which gives me some hope that the awkwardness in his room was only temporary. “We’re taking the subway.”