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minutes.”
    I walked away and when Don thought I was out of earshot I heard him whisper to Justin. “ Damn . That girl is fine.”
    I didn’t get a chance to hear Justin’s response.

Chapter 3
    As I headed towards the train station that evening it dawned on me that the last place I felt like going was home. With my brother still at his girlfriend’s there would be no one to talk to, unless you counted Buddy, but he couldn’t exactly talk back. I sent a text to my friend Susan asking her what she was up to. Her boyfriend was over, but she wanted me to stop by anyway. Normally, I hated being the third wheel, but I was getting more and more used to it. 
    Susan lived in Bayridge, which meant an even longer train ride. When I finally got to her place she was outside walking a bunch of dogs. It was how she made enough money to quit her day job and go back to school; dog boarding and walking, which always struck me as funny since her boyfriend hated dogs.
    “You look cute,” she commented.
    “Just got off work.”
    “Oh, that’s right. At the community center? How do you like it so far?”
    “It’s good. I don’t feel like I’m actually doing that much, though. I tutored a few people, but I’ve been sitting around more than anything.”
    “They’re still paying you, though, right?”
    “Of course. I wouldn’t bother going all the way out there for free.”
    Susan smiled. She understood me. She hadn’t had the easiest life either. Despite our almost ten year age difference, it felt like she got me.
    I followed her back inside and climbed the three flights of stairs to her place. Her boyfriend, Greg, was sitting on the couch with a Sam Adams in his hand and the baseball game on.
    “’Sup Jesse?”
    “Not much, how’s it going?”
    “Good. The Yankees are up by one.”
    Baseball again. For a second my mind flashed back to Justin and Don talking earlier. I need to not think about Justin, I tried telling myself. He seemed like a guy who had his shit together, and those kinds of guys tended to avoid me like the plague. Instead, I seemed to be some sort of magnet for every dysfunctional loser in the five boroughs.
    I flopped down on the couch next to Greg, he reached forward to grab me a beer.
    “No thanks, I’m good.” I hated the taste of beer and Susan was on her way back from the kitchen with a Smirnoff Ice, which she knew was my favorite.
    “So have you met any cute guys at your job yet?” she asked as she handed me the ice cold bottle.
    “NO! I’m not there to meet guys, I’m there to work.”
    “That’s perfect,” Greg chimed in, “’cause my friend and his girlfriend just broke up. . .”
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said holding my hands up to let him know to stop talking. “First of all, I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now. I told you guys that, like a hundred times. And second of all, even if I was, I’m not going out with some guy who just got dumped.”
    Sometimes it felt like I was the only person I knew who wasn’t dating someone. It also felt like everyone I knew was always trying to remedy that situation. But I just wasn’t in the mood for dating. My last relationship had been a disaster of epic proportions. For months something in my gut told me my now ex-boyfriend had been cheating on me, but I didn’t want to believe it. I’d given up my dorm room to move in with him and refused to admit how stupid I’d been to do it, so it took way longer than it should have for me to dump him. He was so used to me being a chump that he refused to accept my decision. He’d show up outside my classes and call me literally nonstop for hours on end every day, until I finally changed my number. It took months before he gave up, and thankfully, I hadn’t seen him or heard from him in a while. I was not ready to go through anything like that again.
    Greg was about to try and change my mind; I could see the words forming. Luckily, Susan stopped him. She shot Greg a look. “Leave it