Singe Read Free

balled up into fists, the resolve of what he was going to do. He makes himself unclench them. “That a fact?”
    Addie brings one arm up to shade her eyes like a girl on a beach. “That is a fact,” she enunciates, careful to fit her tongue around the words. It makes Eli want to kiss her. She’s got a wide, pale mouth that he’s always liked, hanging there like a promise at the bottom of her heart-shaped face.
    “Show me,” he commands.
    Which is how he ends up hoofing it two blocks down and three blocks over to Addie Manzella’s shitty second-story instead of drinking his brains out, the humidity so thick he sweats through his starchy dress shirt in about ten steps. It’s better. It’s a relief. Eli pushes the thought of Drew aside, concentrates on Addie’s swaying hips instead. She can’t really walk in her heels, unpracticed or drunk or both. Eli wants to put his hands around her waist and feel the bones shift.
    “It’s a walkup,” Addie announces finally, stopping in front of a dingy club to pull off her pumps. It takes Eli a second to realize they’ve arrived, his focus still one-hundred-percent on her ass. He looks between her dangling cross and the unlit neon sign reading LOOKOUT , a collection of sad flyers advertising a Saturday night drag show. Come out of the closet and cum in LOOKOUT , the chalkboard sidewalk sign reads.
    Addie catches him staring. “That one’s new,” she says. “Last week was Come analyze our anal , although I think it’s mostly a lesbian bar.”
    Eli blinks. “You live above this ?”
    “Uh-huh.” Addie grins at him, wide and delighted. Her temples are soaked from the walk, the dip of her collarbone bathed in sweat. “Look, you coming or what?”
    Which—yeah. Eli is.
    She unlocks a side door and leads him up a narrow staircase, stepping aside to let a mangy-looking cat scurry out the door onto the sidewalk. “That’s Chicken Cat,” Addie tells him as the thing darts by. “He’s part mine, I guess? He lived here before I did.”
    Eli edges out of her way on the tiny landing so she can open the door to her apartment, close enough that he can smell the faint floral scent of her perfume. It’s very, very hot. “How long’s that?” he asks.
    “Not long,” Addie says, though her voice is nearly drowned out by the wheezy hum of the ancient-looking window unit in her living room. Eli peers over her shoulder at a good-sized space jammed full with a crazy hodgepodge of furniture, a futon and a beat-up IKEA coffee table alongside an antique wingback chair. There’s a huge photo collage of Addie with a bunch of other girls hanging on one wall, from back in high school maybe, plus one of those ornate carved medallions on the ceiling, like possibly a chandelier used to hang there in the days before the building was carved up into starter apartments and a sad-looking nightclub. There’s clothes and magazines and assorted detritus heaped on pretty much every available surface. Eli’s skin prickles in the suddenly chilly air.
    “Ignore the mess,” Addie tells him, dropping her heels on a denim-covered beanbag chair and padding over to the kitchen in her stocking feet, opening the Reagan-era freezer and cracking some ice out of a tray. “Here.” She fills two glasses from the tap and hands him one of them, hopping up on the Formica countertop. Eli watches her throat work as he gulps, not entirely able to help it.
    “Hi,” Addie says when she’s finished, looking at him expectantly. Her mouth is very wet.
    “Hi,” Eli echoes. Slowly, he puts both hands on her thighs. The fabric of her dress is like an oven, all this heat radiating off her like she’s a human hot water bottle. Her hair would be warm to the touch too, he bets, inky-brown and sun baked.
    “Hi,” Addie repeats, quieter now that he’s close. She’s looking for a kiss, Eli can tell. It’s a way girls have of holding their faces.
    Shit where you eat , he thinks. David Manzella’s daughter.
    “We