Page 42 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B
“…He’s so cute. Ugh.” I groan. “I literally can’t stand him.”
“You wanna keep him?” she asks, and I can see her face in her voice: lips pursed and brows high. “Then do not, I repeat, do not tell him about Three-Point-Nine.”
I freeze at the curb and look through the glass again. Andrew’s smile dies, and he shifts in his seat, eyes bouncing from the door back to the TV.
“Aight. I’m goin’ in.”
I end the call and round the brick corner.
Some guy holds the door with two fingers on his way out. I slip past him, and the door shuts behind me, cutting Midtown off my back.
Inside, it’s deafening. NFL Sunday on steroids, classic rock blaring, a line of dudes at the bar losing their shit over a fumble that happened in the second quarter.
As people see me at the door,
a wave of reactions build.
Five men boo at the same time.
One guy near the bar—
“No fuckin’ way.”
Another drops a wing from sauce-covered fingers as if I spoiled his appetite.
The TV volume dips for one second when—“That a fuckin’ Eagles jersey?”
I glance down, smirking to myself.
Someone lets out a long, wounded
“Naaaaahhh.”
The room erupts.
“Security! We got a threat!”
“Yo! Take that shit off!”
“Is she lost?”
“Go back to Philly, sweetheart.”
Andrew’s out of his seat before I clear the black mat by the door.
The second our eyes meet,
I mouth across the bar to him: ‘Go Birds.’
He scrapes a hand over his mouth,
head turning to fight the grin,
moving toward me through bodies,
pulling up his sleeve
with a bite of his lip,
