The Shameless Hour (The Ivy Years #4)

“He has to wreck it some time, right? Nobody can lie so much and get away with it.”

I’d thought that, too. But three years later… “I have to assume that he’s still cheating on her.” Even though I was pissed at my sister, this bothered me. I’d just discovered the horrors of having a doctor tell me I’d caught something. I hope my sister didn’t eventually figure it out that way. God. “He’s held it together until now. Besides, my sister also thinks that the sun shines out of his ass. I’ve tried to warn her. But it’s not like anyone wants to hear what I say.”

The shuttle docked underneath Times Square, and Rafe and I walked out. I followed him to the uptown number two and three train platform. “Where exactly are we going?” I suddenly thought to ask.

“To get some dinner in Washington Heights,” Rafe answered immediately. “I’m starved.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Don’t be.”

An express pulled up, and we got on. After the sing-song warning tone, the doors clattered shut. Rafe pointed at a single empty seat, and I dropped into it. He took up a position right in front of me, holding the bar over my head.

Looking up at him, I said, “I got really drunk at their wedding.”

“I’ll bet.” Rafe chuckled.

“Julie claims that I ruined her special day by puking onto the topiary after the cake was cut. But that shit was tainted long before I threw up.”

Rafe snickered. “I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.”

When the doors opened at 72nd, quite a bit of the crowd got off. So Rafe dropped into the seat next to mine.

“Tell me where you’re taking me,” I said, hoping to lighten up the evening again. For a few minutes there, I’d actually had fun. Dancing with Rafe had been the high point of the last few weeks. Not that I was about to tell him that.

“To my family’s restaurant,” he said. “Is there anything you don’t eat?”

I grabbed my chest in mock horror. “Dude, I’m from New York. You can’t scare me even if you try.”

Rafe grinned.

Many subway stops later, we emerged in Washington Heights. I’d never been to this neighborhood before. It was past Columbia University, where my high school friends and I used to go to drink in the bars that served college students without ID. It was north of the hospital and north of pretty much everything. The only time I’d set foot up here was on a school trip to The Cloisters museum.

I didn’t like to think of myself as an Upper East Side snob. But there it was.

“Are you freezing?” Rafe asked.

“No, I’m fine.” Truly, I was getting cold. But after that scene I’d put Rafe through earlier, I wasn’t going to complain about anything else tonight.

“I wanted to walk past the site.” Rafe pointed down the block.

“Oh! For our project?” What a lousy teammate I was. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we were only blocks away from our Urban Studies assignment. I followed him to West 165th Street. And there it was, the ugly building from the photograph. “Can’t imagine why we’d tear this down,” I teased.

“Right? But we don’t need to look at the building so much as what surrounds it.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me. “Across the intersection, there’s an apartment building. That looks like a nice place.”

It did, too. It was six stories high, a pre-war brick building. One of thousands in the city.

“But those are some pretty gritty retailers over there.” Rafe indicated a check-cashing joint and a pawn shop. There was also a skeevy little bodega and a shoe repair store.

“This spot has good foot traffic, though,” I said. “We could put something better here. A grocery, or a restaurant.” I took out my phone and began to turn in a circle, snapping photographs of everything.

“The judge is a food guy, remember. If we did something with food, he might like it.”

I gave Rafe a little poke in the ribs. “Look at you, Mr. Tactical! I like it.”

He put a hand on my back. “Speaking of food, let’s go eat.”

A few minutes later he led me under a striped awning into a brightly lit hive of activity. The restaurant wasn’t fancy. The interior looked like it had been there since the seventies, if I had to guess. There were Formica tables with metal edges, and the walls were painted in colors which were just a little too bright to be stylish.

But the place was jammed. I couldn’t even see it properly, because there was a knot of people between the door and the dining room.