Close.

Julia and Omer had virtually nothing in common—except the fact that they both liked science, and both loved having sex with each other.

Julia and Omer had their first introduction during an incredibly boring seminar while working through their degrees in chemical engineering. They hadn’t met each other before, though they had been in the same major at the same university for three years. They were put into a group together at this particular event, and they had an hour to develop a very basic design for an environmentally safe method of…whatever…

They both didn’t even remember the subject matter of this little assignment. They were staring at each other the entire time, while everyone else in their group shit a brick trying to figure it out. They were the assholes trying to initiate awkward conversation with each other over sheets of loose-leaf and chewed-on pencils.

After the seminar, which had lasted for most of the afternoon, Julia waited outside the door for Omer. She pretended that she was texting someone very important when he finally appeared. He stopped for a moment to glance at her. When he saw that she was so preoccupied with her phone, he supposed that she was waiting for someone else…so he went away.

A couple of months went by, and they both sort of forgot each other.

Julia was out at a bar with some of her friends one Saturday night after bombing a few tests. She was doing shots of bourbon, and trying to avoid the advances of some bro-types lurking around the pool tables. She got up, and told everyone she was going outside for some fresh air.

It was warm outside.

She was out on the sidewalk, standing amidst more drunk college students than she could really count. That’s when she turned, and saw Omer sitting on the window ledge of the neighboring building, surrounded by some of his friends. She was a little drunk, and feeling a bit in her element, so she smiled and gave a little wave.

He smiled back.

She put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, and moseyed over to him.

It was probably a mixture of her desire and the alcohol, but he looked fascinatingly good-looking. His hair was a huge helmet of curls around his gold, chiseled face. His eyes were two black marbles peering out at her from narrowed brows. He was wearing a black turtleneck and black pants. He looked like some rich guy who owned a loft and made sculptures of naked women.

She was incredibly aroused.

After brief introductions, his friends took off in favor of leaving the two of them alone together.

Julia stood in front of him, teasing him with her eyes and her smirk. Naturally, he couldn’t help but intensely admire her tight-fitting tank top, her bright hazel eyes, her shoulder-length dark, straight hair, her slimming jeans… He was nervous when she leaned over, hovering her lips over his.

“Your name is Omer, right?” Was her sultry whisper.

“Yes. You’re Julia…”

“That’s right.” She smirked. “I’m Julia.”

“You’re beautiful, Julia.”

“You’re observant, Omer.” She took his hands, and placed them on her hips. “I’m glad we’re acquainted.”

She leaned in and kissed him first. It was a deep, soulful embrace of the mouths. Of course he had kissed women before, but he hadn’t experienced one with the sort of intensity she was offering. It covered him over, and yanked him in. He was instantly intrigued, his innards blazing.

It wasn’t long before they were in the back alley behind the bar. She was perched on a wobbly trashcan, and he was standing up in front of her. Their pants were down around their ankles, and they were clinging to each other, the warmth around them suddenly burning their flesh. It was a wild, feral, full fifteen minutes of freedom.

From the whole thing beginning this way, it seemed it was all an extremely typical situation—but it wasn’t at all.

Julia’s last name was Steiner, and she was from Massachusetts. Her mother was a lapsed Catholic, her father was Jewish—she considered herself more neither than either. She was raised in a large farmhouse on a rocky piece of land in the country, in a somewhat progressive environment, with a lot of outside knowledge available to her at her whim. Her older brother Max was gay, and her parents were entirely cool about it. She was a cat person, and her favorite beer was Amber Bock.

Omer’s last name was Asani, and he was originally from Turkey. His parents were both Muslim, and had moved to the United States when Omer was too young to remember the details. He considered himself a moderate follower of his parent’s faith. He was raised in a household traditional of his culture, with strict routines and little room for negotiation. He had three brothers, and one sister—all older, and all married. He was forbidden to have pets, and forbidden to drink—and therefore had never developed a taste for either.

They knew nothing of each other outside of the physical. 

Julia invited him over to her place the next weekend, after they were done with the intense Monday through Friday routine of tests and assignments. Omer agreed to go. The door to the apartment was closed behind them for barely five seconds, and Julia’s legs were wrapped around him, their mouths tangled together, and he was carrying her to the couch.

“Do you—ah—do you have roommates?”

“Yeah—mmm—why?”

“Are any of them here?!”

“No, of course not.”

At this point, he was under her. They were on the couch, sort of. They had fallen awkwardly in the heat of it. She was on top of him, beginning to open his pants, when she noticed that he had stopped. Julia paused, and tilted her chin up to meet his gaze.

“Omer? You okay?”

“Yeah…”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just thought you should know something…before we, you know, keep going.”

“Okay, what’s that?”

“I’m sort of…engaged, kind of.” He muttered, looked up into her blank expression. “Before you think what I know you’re thinking, hear me out. It’s a culture thing. My parents arranged it with her parents. It’s going to happen after we graduate. I don’t really know her—”

“You don’t really know me, either.” She replied. The corner of her mouth twitched. “I have a boyfriend too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She slid off of him, and they sat next to each other on the couch. There was a moment of silence. They didn’t look at each other. Julia’s hair was sticking up in odd shapes. Omer’s shirt was halfway up his torso. They sat there, staring at the wall ahead.

“I’m Jewish, mostly.” Julia spoke, after a thought.

“You know what I am.” Omer replied, with a slight chuckle.

“Not all Middle Eastern people are Muslims, Omer.” She responded, rolling her eyes.

“Well, I am…of course…” Omer smirked. “I would have to be that guy.”

She shoved him playfully with her hand, and a swatting war commenced. When she raised her hand to take another slap, she noticed something on his torso, and moved his arms out of the way. It was a tattoo of a phoenix. She looked up at him, her hazel eyes lowered and mysterious.

“You didn’t say you have a tattoo…”

“There’s a lot I haven’t said yet.” He told her with a soft smile, tilting his head a little. “Like, how I want to go somewhere with you.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know, but I want to take you somewhere. Let’s go to a movie. Let’s be friends.”

Julia smirked, and held out her hand.

“Okay, friend.”

*          *          *

            Omer and Julia went to the movies once every couple of weeks. They had lunch together at least once a week. They called and texted daily, and the conversations were always either very sexual or very humorous—or a weird combination of both. He once text her telling her she was giving him a hard-on in his most difficult class, and of course she had to reply with a picture of a chemical model shaped like a penis.

            They were having sex every other day, at the very least. Most of the time it was in random places. They would meet up in the evening, and walk around campus or the park until it was dark outside. One night, they found themselves on top of a parking garage—and the sound of their lovemaking prompted a homeless man to yell out,

‘What the hell is going on up there?!’

            Julia’s on and off boyfriend, Grayson, was nothing like Omer. He was a solid W.A.S.P—blonde hair, blue eyes, Protestant, from Michigan. He was a mathematics major, and pretty stoic apart from a weird pension for internet humor. Grayson started noticing Julia’s waning affections right away. When he confronted her, she didn’t tell him everything—in fact, she told him nothing. She just broke it off for reasons she had been collecting for months.

            Neither of them, to be entirely frank, was upset about the split. 

            Julia’s attention was on Omer, and Grayson’s attention was on bitcoins.

*          *          *

Julia didn’t think much about it when one day Omer didn’t text at the usual time she had become accustomed to. She did start thinking more about it when another day went by, and then another, and another. Finally, a week had turned around and she hadn’t had a single call or text. She didn’t try to contact him, out of fear of seeming desperate…but she was a little miffed.

            Then, finally, on the ninth day of having no contact at all, Julia finally happened to run into Omer completely by random. She was at the mall with some of her friends, and she happened to spot him in the food court. Despite having snuck around for the better half of three months, her friends didn’t know a thing about who this guy was or what was going on—the only slight indication of his existence came from the sound of the headboard in her bedroom banging against the wall.

Omer didn’t notice her, but Julia could see he was accompanied by who appeared to be members of his family. They were eating pizzas together, and enjoying one another’s company. He was also with a girl. She was very pretty—olive complexion, dark eyes, and a turquois hijab to match the blue accents in her blouse and pants.

            Julia put two and two together, and figured that the pretty girl was Omer’s…whatever she was.

            After seeing that, Julia was prepared to give him up. After all, he had stopped contacting her. They had laid down the situation to one another very early on in their tryst. They knew it was going to happen eventually, she just hadn’t supposed that he would be the first to break free. She hadn’t supposed that she would be so bothered by it, either. She was actually truly upset, but determined not to show it.

            She was really surprised when one night, about two weeks after she had last heard from him, Omer popped up at her apartment right before she went to bed. He looked slightly distressed, and Julia was pretty surprised to see him. She had just showered and didn’t have a bra or makeup on—though she didn’t know why she cared so much, he’d seen her in less.

            “Sorry it’s kind of late, I’m kind of freaking out a bit, I just—”

            Julia stood there, her arms cross over her chest. Her hair was up in a towel. Her face was so clean from the rigid exfoliation that it shined. She wore an oversized grey shirt, and men’s boxer shorts. Omer’s jaw tightened up, and he couldn’t finish his sentence.

            “Come on, sit down.” She insisted, pulling him over to the couch. “Do you want something to drink?”

            They sat down.

            “No, I’m okay. Well, I’m not okay.”

            “I know.”

            “I missed you.”

            “I know.”

            “You missed me.”

            “Yeah, I did.”

            He took a deep breath, running his hands through his hair with anxiety.

            “I want you more than I need you…and, I need you pretty bad.” He spoke, his hands sliding down to cover his face. “I felt like a dick for not calling, I am a dick for not calling…”

            “Omer, stop. Come on.”

            She reached over, and took his hand. She held it in hers. She did it because she knew this was it—this was the doozy. This was the defining point in their very small, very strange relationship. A relationship between two people who were the stragglers in each other’s lives—the ones in the middle, the ones who were on the outside looking in.

            “I want you to know that I have feelings for you. I have a lot of them, and they’re extremely complicated. It feels like love, Julia. It hurts like love is supposed to.”

            “Come on, Omer. Come on, don’t say that.” She shook her head, trying to make reason out of it. “I know it’s my fault. I made the first move, I know that. It was all me, and I don’t care. I’m glad it happened. But it’s past tense, you’re in the process of moving on—”

            “I’m not. I’m really not.” He insisted, shaking his head. “I know you want me to say that we’re just fucking, but we’re not. I thought about you every day, all day, when I didn’t call. You know I mean it.”

            “I know.”

            “Then what?” He asked her. “We can make it work.”

            “No, we can’t.” She told him, quietly. “I’m drawing a line in the sand here. You’re on that side; I’m on this side. You had a plan before I came into the picture, and you’ll have one after I’ve walked out of it—I’m not the chosen one. I’m not the one who is going to interrupt your…arrangement…”

            “Julia…” He muttered. “You don’t mean it…the whole, your side my side thing…We’ve been acting like we’re together. I think we’re together. I think you and I are, you know, more.” 

“Let’s just leave it as it is, for what it is. I mean, we’re incredibly fucked up individuals for what we’ve done…” She hesitated, she pressed her hand against her chest. The tears were streaming down her cheeks and into the creases of her mouth. “We were close, we were damn close…”

He moved to reach out and touch her, but she stood up.

“Omer…I’m not going to say it, so...Just go, okay?”

He stood up with her, and they walked over to the door. They stood together in the threshold. Omer grasped her hand, and brought it up to his lips. He kissed the top of her knuckles, and inside of her palm. His eyes met hers, and she smiled faintly.

He wanted to hug her. He wanted to touch her. She wanted him to touch her, too. She was hoping he was going to try to reach out again, pull her in, and give her another reason to really regret it. This was their most personal moment. This was their most personal contact—nothing touching at all, but their hands.

He nodded, biting his bottom lip, and he left.

It may, or may not, have been worth it to let go…because they didn’t really let go at all. She closed the door, and she felt like a window was open somewhere, waiting. He walked down to the bus stop, still biting his lip so hard the inside started bleeding in small amounts.

They were both slumped up against a wall with broken hearts that afternoon, and they stayed that way for a while.

Banna.

She opened one eye, then the other.

Rain hit the windowpane in front of her. The sheets felt like heaven, everything else felt like it was smothering her. The air, the soft sound of traffic from the window, the colors the outside world made when it danced in the light through the window—she bit her lower lip, and closed her eyes again.

Her head rested gently against her hand, and she clutched a blue blanket with flowers on it—it was a security thing from way back in her childhood. If someone were looking in, they’d think she was as peaceful as anyone.

It was the middle of the day, around 3pm.

She’d just graduated from college, and was living with her mom—a fifty-something new-age sort who worked at the library until close.

She figured there was very little to do with her English degree. It felt imposed upon her. After all, she’d practically grown up in the library where her mother toiled day in and day out—organizing, reorganizing, replacing, scanning. Her first memory was of riding side-saddle on the book cart as her mother walked around the vast rows, alphabetizing.

“Pick a book, any book.” Her mother told her.

She was six, and reached towards the shelf. She pulled down a large green volume. The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson.

“Good girl!” Her mother beamed with pride.

That was the beginning of the fad that would last a lifetime. A lifetime of writing, rewriting, reading, rereading, and longing to be an important literary figure people would remember. Yet, here she was. There was nothing special about her volumes of wordy poetry, her alliteration, her mediocre dramas spat on the pages of her marble notebook.

She laid in her bed now because she was living in a different world from everyone else. She felt like an alien, a thing of weird circumstance. She wanted to read substance, she wanted to read things that made her quiver—better, she wanted to write things that made other people quiver.

But she was living in a different world.

She was living in a world where Fifty Shades of Grey was being called erotica.

Her mother had put Vanna on the birth certificate, but a typo had made her come out of the hospital legally named ‘Banna’. The way it ended up, her mother actually preferred Banna, and decided to keep it. A lot of people thought it was Banana. She had to correct a new person every other day since forever.  
            Banna. Banna. Banna. Nana. Nana. Nana. Bah-nana.
            Banna grew up getting postcards from her dad. She never met him in the flesh. He was living in India, and at one point before she was born he’d changed his name from Greg to Santi—it meant ‘peace’ in Hindi. In his postcards and letters, he referred to himself as her father…It was an unusual arrangement, and she knew the truth.

Her mother had met Santi in college, and they became best friends. Santi was searching for enlightenment, and they bonded over books and conversations on philosophy. They were practically inseparable for ten years following their college graduation—they had platonic sleepovers discussing books that lasted until the early morning hours, they had brunch together, hung over after nights of partying with their hippy friends, and walked around the mall wearing sarongs and sandals made of hemp.

Santi announced one day that he was moving to India to seek a purer way of life, and Banna’s mother was devastated for a couple of days. After all, she was thirty-three, and unmarried. She wasn’t close to many people. She resented the idea of losing Santi, because he was the closest thing that she’d had to intimacy with another person.

After brooding, she devised a plan, and pitched it to her best friend.

Santi was asexual, but when he watched Banna’s mother sitting there in a pool of her own tears, he quietly consented to her wish. She had asked him if he would have sex with her, purely for the purpose of conceiving. She wanted to have a baby, and had for a long time—she just didn’t have anyone in mind to help her out.

Santi was the perfect person to father her child. He was smart, kind, handsome, and someone she could trust. He was also going away, and having his baby would preserve a piece of him with her always. When she put it to him that way, Santi really couldn’t say no.

They came to a once-a-week agreement until her pee sticks came back with a positive result. It didn’t take too long. Santi was incredibly patient, supportive, and made the sessions as personal as he could without stepping over the line of their agreement. They weren’t in romantic love, but they loved each other—he was giving her a gift.

Banna’s mom was three months pregnant when Santi said he had to go. His papers were sorted out, and he had only a limited time to enter the country. The terms of their agreement were informal, but settled out—he was going to be father to the child, he was going to financially assist this child if need be, and he was going to keep in touch as often as possible.

And so, thousands of post cards, pictures, and letters later—Banna knew a lot about Santi, and called him Dad.

As a kid in grade school, her classmates made fun of her for having a ‘pretend’ dad, and she began to actually doubt his existence. That’s when her mother came out with it. She sat Banna down, and told her she knew she was mature enough for a ten year old, and deserved to know the truth. Santi wasn’t pretend, he was just a Hindu living in India, walking around barefoot, shaving his head annually to rid himself of sin, and giving alms.

The rest of Banna’s growing up had a lot to do with feelings of being an outsider. She sometimes thought that she’d have been better off having been born in a different time period, in a different country. She was exhausted from having to explain everything to new persons—this kind of small talk ritual didn’t impress her, or turn her on.

Why’re you named that? What’s your dad’s name again? What are you going to do with an English degree? Why is your father in India? What is he doing? What does your mother do?

But it didn’t get better, it got worse, and here she was.

            Banna worked in a coffee shop, and had been working there for about a year. Every day she had to interact with people who were under the impression that she was far more normal than she actually was. This was in part because she had found a nametag that read ‘Britney’ when sweeping under a counter one day, and had taken to wearing it on her apron.

            Britneys were less suspicious than Bannas.

            But today didn’t feel like a day to go to work. Today felt different. It had been raining for ages, and it didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon. Her bed was too comfortable to leave at 8am…still too comfortable at noon…

            The phone rang.

            She pulled her blue blanket over her head to hide from the sound. It was obnoxious, and resonated throughout the wooden structure of the house, absorbed by absolutely nothing. With no one to answer the call, the answering machine picked up after the sixth ring.

“Hey, Bannie, I’m just calling to see if you’re coming into work today—Val is super pissed you didn’t show up, but I told her you were too sick to call in…Bannie, please call me back. You’re freaking me out a little.”
            Click.

Banna recognized the voice. It was Natalie from work. Natalie was a super tall redhead, and the only person in Bannas life to ever call her Bannie.

Natalies are less conspicuous than Bannas.

It was nice of her to care, but today wasn’t a day for caring about work. It wasn’t a day for caring about much of anything. It was a day for staying in bed. It was one of those days.

In fact, it was the kind of day that discouraged her from sitting up and smoking a cigarette. It was the kind of day that made her want a dog around to snuggle with, a big dog—like a golden retriever. It was the kind of day that made her sleep with a bottle of Demerol under her pillow.

Banna sat up, and reached over for the half-full glass of water on the bedside table. She never went to sleep without a glass of water. She took the pill bottle from under her pillow. She counted five pills. Five was a sensible number. She stuffed them in her mouth one by one before chasing it with the rest of the water.

It wasn’t a whole lot to think about. It would be enough to kill her or sedate her for hours—only time would tell. Regardless, her mother was coming home around eight and would figure it out anyway. If she didn’t, oh well…that’s the chance you take when you play with dangerous things.

She laid her head back down, pulled the blue blanket up to her shoulders, and stared at the rain slowly dripping down the windowpane.

“…I fucking hate Fifty Shades of Grey…”

The Kid.

He sat at the street corner, in front of a pizza shop. The morning dew dripped lazily off of the awning behind him—that’s how early it was. Some old man in a white apron came out of the pizza shop to bend over for a stretch, and smoke a doobie. He was Frank, who made the pizzas from scratch every morning. He had been doing that same old crap for fifteen years—his body ached from hunching over to kneed the bread, to stir the sauce. Frank thought making pizzas for life was like being in a bad relationship—you could bitch about it, but at the end of the day, you still get the good stuff whenever you want it.

The guy on the corner knew this, as he had sat on this corner before many times. 

Our kid here on the corner couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. He had a baby-face, long hair cut shorter in the back than in the front, intense eyes that scoped the area with their blue-silver irises, and he was decked from head to toe in the kind of denim regalia that you could only find at second-hand stores. Nestled in his arms was an old acoustic guitar with a strap—no case for it or nothing, he just held it all the time.

He arched his neck.

“You got another one of those, Frank?”

Frank looked over, exhaling a bit of smoke from the corner of his mouth. He didn’t exactly reply, but he reached into the pocket of his apron anyway and pulled out another joint and a box of matches. He moseyed over to the kid on the corner, and handed them to him.

“Here, only cos’ you’re broke.” Frank muttered, looking away.

“I can’t afford to act like it.” Corner guy said, striking a match and lighting up. “I mean, I’m gonna have a kid soon and whatever…”

This got Frank’s attention, because he suddenly looked back and made eye contact with this corner guy for the first time.

Frank had seen this kid for two years. For two years, this gutter rat would come and park up on the corner with his guitar. For two years, patrons of the pizza shop bore witness to this guy’s highs and lows—pitiful strumming to melancholy blues songs about cheating women, upbeat folks tunes about being free on the road, anything and everything in between. For two whole years, Frank would come outside to smoke and this kid would be sitting here starting out his day. He never thought to say anything to him at all until today, but this revelation the corner kid just sprang up with seemed to be an entirely appropriate time for Frank to dish out what he had been thinking these two years.

“Is that what kids like you are doing these days, impregnating girls? Do you even know what that kind of responsibility takes?” Frank’s voice suddenly rose over the quiet of the entire block. “Look kid, I have four children of my own. They’re entirely ungrateful assholes, all of them. They think they can take off, come back, and live on my dime whenever they feel like it…I make nothing working here, and I only enjoy it because it’s fucking pizza. When one of my assholes decided to go to college, I had to work sixty hours a week…sixty fucking hours. And you know what he did? Do you? He decided to drop out on me!”

The guy on the corner was silent.

“Look kid…if you’re going to be a father…why are you sitting here playing for pennies and people’s time? Didn’t you have a father of your own, can’t you look at his life and whatever he did—and learn something from it?”

There was silence on the block again.

Frank put the joint back in his mouth. He slowly turned, and went back inside the pizza shop. The dew on the awning still dropped. There was a car or two that passed, but it was still too early—the shop wouldn’t open for another two hours.

The kid on the corner placed his hands on his guitar, but couldn’t strum. He glanced around at the street in front of him, but suddenly didn’t feel anything. The joint was down to the nub, so he blew out the last of the smoke and tossed it to the ground. For the first time in two years, he didn’t feel like playing anymore.

He got up, swung the guitar around his torso onto his back, and stepped out into the street.

At that very second, a forty-something mother of two in a grey suburban came speeding around the corner. She didn’t see the corner guy, because she was too busy digging for her sunglasses in her purse. When she collided with the kid, right at his hip, it was too late. It only took five seconds, and he was lying on the concrete—his left leg shattered, his guitar busted beyond use.

*          *          *

When Frank got off of work that afternoon, he headed down to the nearest hospital where he knew they were keeping the kid. He felt like a pile of shit. After all, he had told the guy all kinds of really unpleasant malarkey only moments before he got bulldozed by a vehicle ten times his size.

He still felt like a tool when he moseyed up to the nurses’ station, and was face to face with the most lethargic looking RN he’d ever seen in his life.

“So, I don’t know the name of this kid…” Frank stated, with a nervous stutter. “But he’s uh…he’s blonde, about twenty-two…he came in this morning around nine, had been hit by a car.”

“Oh.” The girl shuffled through some papers. “Ezra Pritchard. Room 104—down this hall, take a right, first door on the left.”

As Frank slowly made his way down the neon white hallway, passing old and young, people in wheelchairs hooked up to cables, and open doors with sick people in beds—he felt weirder and weirder. There was something like rage in him, the residue from the conversation that morning when he had mentioned his own children. He had meant every word he had said about them. But on the flip side, there was this little odd hole in his stomach—it seems he couldn’t really relax unless he knew this corner kid was okay.

So when he came up to the closed door of Room 104, he took a haggard breath, and knocked stiffly.

It took a few seconds, but he only had to knock once. The door creaked open, and a girl of twenty-something with long dark hair and brown eyes stuck her head out. She had bags under her eyes, and little makeup on.

“Can I help you?” She asked in a calm, quiet voice.

“Yeah, uh…I’m Frank Stilano…I pulled him off the street after the accident.”

It was blunt, and the girl stared at him for a second without reply. Then, stepping out of the door, she stood in front of him with wide eyes. She was incredibly small for being pregnant, which she was—a small bump was forming under her sundress. Her arms were thin, and so were her legs. Frank assessed that she just couldn’t be Italian.

“Thank you, so much…you don’t know what this means to me.” She spoke sincerely, her voice still soft and quiet. “I mean, I don’t know what I would have done if he…”

“I guess you’re his girlfriend or something?”

“Yes, I am.” She raised her eyebrow slightly. “Do you know Ezra?”

“He just sits outside of the shop in the mornings. He was crossing the street to the corner when he was hit. I’m out there around the same time he gets there.”

“I’m glad you were. I’m really glad.”

“I know this is a bit of a shit question, but…are they going to throw him out of the hospital when he wakes up?”

“Oh, no…my parents are helping us. They say he’s going to be out of here in a day or two, so…they really love Ezra, they just want him to get better. When he wakes up, we’ll go to my parents’. He can rest there until his hip is healed up.” 

Frank dug into his pocket, and took out his wallet. He sorted through a few bills, and pulled one out. He handed the hundred dollar bill to her.

“Here, just…just give him this when he wakes up. Don’t tell him it’s from me.”

“I will.”

“It’s for you both, I guess. I don’t want the kid to have nothing when he gets out of here. Put it towards the baby, or something.”

“That’s really nice of you…you really didn’t have to—”

“Who is his father anyway? Some gutter-punk lowlife?” Frank inquired, angrily. “Why’s it just you here all alone? Shouldn’t his parents be here?”  

“My mom and dad are coming back tonight with some food, they went home to change.”

“And his parents? Huh? Drugs? In and out of shelters?”

“Ezra’s mom was a dental hygienist who ran off with her boss when he was really young, his dad’s a doctor…" She stopped for a moment, and bit her bottom lip. "He threw him out when he was fifteen because he applied to an arts academy for music and got in…”

“He got in?”

“Yeah...Interlochen Arts Academy. He can play five instruments. He wanted to be a musician, and his dad told him he was shit, and threw him out. When we met, he was doing what he’s still doing—”

“Just playing on the corner?”

“He wakes up at five in the morning every morning, and goes play in front of the pizza shop until noon. Then he comes home, takes a shower, and sleeps until about two—then he gets up, and goes work at the chemical plant until midnight. Then he comes home…He lives with me for now, at my parent’s house. When I met him a year ago, he was living at the homeless shelter on Crook Street.”

Frank glanced down at the ground.

“Look, uh…” He muttered, digging his hands in his pockets. “When he heals up, tell him we’d like to have him back on the corner…if he wants, I can even talk to the boss and see if he can get a job as a busboy or something. He knows where to find me.”

The corner of her mouth twitched for a second, and slowly crept into a smile. Without warning, she put her arms around Frank, and gave him the first hug he’d had in about six years. He was so stunned from the feeling of it, he didn’t really know what to do. So he just let her hug him, and when she pulled away, the warmth stayed.

When she smiled at him, nodded, and went back in the room—the warmth stayed.

It stayed.