Fall (VIP 3)

“Maybe I’ll play tonight,” I tell Killian, and open the fridge again. “Go back to whatever you were doing.”

“Who I was doing,” he corrects. “And I was doing my wife—ow, Libs. What’s with the pinching?”

I hear Libby squawking in the background, and I laugh. “Maybe not put her business out there, brother.”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Got that loud and clear.”

Smiling, I pull out a pot of stew I made yesterday. “I’m really fucking disappointed in you if that’s what you were doing when you answered the phone.”

“Hey,” he protests, “I was being a good friend.”

My smile disappears. He’s babysitting me again. What’s worse? That I felt the need to call him in the first place? I suppress a sigh. “Be a good husband and entertain your wife. I’m going now.”

Hanging up, I stare at my stew. I can’t stay here. Outside, the blizzard blows harder. I’m alone, but I have food. A lot of it. And it’s good. Some others aren’t likely to be as lucky.

Jogging into the laundry room, I grab a small hamper and then put the stew and other supplies into it. I carry it down two flights and knock on the door.

Maddy answers and breaks into a wide smile. “Well, hello, handsome.”

“Maddy, looking gorgeous as ever.”

She laughs, and it comes out a bit wheezy. “Sweet talker. What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to know if you’d like to have dinner with me. Might I interest you in some beef stew?”

She beams as though I’ve made her week. Putting that look on her face makes me happy, but there’s also a sense of discomfort. All I’m doing is sharing my food—hardly heroic stuff here.

“I would love to have dinner with you, Jax. Come on in.” She turns and heads back into her apartment.

I slow my pace to match hers. Maddy’s place is smaller, the ceilings lower. It’s tastefully done, filled with antiques and fine furniture. In many ways, it’s like an English home plunked down in the middle of Manhattan. I don’t need a therapist to tell me it reminds me of my childhood, even if Maddy is pure New Yorker sass.

I met her when I moved in a few months ago. At the time, she was trying to haul a cart of books up the front stoop. The woman is five feet and probably weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet, but still she wouldn’t give up her struggle until I took the cart from her.

I’d soon learned that Maddy had been a stockbroker, one of the only women making it in the field during the 1960s and ’70s. I’m fairly certain she could buy the building but she seems content to live in her small one-bedroom.

I follow her into her kitchen, and she pulls out a big pot to heat up the stew. “What else do you have in that basket, Little Red?”

“Cute,” I say, setting down my hamper. “I have some salad and a nice baguette.”

Maddy leans against the counter and pulls an electronic cigarette from a drawer. “Young man, you make it entirely too easy to tease.”

Shaking my head, I prepare the stew. “And you have a dirty mind, Mrs. Goldman.”

“It’s Mrs. Goldman now, eh?” She draws on the electronic cigarette and peers at me through ridiculously long false eyelashes.

“I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

Maddy takes the bread and starts to cut it. “Honey, I’m seventy-four. I don’t have time for gentlemen.”

I laugh. “Noted.”

We eat dinner at the kitchen table that’s tucked in the corner by the window. It’s one of those old ’40s-style Formica-and-chrome sets better suited in a diner. The snow falls in thick, blowing waves.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the company, kid, but I would have expected you to be far out of town by now,” Maddy says between bites of stew.

She knows who I am. She recognized me as soon as I’d offered to help her with her bags that long-ago day. Apparently, she’s a Kill John fan.

“I guess I should be.” I grab a chunk of bread. “Couldn’t really think of anywhere I wanted to go.”

And that’s the plain truth. Killian and Scottie are both married now. Third-wheeling, it does not appeal. Rye and Whip are off at a health retreat. Not to get healthy, but to score women, which sounds kind of desperate, if you ask me. I could have hung out with Brenna, but we’d just start bickering eventually, given that she thinks I should settle down; I think she should mind her own business. And hanging with people who aren’t close friends is no different for me than being alone.

Maddy’s stare penetrates my thoughts. “You need to find yourself a woman. Someone to keep you company on cold nights.”

Not her too. I swear to God, you hit thirty and everyone tries to see you married off. It’s a fucking epidemic.