Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [80]
Jess wasn’t sure if he was moving their hands or if Frankie was pushing them down, but for a long moment he couldn’t do anything other than watch them and feel the soft wrinkle and tug of vintage cotton slip-sliding over hot, sweaty skin.
They were standing so close together now that their thighs were brushing, denim against denim. Frankie’s eyes flashed and Jess knew with a sudden shock that he was about to get jumped in front of God, Miranda, and everybody.
Scary, sure, but even scarier was his suspicion that he might not be able to make himself care enough to stop it.
“Outside,” he said hoarsely. “Please.”
Frankie wet his bottom lip, slow and obscene. “Sure, Bit. Could use a touch of fresh air myself.”
Summer had gone into full swing in the last few days, but even the greenhouse effect of all Manhattan’s glass skyscrapers couldn’t trap the heat for long. The sun had gone down hours ago and a light crispness rode the night breeze. Jess shivered as it teased across his overheated skin as they emerged from the bar.
Chapel was an underground joint, the thick wooden door nearly hidden from the street unless you knew where to look. Jess had been surprised that the Market crew would bother with the forty-five-minute subway ride to the Lower East Side just to get to their favorite drinking hole when there were plenty of dives, complete with peanut-shell-strewn floors and crop-top-clad barmaids, along Amsterdam Avenue just a few blocks from the restaurant. He supposed it had to do with tradition—most of them had been coming to Chapel after dinner service at other restaurants for years—and the fact that lots of the cooks and servers lived downtown or in Brooklyn, so Chapel was on the way home.
Frankie’s place was close by, a grotty attic apartment he laughingly referred to as “the Garret,” like some bohemian painter in twenties Paris. Jess adored it. Stepping into the Garret was like entering a sultan’s desert tent, all dark and enclosed with sumptuous, if threadbare, material everywhere. Everything from woven Navajo mats to faded Persian rugs covered the entire open space, layering over one another haphazardly and forming a soft barrier between the hard floor and the bare feet Frankie insisted on. There wasn’t any furniture to speak of, but the patterned satin pillows, round overstuffed bolsters, and huge tasseled cushions Frankie had picked up at flea markets cast every Garret activity in the most leisurely, decadent version of itself. Frankie didn’t sit down at a table to eat, he lolled against a pile of velvet. He didn’t lie down on a bed to sleep, he reclined at his ease in a nest of chenille blankets, beckoning Jess to join him. He’d spent many stolen hours holed up in Frankie’s otherworldly den of iniquity, lost in softness, silence, and the newness of everything that happened between them.
They talked. A lot. Well, Jess talked and Frankie looked amused. But even with the cascade of details that had spilled out over the Garret, Jess still hadn’t talked about Brandewine University, or why he’d run home to Miranda like a wussy little baby. Part of him wanted to tell, and was sure Frankie wouldn’t laugh or judge (he wasn’t a very judgy sort of person), but shame always choked Jess before he could even try.
There were few lamps in the Garret, and none with bright, fluorescent bulbs. Crazy antique oil lanterns and a table lamp with a Tiffany glass shade were about it. The slanted ceiling sported a grimy skylight, but it let in more ambient city light than moonlight.
Jess imagined even the sunshine through that cloudy window would be weak and muddy. It was just a guess, though. He’d never actually seen the Garret in daylight. Frankie wouldn’t let him stay the night. Not that Jess had really pushed, since he’d yet to come up with a plausible reason to give Miranda for staying out till morning, but still. There was something about the firm but gentle way that Frankie ushered him out the door every night at the