LOL: Laugh Out Loud (After Oscar, #2)(44)

“I won’t be back by then,” I told her.

“Then I’ll just let myself into the apartment and I’ll see you when you get home.”

I squeezed my fingers against my forehead in frustration. “I don’t have an apartment. I told you—I lost it after I lost my job.”

“Oh for the love of—” She cut herself off and let out a long breath. “Then where am I supposed to stay, Scotty?”

I felt my shoulders tense, the pressure of her expectations that I fix this for her squeezing around me. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t have a lot of money,” she said.

I gritted my teeth. “Join the fucking club. I don’t have any.”

“Scottybear,” she said, shifting automatically from commanding to sugar sweet. This was the woman who could charm the wallet right out of your pants in the middle of a Broadway lunch hour. “I need you to hurry up and get back here so we can share a place again. I don’t know how long my money’s gonna last if I can’t find a job right away and don’t have anyone to split rent with.”

“I’m trying to find a job,” I told her. How did she not understand? “I can’t magically make one appear out of thin air.”

“Remember that time after Jingo left and I had to work the streets?”

My stomach turned over. I was ten, and my mom had done that because she’d caught her boyfriend looking at me with a little too much interest. “Yeah, Mom. Of course I do.”

“You want your mama to end up back on the streets?”

It was a low blow. But an effective one. And it wasn’t like she was telling me anything I didn’t know. I did need a job, and both of us needed someone to share rent with in order to have any chance at getting our feet back under us. The sooner I got my head out of the clouds and realized my life wasn’t some dreamscape of sleigh rides in Vermont, the sooner I could get my ass back to the city and find work.

“Of course not,” I said, mentally packing away my dream. My stomach continued to churn, and I felt my chin begin to tremble. I couldn’t let her hear my emotion over the phone. I had to end the call.

“Of course not,” I repeated, trying to sound more sure of myself. “I’m working on it.”

“That’s a good son.” It sounded perfunctory, but the little boy inside me still preened at the statement. “Now give me a mailing address where you are. I gotta give it to the paperwork people in the morning so they can let me out of this place.”

My brain was only halfway engaged when I rattled off the address for Oscar’s place. The rest of my thoughts spun from the rapid shift between thinking about any way I could beg for work from Kip’s family and knowing I was heading back to Queens to find a minimum-wage job instead.

I ended the call and trudged back to the house, struggling like hell to think of a solution that didn’t involve looking at this multimillion-dollar home like easy pickings. When my mom had gotten me busted for petty larceny at thirteen, I’d gotten off with probation. The next year, I’d started working at the stables. But then she’d roped me into another one of her schemes when I was sixteen. That one ended in juvenile detention and a record. Thankfully it was sealed, but it still freaked me the hell out enough to keep me from ever doing anything to wind up back there.

And that was also part of the reason the medallion owner had immediately fired me at the stables. When you had a reputation for being a punk kid with juvie shit in your history, you weren’t given the benefit of the doubt when you returned to the stables with a police escort.

I opened the door to the mudroom and kicked off my boots.

“That you, Scotty?” Roman called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, it’s me.” I shucked off my coat and hung it on a hook.

Suddenly, Roman appeared in the doorway between the mudroom and kitchen. “You okay?”

I looked up at him and noticed concern etched in his handsome features. “Why do you ask?”

“You don’t sound right. What happened? Was it bad news about a job?”

“Oh, no. It’s not about a job.”

“Shit. Is it Nugget? Is she okay?”

Suddenly I realized I wasn’t going to be able to keep this from him, and my stomach plummeted. He would insist on helping. He’d insist on giving me money. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Roman.” My voice came out shaky and unsure.

The furrow between his eyebrow deepened. He took a step toward me. “Fuck, Scotty, whatever it is, we’ll fix it okay? Oscar probably knows a vet or—”

I walked right into his chest and slid my arms around him for one last hug. Because there was no doubt in my mind, my ugly past was going to mean having to say goodbye to this sweet man.

“Nugget’s fine,” I mumbled into the soft cotton of his shirt.

Roman’s arms came around me and held me tightly the way he had before when I’d needed comforting. He was solid and steady. A good man. Sincere, sweet and thoughtful. How the hell could I lie to him? I couldn’t. But I was so embarrassed. Of my past. Of my present. Of what I was about to ask him.

I pressed my face into the hot skin of his neck above his collar because I couldn’t bear to look at him when I said the next part. “I think I’m g-going t-to have to s-s-sell her.”