When No One Is Watching(36)

He suddenly turns and snaps a picture of me.

I lower the water bottle from my lips. “What the eff, Theo?”

“Sorry,” he says, looking at the camera’s display screen. He’s not sorry. “Couldn’t resist.”

He turns and shows me the photo of myself with the bottle held near my mouth, lips moist and slightly parted. My braids are pulled up from my face, showing the smooth stretch of my deep summer-brown skin over my cheekbones and the darker circles under my eyes.

I look . . . attractive, I guess.

But tired.

I look like my mom.

“So what’s the plan, boss?” he asks as he pulls the camera back and glances at the screen one more time before turning it off. “How does all this fit into the tour?”

“Well, I don’t think we’ll walk all the way over here during the block party, but I want to mention this neighborhood, since it overlapped Gifford Place at its peak. But I’m probably gonna start way before that with the Native Americans who lived in the area—”

“That’s a pretty broad lens.”

“—and then talk about the enslaved Africans who helped the Dutch build their initial farm holdings on the land they stole from the Algonquin.”

“The Dutch? Not the British?”

“Weren’t you supposed to look up the Dutch West India Company?” I ask, shooting him an annoyed look.

Theo’s eyes are warm. “I didn’t get around to it. But I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because I like when you pull out your ruler, especially now that I know you only do it for me.”

He stands up and walks away, like he’s just pulled some smooth move and I’m supposed to sit here all flustered. I scoff. If this is his idea of flirtation, he better hope I never actually decide to give in to my curiosity, because he’s not ready for this jelly. The only reason I feel this buzzy sensation is because I need a nap. And the fluttering in my stomach is because I need food.

I get up and follow him, and as we head out the woman at the entrance calls us over. “You know where you can go if you’re looking into the history of the neighborhood? The AME around the corner. Our archivist is always tapping their historian on the shoulder for something or another. Kendra Hill is her name. She’s basically a walking encyclopedia of this area.”

“I know Ms. Hill,” I say through a pasted-on smile. “She’s a friend of my mother’s. I can call her and set things up.” I turn to Theo. “Wanna head there tomorrow if she’s free? And if you’re free.”

I wince internally; just like that and I’m already assuming he’ll be there to help. I haven’t learned my lesson at all.

“I’m free,” he says. “I said I’d help. So I’m going to help.”

I scramble for a snarky response, but the only thing I come up with is a quiet “Thanks.”

I’m tired.

I need help.

I’ll take it.





Gifford Place OurHood post by LaTasha Clifton:

OMG, check out this Secret New York article! It’s about how there used to be secret tunnels under the Medical Center!

Amber Griffin: Wut?! The mole people are real??

Candace Tompkins: No mole people. The hospital was a factory for a little while after the sanitarium closed down, and there were underground passageways. They were used to transport shipments back in the day.

LaTasha Clifton: What kind of shipment needs to be carried underground??

Candace Tompkins: They didn’t want to bother the rich people who lived in the neighborhood.

Amber Griffin: I don’t buy it. MOLE. PEOPLE. PERIODT.





Chapter 9

Theo

WHEN I WAKE UP FROM A BOREDOM-INDUCED NAP, THE LATE-EVENING light is throwing shadows that highlight the raging boner tenting my boxers.

It feels wrong having this thrum of excitement in my veins for the first time in months, and not for Kim, but not as wrong as it should.

I shouldn’t be popping wood over Sydney. She’s just my neighbor. The end.

My dick jumps and I heave a frustrated sigh, then roll groggily out of bed and head to my bathroom on autopilot. When I turn on the tap in my shower it makes a sound like a smoker’s hacking cough followed by a clang somewhere—still no water, of course.

I crack my front door and drop my head as I poke it out, half from defeat and half listening for any of the usual sounds that bounce up from downstairs when Kim is home.

Nothing.

My body unclenches at what the silence signals: No tiptoeing around. No waiting for the anvil I’d thought I could evade to finally drop out of the sky like in the old cartoons Mom would put on, volume high, to keep me busy when her latest boyfriend came over. Sometimes in the cartoons, the heavy objects falling out of the sky were unavoidable acts of malice. More often, the character about to get walloped had set his own anvil-smashing in motion through some combination of greed, hubris, and stupidity.

Yeah. I guess I hadn’t paid enough attention to that part.

I wrap a towel around myself and head downstairs to shower off my sleep sweat—it’s still hot as fuck in my room and I feel sticky and sluggish.

I’m relieved at the thought that Kim is gone, again, even if she is with someone else. Maybe I should be raging and trying to win her back, but all I can think of is how nice it will be to cook dinner on the stove tonight, like a grown-up, instead of eating Cup Noodles rehydrated with water heated on the hot plate in my studio. Maybe I can turn on her AC, relax, and finally look up this Dutch West India Company stuff I told Sydney I would research.