Engaging Men Read Online Free Page A

like one. Big time.
    “What on earth are you doing?” I cried, though I knew exactly what he was up to. Collecting other people’s castoffs. For as lovable as Justin was, he had the single worst trait you could have in a roommate: He was a pack rat.
    “Hey,” he said, glancing up at me from where he stood, bent over his latest find: a turquoise-green sofa that had clearly seen better days. “Can you believe someone left this for garbage?”
    Uh, yeah, I thought, studying the yellow floral trim and sunken seat cushions with renewed horror.
    “It was right out front, too.”
    I felt a groan rising up. A threadbare couch, circa 1975, right in front of the building. Clearly there was no way Justin could have resisted. “Justin, we already have two couches.” One of which he had promised to get rid of after he dragged hom.e his last couch acquisition. I realized once again why inheriting your Aunt Eleanor’s spacious, rent-stabilized two-bedroom could be a curse, at least in Justin’s case. In addition to the assorted furnishings Aunt Eleanor had left behind for her favorite nephew, Justin had acquired, among other things, four television sets, three VCRs, six file cabinets and a Weber outdoor grill that I assumed he was saving for some suppressed suburban dreamhouse with a garage big enough to store Yankee Stadium, should any future mayor carry out Rudy Giuliani’s threat to tear down the current home of the Bronx Bombers. For surely if that day ever did come, Justin would feel compelled to save some part of it. In his warped little mind, Justin didn’t think he was collecting junk so much as rescuing it.
    “Ange, you think you could give me a hand with this?” he said.
    I sighed, realizing I would have to give in for the moment, trapped as I was in the hallway until my roommate’s monstrous new acquisition was moved.
    “How did you get this up here anyway?” I asked. Though Justin was well muscled for a lanky guy, I somehow couldn’t picture him maneuvering a three-hundred-pound sofa up the two long flights to our apartment.
    “David in three-B gave me a hand. And he said he had some old lamps if we were interested—”
    Ack! “Justin, honey, we need to talk…” I began gently, trying to not completely douse the delighted gleam in his eyes. But just as I was about to launch into a speech about the dangers of recycling, the phone rang.
    “Can you…?” I asked, gesturing toward the couch that stood between me and the rest of the apartment.
    I slumped against the doorway as Justin grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” he sang into the phone, in his usual chipper voice. “Hey, Mrs. Di, how are you?”
    My mother. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and waited while Justin practiced his usual charm on her. I sometimes think she called to talk to him, judging by the giddiness that was ever present in her voice whenever Justin finally handed over the phone. That was just Justin’s way, I supposed. Even I had been charmed by him from the moment we had met in an improv class four years earlier. At the time, we were both just starting out in acting, Justin having given up a career behind the camera when the feature-length film he’d directed won a lot of buzz on the festival circuit and a prestigious award but ultimately no distributor. He claimed that he wanted to expand his horizons now that he had realized just how hard it was to get a movie out there. I wondered at that, since it seemed to me that it was just as hard to get yourself out there as an actor. But Justin seemed happy enough to take a union job as a grip for a production company based out of Long Island City, which gave him the kind of flexibility he needed to pursue acting.
    Our improv teacher had paired us together, me being the only student without a partner when Justin straggled in, even later to class than I had been. I was a bit scared of working with Justin, who, with his dark blond hair, green eyes and tall good looks, was just the kind of