Subway Love Read Online Free Page A

her BlackBerry the whole time. Jonas was grateful she hadn’t tried to come in, and he was surprised she remembered him now.
    Jonas’s father still hadn’t figured out what was going on. He looked around as if there was someone else named Jonas that this woman might be calling out to.
    Nick whispered, “Is that her? Shit, she’s hot. Sorry, man, but she is.”
    She was, if you liked that kind of body — round, big breasts, long legs in high heels. Never Jonas’s type. Not his father’s type either if you judged by the woman he had been married to for the past eighteen years. Nothing like his mother.
    Nick and Jonas slowed their pace but moved forward, and eventually the four were face-to-face. Jonas’s father made the first awkward move. He leaned in stiffly, hugged his son, and then turned to shake Nick’s hand.
    “Hello, boys,” he said. “Well, Nick, you’ve certainly grown.”
    “That’s generally what happens,” Jonas said.
    Then it was quiet.
    A train roared into the station, but nobody moved. Lorraine suddenly spoke up. “So, Jonas. Are we going to be seeing you one of these days?”
    It was strange — like someone had given her a different script and she was reading for the wrong movie.
Like, hey, maybe you haven’t noticed but my dad was married when he started shtupping you, and now my whole family is totally fucked up. So, when are you going to be seeing me? Probably never.
    “Seriously?” Jonas said. “We gotta go.” He started walking away, and then, just like it
was
a movie, a trio warming up against a wall — violin, guitar, and bagpipes, of all things — started their woeful music.
    “There’s no cause to be rude,” his father said.
    “Well, technically you could . . .”
    But his father raised his hand and cut him off before Jonas could continue. Jonas watched as his father protectively took Lorraine’s arm and led her away as if from a contaminated dump site.
    “What the hell was that?” Nick asked. They sat down on the same bench where Jonas had been sitting the day before when he had seen the girl who he so badly wanted to find again.
    “What?”
    “That.
That.
Your dad. What the hell?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “It just came out.”
    “Damn.” Nick shook his head.
    Jonas was silent, still struggling in his mind with the image of his dad and that woman touching. She had taken his arm? Or had he taken hers?
    Nick and Jonas both looked straight ahead at the platform on the other side.
    “Is that where she was sitting?”
    Jonas nodded. “Yeah.”
    “Does she have brown hair? Long, parted in the middle?”
    Jonas felt the beat of his heart quicken. “Yeah.” He looked around for her.
    “Is she kind of slim and really, really pretty?”
    “Yeah, where?”
    “Is that her, right there? Walking toward us?”
    It was an old woman, the kind who might be a bag lady but then again might just be someone’s grandmother who wore too many layers of clothing. And carried a lot of plastic bags.
    “Oh, fuck you, Nicholas. I’m not in the mood.”
    “Sorry.”
    Jonas slouched down on the bench. “You’re sorry a lot.”
    “I guess so, but I really am. I was just trying to take your mind off your shitty dad.”
    He was, wasn’t he? Shitty.
But it really wasn’t for anyone else to say.
    “Sorry,” Nick said. “Again. I know, yes. I’m sorry a lot.”
    “It’s all right,” Jonas said. “So am I, I guess.”
    LAURA noticed her brother had slowed his pace. The sprint he had led her on as soon as they got out of the subway ended as they turned onto the avenue and neared the apartment.
    The doorman recognized them and opened the door.
    “You here till Sunday?” he asked. He sat back down on his stool and swiveled around toward the phone and the switchboard. He would need to call up first to let their father know they had arrived.
    Mitchell actually stopped walking to answer. “Yeah.”
    They weren’t the only kids whose parents were divorced, but Laura