Heading to Boston for a party on Sunday, so…since Staten Island, NY is mostly on the way, just a slight detour, so…
I worked all day, then loaded up the car with my bags, my Cricut Joy, the dogs, and me…and we were off! On the road again…ha ha, you are welcome for the ear worm!
It’s about 2.5 hours to get to my dad’s house from ours, not too bad, didn’t hit much traffic, thankfully! We got to…
TW: Idiots in love, angst, smut (PiV, protected). 18+ only.
AN: Part of a series. The series masterlist here.
You were late. Again.
To be fair, though, it wasn’t your fault this time. When your plane landed at LaGuardia, it ended up taxiing for forty minutes until it found an available gate, and then you had to sprint to baggage claim. And then you had to find a taxi, and when you did, traffic was so bad that the driver shot into New Jersey and took I-95 to get to Staten Island.
It didn’t matter, as long as you got there eventually. Sometimes you had to take the long way round.
********
It was a subdued Thanksgiving, which suited Sonny just fine. Theresa’s daughters, since the divorce, had to split their holidays between their parents, so they were with their father. Theresa herself had opted to stay in Connecticut and host her own wine-based, solo Thanksgiving for herself. Gina and her latest boyfriend had stopped in for a quick dinner but had left to go to his family’s house on the other end of the island. Bella and her baby – a little girl named Moira – were taking a nap upstairs in her childhood bedroom, exhausted by the baby’s awful sleep schedule. That left Sonny parents and Tommy in the living room, watching the football game and dozing off from their respective turkey comas.
Sonny was so exhausted that he was having trouble sleeping. It had been an awful year. He had an undercover assignment with a men’s shelter that left him shaken to his core about the thin possibility of redemption for lost souls.
His sergeant had also been gunned down and killed. They never replaced him, though, so SVU was running perpetually short-handed. He rarely had time off, he never had time to recover from one case to the next, and his commanding officer seemed pretty cavalier about the mental wellness of her detectives.
If he ever needed his best friend, it was now, but he respected your choice to move to L.A.
He kept in touch with you, of course. He called and texted, and the two of you had a few video chat sessions. You showed him your cramped little apartment a few blocks from the ocean, and once you had a chat from London, where you were working on a limited episode run for a streaming service.
He loved seeing you, but it left him heart-sore. Seeing you on the screen of his laptop could not compare to the genuine article.
He held back a lot of his work struggles. He didn’t tell you how lonely he was, how much he missed his friend. He didn’t want to make you regret your choice. All the same, you seemed to sense when he was at his lowest, because a new playlist always seemed to appear for him to bolster his flagging spirits.
The best playlists, though, were the ones he was able to buy after you started your stint on the west coast. You got work – first with the limited run series, then with a bare-bones action film, then with a larger film. You scored a documentary, and the haunting piano and string-based score was nominated at some film festivals. Sonny bought every soundtrack and score that had your name on it.
He set up a news alert for your name and got some traffic. The best was a profile about new up-and-comers. It was a group shot of everyone in the piece, but he was able to crop everyone else out on his computer. You looked amazing in it: hair down and styled, in a chic tuxedo tailored to your form, with a slight smile on your face.
Still, he missed you. And on days like Thanksgiving, he felt your absence more keenly.
He sat with his parents and Tommy for a bit, half-heartedly watching the Lions play. He wondered what you were doing. Probably hanging out with your new friends, eating the authentic Mexican food you were always raving about.
He stood up abruptly and made his way down to the rec room in the basement. Most holidays – and summers when you were in college – that’s where you and Sonny ended up. It was your movie hub: just the two of you curled up on the couch together, under his nonna’s scratchy acrylic crocheted blanket (because he cranked the air to an uncomfortable degree on purpose), watching a movie and ignoring the tension between the two of you. Well, he knew it was tension now. At the time, he had just thought it was him.
He sprawled out across the old couch and turned on the TV, flipping through the channels until he found something. “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” Sonny smiled. It was one of your favorite movies, and he settled down and watched it. If his mind wandered, it wandered back to your final week in the city. Those few final days you had spent together, mostly in his bed (and in his shower and on his couch and once on his kitchen counter). He replayed those moments over and over, but the details had grown hazy over time. All he could vividly remember was the feeling of completion and contentment when you had fallen asleep beside him.
The movie was about halfway done when he heard people talking upstairs – laughter and little shrieks of joy. He guessed that Moira was awake and his mother was cooing over her. Or maybe Tommy and his dad were really getting into the Lions game.
He heard the basement door open and someone take a few tentative steps down the creaky stairs. It must be time for dessert and coffee, but Sonny wasn’t hungry.
“I’ll be up in a bit, ma,” he called over the back of the couch, focused on the screen in front of him.
“I’m not your ma, stretch,” a familiar voice replied in a teasing lilt, and he shot up into a sitting position just in time to see you descend the rest of the steps.
********
Your first thought was that you broke him. He stared at you over the back of the couch so long without saying anything, you worried that he had died in place.
Your second thought, as you looked him over was, Christ, he looks exhausted.
Sonny was as handsome as ever. His hair was a little greyer, but it made him hotter, in your opinion. It was soft and tousled, unstyled – your favorite version of his hair. His eyes were as blue as the ocean.
But he looked pale, and he had dark circles under his eyes, and the lines around his eyes were deeper than the last time you saw him. You knew that his job wasn’t easy, and you knew from Bella that it had been more difficult than usual. You worried that you hadn’t made things easier on him either.
He continued to stare at you, and your eyes flicked to the TV. It was one of your favorite holiday movies, and you made a little cry of delight. You walked around to the couch and made to sit down to watch, but Sonny shot to his feet and pulled you into a fierce hug. He wrapped his long arms around you and squeezed you so hard you thought your ribs would break again.
“You’re really here,” he muttered into your hair.
“I am,” you replied. Your face was pressed against his chest, and you breathed him in. He wore a cologne that always made you think of growing things – a sort of fresh, green smell that combined with his soap and his own body chemistry. “I would have been here sooner, but traffic was a nightmare.”
He squeezed you to him for another moment, then pushed you away, his hands firmly placed on your upper arms. “No one told me,” he said, looking you over. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I wanted to surprise you.” You suddenly felt shy underneath the scrutiny of his gaze, and you ducked your head.
He moved both of his hands to either side of your face. “It’s the best surprise ever,” he declared, and he leaned down to place a gentle kiss on your lips. You sighed and kissed him back. You had missed him so much.
He tilted your head, deepening the kiss. You felt him part his lips and run the tip of his tongue along your lower lip, but before you could open your mouth to him, the basement door swung open again. A voice – Bella’s – yelled down that coffee and dessert were being served.
“And stop making out, you perverts,” she added for good measure, and you ignored her cackling laughter with all the dignity you could muster.
********
Sonny sat across from you at the dining room table as everyone gathered for pumpkin pie and coffee. You immediately scooped baby Moira from Bella’s arms, claiming that you had to make up for lost time. The baby grabbed at your hair and tried to shove her chubby fist in your mouth. She was completely enamored with you.
Baby Moira wasn’t the only one. Sonny felt like he would never be able to look at you enough. Your hair was just a shade messy – he knew it was from your cross-country flight, but it looked exactly like your usual post-sex hair, and it made him feel more turned on than he would usually like while sitting with his family at the dining room table.
You were in relaxed jeans and a button-down flannel shirt, partially unbuttoned and revealing a lace-trimmed camisole underneath. You looked completely comfortable, and maybe for the first time since Sonny met you – completely comfortable with yourself. You had a relaxed air about you. Maybe it was all the sunshine. More likely, it was all those tamales that you raved about.
Bella dished out pie while Dom Senior poured mugs of coffee and passed them around. Sonny’s mother went to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later bearing a plate of reheated leftovers. She placed it in front of you with a smile.
“I’m sorry I was late,” you said with a rueful shrug. “Our plane didn’t have a gate and it took forever to get here.”
His mother waved off your apology. “We’re just glad you’re here.”
You tucked into your leftovers one handed, your other arm cradling the baby as she dozed off against you. It made Sonny smile to see it. You were always such a natural with his nieces – even this one who had just met you.
“How long are you staying?” Dom Senior asked.
You chewed a forkful of stuffing and swallowed before you answered. “I fly back on Sunday morning.” Sonny felt his stomach drop. You were only here for a few days, and it already felt like time was slipping away too quickly.
You glanced over at him and caught his gaze before you continued. “I have a few more months on my sublet here in New York, but after that, I’m going to move back.” You gave him a smile. “I’ve made great connections, and I’ll probably have to travel back to L.A. more than I’d like, but plenty of composers and musicians live elsewhere.”
Bella scoffed and gestured to the window where an icy rain was pattering against the glass. “You’re trading in warm weather and sunshine for this?”
“Aren’t you the one who gave me a list of reasons why L.A. was worse than New York?” you teased back.
“I just liked living vicariously through you,” she shot back. “How many friends run into one of the Marvel Chrises on the way to the bathroom?”
You nodded and took another bite of stuffing. “True. But I can’t keep up with the people out there. Too many diets and workouts. Everyone assumes I’m a wannabe actress and critiques me accordingly.” You scowled at your plate. “One producer told me that I was a ‘New York five but an L.A. two,’ and that was after he realized I was there to score his garbage movie.”
Sonny felt a flare of hot anger to hear that some guy made you feel bad about yourself. “You’re a Staten Island eleven,” he blurted, making the table erupt in laughter. He felt his face growing red, and his dad reached over and clapped him hard on the back.
“Smooth, son,” he chuckled, but Sonny’s mom reached over from the other side and smacked her husband.
“Like you ever did any better,” she teased. Dom Senior snatched her hand as she tried to draw it back and kissed the back of it.
“I did good enough to get you,” he said with a wide grin, making Bella groan in embarrassment. Sonny, though, could only watch you across the table.
********
Sonny’s family was old-fashioned, despite having a grandchild out of wedlock and a daughter who had recently divorced. As such, you and Sonny put up what you hoped was a convincing charade about how he was going to drive you to a friend’s place where you were crashing for the next few days.
The reality, of course, was that within seconds of returning to his apartment, he had you pressed against his door, the two of you kissing fiercely and pawing at each other like you were each drowning. There were too many sensations and emotions: the feel of his warm hands as they untucked your shirt and camisole to touch your back. His mouth on yours, his lips impossibly soft. His thigh, as it pressed between your own legs and parted them.
You reached down and tugged at his grey Henley, breaking the kiss long enough to pull it over his head, ruffling his hair even more. You tossed it aside and then his mouth was back on you, kissing the sensitive spot at the junction of your neck and shoulder, sending chills through you.
“I missed you so much, doll,” he whispered against your neck. His breath was hot and sent another tremor through you.
You ran your fingers through his hair. “I missed you more,” you breathed back.
Sonny fumbled at your shirts. His fingers scrabbled at your button-up, and he mumbled curses when he couldn’t get it undone fast enough. When he did get it unbuttoned, he tried to pull it off of you, but your sleeves got caught and he cursed again as he unbuttoned the cuffs.
You pushed him off of you so that you could handle it, so he shifted his attention to his own clothes. He tugged his undershirt over his head, but slowed and then stopped completely to watch you as you removed your camisole.
You bent over and pulled your boots off, then straightened up to unbutton your jeans. You looked up at Sonny and laughed at him. His chest was rising and falling with his shuddering breaths, and his mouth hung slightly agape.
He moved swiftly to you. He pressed you back against the door, latching his mouth on the pulse point. You laid your hands on his bare chest and tugged on his sparse smattering of blond hair there.
Sonny’s hands drifted down to your hips and finished unzipping your jeans. He unlatched his mouth from your neck and worked his way down, pushing your pants down over your hips, down you thighs. His ran his warm palms over your bare legs before he pulled your jeans over your feet and tossed them aside.
He knelt in front of you, and you laid your hands on the top of his head. You tangled your fingers in his hair, tugging it gently, trying to get him to stand back up. He looked up at you, in just your underwear, while he was still half-clothed.
“You need to catch up, Dominick,” you said. You loved the way his sunny blue eyes turned dark when you called him by his first name.
Instead of responding to you, he slid an arm behind you, cupping your ass in his large hand and pulled your lower half towards him until his face was pressed into your lower belly. You ran your nails over his scalp, drawing low groans from him that vibrated through you. His hot breath made the throbbing between your legs increase almost painfully. You felt dangerously close to losing your legs underneath you.
“S-Sonny,” you stuttered as he moved his mouth a fraction lower. “I need you.”
“You have me,” he murmured against you. He licked along the lace waistband of your panties, making your knees buckle just a bit.
You tightened your grip on his hair, drawing another groan from him. You felt almost dizzy with desire and had to press the back of your head against the door and take a few deep breaths to calm yourself.
“Sonny, we have plenty of time,” you told him in a strangled voice. “But right now, I really need you.”
His other hand landed on your hip, tugging at the edge of your panties and pressing wet kisses on each new inch of exposed skin. He didn’t reply, too focused on moving his mouth closer and closer to his target.
“Damnit, Dominick!” you yelled, and you pulled his hair hard enough to get his attention. He looked up and shot you a wounded look, like a puppy that had been scolded, but whatever he saw on your face made him stand up and press the length of his body against yours. You pulled his face to yours and kissed him breathlessly, without any art or ability. Just his mouth with his soft lips against yours, tongues sliding against each other, breathing each other’s moans.
“I need you,” you repeated, panting against him. He shifted his head back to the nook against your neck. “Please. I…I’ve waited for this for months. I’ve missed you, Sonny. So, so much.” You wrapped your hand along the back of his neck, stroking between his hairline and the knobs of the top of his spine. You felt rather than heard Sonny sniffling against you, and you felt the first tears when they hit your shoulder.
“I missed you too, doll,” he said. “And it’s been a tough year.” His voice was watery, and you tightened your grip around him, pulling him as tight as you could. He took deep breaths against you as he tried to regain his composure, and once he was calmed, you took his face between both of your hands. You forced him to face you, and you looked into his brilliant blue eyes, now rimmed and swollen from his tears.
“I love you, Dominick,” you said solemnly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
He shook his head gently between your hands. “I’m glad you went, doll.” His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at you. “I’d never want to hold you back.”
You couldn’t help but smile back at him – his namesake sunniness was contagious. “I’m here now though.”
“You are.” He reached down to grasp the back of your thighs, and you jumped up into his arms. You bit back a moan at the sensation of him pressed against your core, and you wrapped your arms around his neck as he carried you into his bedroom and laid you down on the bed.
He stood at the foot of the bed and removed the rest of his clothes, and you wriggled out of your underwear so that when he crawled over you, you were both completely naked.
You could feel the conflict in him – you knew that Sonny was gentle and probably wanted to take his time, but you also could feel how badly he missed you. He settled on an uneven middle ground, pressing slow, wet kisses to you while his hands roved wildly over your form.
His mouth drifted a lazy path from your mouth to your jaw and down your neck, across your collarbones and back to your mouth. His hands wandered down your sides and up your front to cup first one breast and then the other. He stroked your nipples until they were peaked and hard under his caresses.
Spurred on by your moans and your squirming underneath him, his hand glided further down until it was pressed between your legs. He slid a finger between your folds and groaned at how wet you were. He pulled his head back to peer down at you, and your face felt red-hot.
“I told you I needed you,” you muttered at him, avoiding his gaze.
“I told you that you have me,” he replied thickly, and he pushed his finger into you slowly, making both of you moan. Your face grew hotter, which didn’t seem humanly possible, as he stared down at you through half-lidded eyes. He slid a second finger into you, then shifted his hand so that his thumb was circling your clit.
You huffed out a breath through your nose and tried to calm yourself, but you felt a liquid heat pooling deep in your belly, and you knew you weren’t going to last long.
“Sonny, stop,” you whispered. You felt him hesitate and pull his hand away from you. You looked up and saw the question in his eyes.
“I want to…finish,” you stammered. “With you, you know. Inside me.”
He nodded and shifted his weight off of you to reach into his nightstand for a condom. You used the moment to try and steady yourself again, squeezing your eyes shut as you heard him rip the wrapper. Then you felt him stretch himself on top of you again, and you felt his hand cup your face, the thumb stroking your cheekbone.
“Hey, look at me,” he said softly. You opened your eyes and looked up at him. He gazed down at you as if you were the only other person in the world.
All the years of frustrated longing, all the other people you’d each been with, every conversation and glance laden with unrequited love – it all fell away when he looked at you like that. You smiled at him and reached up to cup his own face in your palm, and he leaned into it, touch-starved. After a moment, you simply nodded at him, and he reached down to line himself up with your entrance.
He pressed the tip of his erection into you with a groan, and you felt dangerously close to the edge. He slid into you slowly – way too slowly. His position on top of you made the angle shallow, and his length dragged along your sensitive clit as he pressed himself into your molten core.
You wanted to make it last, but every single sensation was too much: the friction on you bundle of nerves where the two of you were joined. His hot breath, panting praise in your ear. The scent of his cologne and your perfume mingling along with the headier scent of sex.
He was only halfway inside you, but it was too late. You gasped his name once, and then shuddered underneath him with a whimper, your legs wrapping around him to pull the rest of him into you in one thrust. He started to reply to you, but he growled instead as your sheath gripped him, your orgasm ripping through you. You shut your eyes as you came, moaning his name over and over. You were distantly aware of him cursing above you, and he gave a single thrust until he came too.
He collapsed on top of you completely, and his weight pressed you into the mattress. He groaned again, in frustration this time. You stroked his hair at the back of his head until you both recovered. He lifted his head to looked down at you.
“I’m sorry,” you each said at the same time, and you both laughed. He leaned down and kissed you firmly before he shifted his weight and pulled out of you. He left the room for a moment to dispose of the condom, then he came back into the bedroom. He laid down beside you, and you each turned on your sides to face each other.
“I’m sorry I came too quickly,” you said with a rueful grin. “I was too worked up, I guess.”
He pinched your chin lightly between his fingers and kissed you again. “It’s all well and good for girls,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “But I didn’t last at all. Now all my street cred it gone.” You laughed at this, and he pretended to look angry.
“It’s your fault,” he continued. “You set me off.”
“Well, I owe you then,” you replied. You tried to look contrite. “Since your street cred is gone and all that.” You snuggled up against him, enjoying the feeling of his skin pressed against yours. He wrapped a lanky arm around you and pulled you tighter.
You felt comfortably drowsy, the net effect of your flight, Ma Carisi’s dinner, and being back in Sonny’s bed. He hummed above you contently, and you started to doze off until your cell phone chimed from the other room. You roused a bit but settled back against him.
Then it chimed again, and a third time.
“You need to get that?” Sonny asked. His voice rumbled through his chest. “Your west coast boyfriend, maybe?” You knew he was joking, but there was still a jealous undercurrent to his tone.
“There was no west coast boyfriend,” you murmured against him. “Unless you count my detachable shower head.”
He snorted at this but you could feel the relief in him as he relaxed against you.
Then his phone chimed, one after another after another.
“Is that Nicole?” you asked, only half-meanly. He snorted again before he untangled from you and grabbed at his pants at the foot of the bed.
“Be careful,” he said as he pulled his phone out of his pants pocket. “If you say her name three times, she’ll turn up and haunt your house.” You laughed at this and sat up. You wound his blanket around yourself. Sonny unlocked his phone.
“Is it work?” you asked. You felt your stomach dip. You wanted to stay in this little bubble with Sonny for the entire weekend. A little sex bubble, maybe with the occasional movie and homemade pasta break.
He just chuckled in reply. “No, it’s Bella.” He held up his phone so that you could read the screen. “She tried to text you and you didn’t reply. Now she’s of the impression that you’re here with me, corrupting her chaste, virginal brother with your wanton ways.” He typed out a reply, then turned off his phone and tossed it on the nightstand before lying back down. He grabbed you around the waist and pulled you down beside him.
“What did you tell her?” you asked.
“The truth,” he said. He kissed you chastely, then tilted his head to deepen the kiss. He broke away to look down at you, and his blue eyes were glittering with unshed tears again. “I told her that you’re home.”
"The way you talk, it's so proper. Have you lived on Staten Island your whole life?" He went on.
"You don't belong here" he says. "You deserve Manhattan."
Feeling sophisticated I felt my way up and back downstairs without the hallway light. After shedding layer upon layer of cigarette soaked wool I stood lost by the fridge in fleece pajamas, warm and sick. Turkey sandwich in hand, with brownie crumbs on my pillow, I fell asleep feeling like Audrey Hepburn.
a couple of my girlfriends and i finally did a trip to NYC - all 3 of us are mothers and this was all of our first times leaving our kids under the care of their fathers for this long (3 nights, 4 days).
so before i forget, as per the usual - HERE is how our trip happened!
thursday october 26th, 2023
take the 10:56 am AA flight from YYZ to LGA - arriving at noon
wait for our baggage and take a cab in to manhattan where we were staying at the crowne plaza hy36
got an early check-in thank goodness and so we went and refreshed ourselves before heading out
then we walked to the VESSEL - fun fact, the vessel is permanently closed (ie you can't go to the top upstairs because apparently people kept trying to commit suicide on it!)
after the vessel, we walked the high line walkway all the way down to chelsea market to have some lunch
i got a truffle and potato pizza - gotta say not my favourite thing lol
then we walked through the city and went into the starbucks roast store (big i guess flagship store with the machines and all visible - 3 floors large!)
after that, we walked to the friends building facade (who would have known that a couple days later we would hear of matthew perry's passing...)
after that, we walked to sabyasachi - which was a gorgeous store and experience omg. the JEWELRY displays i mean...i couldn't deal. also something interesting about his store was his decor - he had a bunch of "Allah" "Rasool" mirror decor all over the walls!
after spending about an hour of so at sabyasachi, we took walked to the subway and prior to that made a pit stop at the milk bar and got a cereal sundae - the name alone makes it sound not great, but believe me when i tell you it was SO GOOD!
then we took the subway to go catch our broadway show
we watched our broadway show - SIX at lena thorne theatre super close to times square - excellent show, 12/10 recommend!
after the show we walked around times square, spent some time in the disney store, and then got dinner at the carts on the roadside which was delicious
and after that we walked back to the hotel, i showered, and we sort of fell into bed and asleep - that night i got to sleep on the bed alone (two doubles that each of us got to sleep alone per night!)
friday october 27th, 2023
woke up and got dressed to go to leo's bagels and got these amazing massive bagels with omelette
then we went to the staten island ferry dock and took a ride on the ferry there and back (didn't stop over) mostly just to see the skyline and lady liberty - fun fact - it's free!
when we got back to manhattan, we walked through to the bull on financial street - next to which there was some turkish politician speaking about how times and turkey has changed....it was interesting but we didn't stick around for the whole thing
after this, we took the subway to go to oculus and one world trade centre where there was some food truck/cultural food fest happening; at the memorial, i saw an older couple just hugging each other and crying and there was a solemn energy in the place.
we left shortly after and got eileen's cheesecake - OMG. SO GOOD. we got the chocolate espresso and shared a slice and prior to that stopped at bambino bakery (where i purchased an almond croissant and proceeded to hoard it for the next couple of days before finally eating it lol) for a bathroom break - which was necessary since eileen isn't a sit-down establishment or anything.
after cheesecake, we walked along the city roads and stopped at stores like polene, abercrombie & fitch, sephora, and target
after that we went to washington square park where there was some little student concert happening and also so much activity just in general because it's right outside of NYU; we had a couple of (what i'm assuming to be) students stop and ask us to call a politician using a script to ask them to call for a ceasefire in gaza.
after that i asked for a stop ANYWHERE i might be able to get some bike shorts because your girl took all dresses and the CHAFING WAS R E A L - so we stopped at aritzia and got some
after that we walked through the city and passed by empire state building on our way to ny public library - unfortunately though as we entered the library was closing and we were unable to go inside :(
after the library we went to the bryant park grill right behind the library and i had some of probably the best ravioli i have ever had!
then we walked through bryant park and walked to macy's
finally, we went to the moynihan train hall and enjoyed some banana pudding from magnolia bakery which was indeed v v delicious!
then we went back to the hotel, i showered, we did some face masks and we slept
saturday october 28th, 2023
we started off the day by subway-ing it to levain bakery where i got a sticky walnut bun - sooooo goooood!
then we walked through the roads and homes and got to central park!
at central park, we made our way to the bethesda terrace and fountain and yard....oh my goodness the architecture EVEN in the park is something else!
we then walked through the park to get to the conservancy pond where there were model yachts sailing along and sat there and just took in the gorgeous day and weather and park next to the alice and mad hatter statue of the tea party. it was a quiet moment of gratitude and happiness there that we absorbed and...filled our cups.
then we walked through to the bow bridge as well as the central park carousel and out the park we exited
after central park we went to our lunch reservations at nobu and oh my goodness - it was soooooooo good and worth it! fun fact, nobu the chain is owned by robert de niro!
after lunch, we went to bergdorf and goodman and my goodness it really makes you feel so little and insignificant surrounded by so much money - that's kind of how i felt while i was there!
after bergdorf we went to 30 rockefeller across from the saks 5th avenue store that has the massive clock on the facade!
then we went to the ny public library again to go and see inside and oh my goodness, what a frigging goddamn beautiful library!
after that we took the subway to get to dumbo (in brooklyn) and then we walked across the whole brooklyn bridge
we ended the night with dinner at joe's pizza which was so g-dang-delicious - i had two slices of the white pizza
when we got back to the hotel, i showered and did another face mask and then fell asleep earlier than the others
sunday october 27th, 2023
was a rainy day from start to end! and also our last day
we started it by going to the summit one at vanderbilt, which was such a cool experience - luckily it was not foggy with the rain and we could see everything above really clearly
after that we went to the grand central terminal, which is right next to summit at one vanderbilt
and then we grabbed breakfast at the pershing square cafe which was delicious
after this, we went back to the hotel and checked out and then walked to macy's
i got esa a little toy and umbrella as a souvenir
and finally we got a cab back to laguardia and unfortunately...our flight got delayed; it was originally meant to be at 5 pm however it ended up being at 6:25 pm and even then we stood in the plane on the tarmac for a good half hour before actually flying
back at home, yasir and a VERY ASLEEP esa came to pick me up at the airport and we headed straight home
it was an incredible trip, and i am so so so sincerely grateful we got to do it. my cup is full....and i hope we can make this a tradition.
Found some honest to goodness WILD Staten Island Turkeys 🦃 today hanging out where they are supposed to be: in the woods! Welcomed them to the neighborhood and then went to get a closer look at the mystery sphere I first spotted earlier this week. I put my Seek @inaturalistorg app to work on it and for a millisecond it identified the sphere as a “gall wasp nest” — anyone know anything about that? I saw “wasp” and got out of Dodge. Quickly. #sigreenbelt #sigreenway #statenislandturkeys @siadvance the turkeys were on Park Drive North — we never see them over here! https://www.instagram.com/p/CqCTw0-so1L/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
“The turkeys have now outlasted three term-limited Council members, the Staten Island borough president, one governor, one mayor, one assemblymember, and two members of Congress involved with their removal.”
Imagine the giddy surprise of the first European settlers arriving on the shores of the Eastern United States only to be greeted by flocks of gobbling wild turkeys roaming the forests. No doubt these immigrants to the new land were feeling rather “peckish” after spending long weeks at sea and were only too eager to indulge in the abundant plump poultry that awaited them. Of course, this is the tradition we continue today with turkey being the centerpiece of American Thanksgiving celebrations.
The wild turkey is native to the North American continent having evolved here over 20 million years ago. Native Americans consumed the eggs and meat and used their feathers to stabilize arrows and adorn ceremonial dress. These birds have six distinct subspecies of which the Eastern Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), found in these parts, is the most populous. Having been brought back from the brink of extinction caused by overhunting and habitat loss, wild turkeys are now a common sight in many areas, with unruly flocks earning the “wild” part of their name by making headlines for nuisance behavior in Staten Island and other urban enclaves.
The type of bird that we bake and feast on at Thanksgiving is a direct descendent of these “wild” wild turkeys. However, not all domesticated breeds are the same and there are some helpful distinctions to know about when choosing a turkey for the holidays:
Conventional/commercial turkey
Conventional turkey can be categorized as the kind of poultry selection you’ll find at stores and supermarket chains. These birds are usually mass-farmed in large-scale facilities and have been selectively bred specifically for their ability to produce meat at the lowest possible cost. They are raised indoors and fed a steady diet of soy and corn-based grain feed which is easily synthesized and quickly converted to breast meat.
The Broad Breasted White and Broad Breasted Bronze are the most popular breeds used in commercial turkey farming. However, the Broad Breasted White is widely favored due to its shorter breast bones yielding greater breast meat and an all-white plumage which leaves cleaner looking skin for dressing. In fact, the growing process for Broad Breasted Whites has been so well refined that birds often grow larger than 40 lbs. Conventionally raised turkey meat generally has a more subtle taste than that of heritage turkey which gives it wide appeal.
Heritage turkey
Heritage means to turkey what heirloom means to tomato, with the two words often being used interchangeably. Heritage turkeys are more closely related to their wild counterparts than the commercial varieties and are the types of birds you’ll find sold in farmers markets this time of year. These turkeys have lived most of their lives outdoors on the farm property with space to roam freely. They have enjoyed a natural diet of foraged food such as acorns, insects and berries sometimes supplemented by feed.
There are other stringent criteria that these types of turkeys must be raised within in order to qualify as heritage breed birds:
1. Naturally mating: Heritage Turkey must be reproduced and genetically maintained through natural mating versus artificial insemination.
2. Long productive outdoor lifespan: Heritage Turkey must live a long productive lifespan while possessing the genetic ability to withstand the environmental rigors of outdoor rearing.
3. Slow growth rate: Heritage Turkey must have a slow to moderate rate of growth.
Heritage turkeys yield less breast meat and grow smaller in size than the commercial, broad-breasted breeds despite having longer production lives. Their meat has a richer, gamier flavor and their well-exercised thighs and wings will benefit from longer, slower cooking times. If you are hoping to enjoy a delicious tasting heritage turkey this Thanksgiving, some of our vendors are still taking orders in time for delivery next week, but may have a more limited selection than earlier in the season. However, if turkey for Christmas is on the table, now is the time to jump in with your order to make sure you get exactly the type of bird you want. Gobble gobble to that!
It wasn’t that unusual that it snowed on Thanksgiving Day. When Sonny Carisi made his way to his childhood home on Staten Island, there were stray flakes drifting down from the slate grey sky. The forecast called for little more than that – just a light dusting.
It wouldn’t be the first time a tri-state meteorologist got it completely wrong.
Holiday dinners at the Carisi household were intense: there were his parents, his sisters, his various in-laws, his nieces. It was already a loud home, but to add in shrieking children and the parade on top volume on the television…Sonny missed the quiet of his Manhattan apartment.
Dinner was always delicious, but it was just as intense, invasive. His parents never truly believed in his career choice, and once they tired of that line of questioning, they shifted to his personal life. His lack of partner. His lack of children. Didn’t he realize that he was running out of time? Why, when Dominic Sr. was his age, he already had a wife and two kids!
And so forth.
There was always a lull between dinner and dessert. The family usually drifted to their respective corners: his father dozing off the turkey coma in his well-worn recliner, his mother sitting on the couch with her latest sudoku puzzle. Tommy and Bella bickering off on one side, Gina and her latest boyfriend getting handsy in another corner. Sonny entered the living room, took in the familiar scene, and turned around. Left the room quietly before anyone noticed, picked up the thread from dinner, and offered to set him up with someone’s sad cousin or offbeat friend.
In the kitchen, it was quiet. Finally. Sonny put his hands on the edge of the sink and heaved a sigh. He loved his family, but they were a lot to take. The Carisi family, en masse, was best in small doses.
Sonny gazed out the window into his childhood backyard. The basketball hoop was long gone, replaced by an ambitious number of raised garden beds that his father tinkered with tomato plants in the summer. The short chain link fence was the same, separating their yard from the neighbor that lived behind them.
Your childhood house. Sonny had grown up with the cliched girl next door, but she was the girl behind, the two backyards butting up against each other. You were younger than him, Bella’s age, but you’d skipped a grade and had been between him and Bella in school. Not that any of you were friends. You were friendly enough with each other, but you all existed in your own little cliques: Bella with the popular girls, Sonny with his little band of mid-level guys (popular enough, but not that popular), you with the weird, artsy girls who wore a lot of black and scribbled tortured poetry in their battered notebooks.
But you had been friendly with Sonny, always ready with that smile of yours: the one that started tentative and shy but that slowly spread across your face. Like watching a flower bloom in front of him. Sonny had nursed that stereotypical crush on you, from middle school onward, happy for any glimpse of you. Any moment together. He had even lied about his mediocre high school Spanish to tutor you one year, and if your own mediocre C+ gave away his lie, you never mentioned it.
Sometimes Sonny still thought of those afternoon study sessions with you. Usually at his kitchen table, your socked feet hooked around the rung of your chair as you mispronounced things, forgot accent marks, wrote an entire essay about your parents that roughly translated as “All about My Mother and Potato.”
It was his first experience with love, albeit completely innocent, unrequited puppy love. It still fueled his muddled teenaged years, and Sonny had plenty of innocuous fantasies (kissing you) that turned more raunchy (having sex with you in his bedroom) as his own experience grew.
He had walked with you enough – walked with you to school, from school – to know that your artsy black-clad façade was just a sort of armor. Your family was Catholic like his, and Sonny overheard enough of the drama that existed there. Two unhappy parents who had a kid every few years to try and patch a marriage that shouldn’t exist. You were the eldest, and you had fled pretty much the day after your high school graduation.
Sonny hadn’t seen you since. He heard rumors that you’d moved out west, Seattle or Portland depending on who he asked. As far as you could get from your family, it seemed. He hoped wherever you were, you were happy or at least content and…
Sonny had been in a sort of fugue state, staring out of the kitchen window into your backyard and reminiscing, and he nearly missed when you came out of your backdoor, pulling on your coat, marching to the little potting shed in your backyard…wait, what? Sonny shook his head a little and looked closer. No, it was you alright. You were in jeans and navy blue pea coat, and your scarf was a bright red that matched your gloves, but that scowl was exactly the same.
Sonny watched you for a moment as you walked around the potting shed, right against the fence line. You dusted off a plastic construction bucket, turned it over, and plopped down on it. Sonny could see the heavy sigh from his vantage point – the way your shoulders slumped, the way you shook your head at whatever scene you had just fled.
Apparently your family hadn’t changed much but – there you were. Not on the west coast at all. Visiting for the holidays, maybe?
Like the Spanish tutoring, Sonny needed an excuse. He grabbed his own coat, grabbed the little container of potato peels, carrot ends to empty into the composter in the backyard. His shoes skidded on the steps of the back porch a little, but he kept his balance. Played it cool. Walked towards the composter. Waited for you to notice him.
You did.
“Hey,” you called out, casual. But then you must have noticed that it was him, because you stood up. “Oh my god. Sonny?”
He tried to play it cool, but his delight in seeing you again after all these years was genuine. Before he knew it, he was hugging you awkwardly over the waist-high fencing and grinning as you pushed him away, your gloved hands on his upper arms as you openly studied him.
“Look at you!” you exclaimed. “I heard you’re a cop now? My mom said you’re a cop in the city.”
“A detective, actually,” he corrected you. “And you’re….” He trailed off, and he noted the way your face fell a little.
“Yeah, I guess my parents don’t really brag about me since I left the way I did,” you said, a little crestfallen. “I’m the black sheep, after all.” You dropped your hands from him and took a step back from the fence.
“I heard you were out west.”
That made you laugh. “You ever notice that to New Yorkers, everywhere is ‘out west’? Pittsburgh, Chicago, Seattle. Tokyo, which is technically in the east?”
“That’s because we’re the center of the universe,” he replied with a grin. God, he had thought you were beautiful when you were a teenager, with big feet you hadn’t grown into yet and your shapeless black t-shirts and a mouth full of braces….you were stunning now.
But you caught his eye and noticed his grin, and you smiled at him and that was exactly the same – the slow way it spread across your face, lighting up your features.
“I was in Seattle for college,” you told him. “And then I went to Silicon Valley afterwards for work. But I’m back in New York now.” You gave a lopsided shrug. “I work in graphic design. Do some coding. Sort of a jack of all trades, but I got head-hunted by a firm here and the offer was too good to pass up.” You glanced back over your shoulder, and from here, Sonny could hear the yelling in your house. “Of course, farther away is often better. Especially when it looks like I’m going to be stuck here from the snow storm.”
Sonny felt his heart start to hammer in his chest. It was stupid – you had just been his childhood crush, but the moment was too magical. The snow was falling thickly now, coating both of your heads and shoulders, and in the falling dusk, the snow sparkled in the streetlights. He’d blame the way the holiday season always gripped him, but he turned to look at his own house over his shoulder. Then he turned back to you.
“Come in for some dessert,” he said.
You shook your head. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t. You’d be doing me a favor. Take the pressure off of me. Give ‘em someone new to interrogate.”
You tilted your head at him. “How do you mean?”
Sonny waved his hand dismissively. “You know how it is. Only son, Catholic family, another year unmarried. My ma is probably going to put out a personal ad in the church bulletin. Marry my son, please.”
It made you laugh again, and Sonny thought he might do anything to hear you laugh more. He rarely heard it growing up; he had to make do with your shy, ducking smiles. Whatever you had done in the intervening years, you had gained some confidence.
He could feel your resistance wavering, and despite his insistence on consent in all matters, it was just an invitation for dessert. So he turned on that charm, tilted his own head, gave you the patented Sonny Carisi dual puppy dog eyes/dimpled smile.
“Please?” he asked, just a shade away from pleading.
“If it’s not intruding – “
“It’s not,” he said. “I promise.”
You gave your own patented smile and ducked your head. Sonny almost missed the faint flush that broke out across the apples of your cheeks, but when he noticed, he assumed it was due to the cold. He followed you along the fence line to the gate, and when you stepped through, he offered you his arm. Which you politely declined.
“Your sister always gave me a hard time,” you explained apologetically. “No need to add fuel to that fire.”
“What?”
Your flush deepened, and Sonny could just make it out as you walked beside him up to his house. “Oh, you know. Bella knew I had a crush on you in high school. She teased me all the time.” You glanced at him as you climbed the few steps to his back porch and waited for him to open the door.
Sonny shook his head, stunned into silence, and his brain churned to find something to say – something teasing but not mean, something charming, something….but the back door swung open, his mother on the other side, and you were being pulled into the kitchen and Sonny was left standing on the porch for a moment, his mouth slightly open, before he joined you.
*****
You had been back in New York City since the summer, but Thanksgiving had been your tentative foray back into your family. After years of low contact, keeping them at arm’s length as you worked your way through therapy….here you were.
Nothing had changed. Your mother was still narcissistic, your father was still borderline abusive. One sister was following in your mother’s footsteps. Another sister was pregnant (a fact revealed at dinner, as you were pouring gravy onto your potatoes), and that’s what set off the latest squall. You weren’t, luckily, at the center of it. You had slipped out for a moment of silence.
Nothing had changed in your family, but Sonny Carisi had crept up on your moment of calm like some handsome Italian-American ghost, walking through the thick snowfall to suddenly materialize right near your seat near the fence. He had changed. He had been adorably dorky as a teenager, all gangly limbs and floppy hair, easy to crush on because he was cute but not oppressively so.
He was straight up handsome now. Grown into his limbs, figured out how to style his hair so that it looked good even as it wilted under the layer of melting snow. He even smelled better – when you had pulled him into a surprised hug, you noticed that he had swapped out the astringent body spray favored by teenaged boys in your time for a more sophisticated cologne. A subtle clean scent with just a hint of smokiness.
You only declined the invitation to dessert out of politeness. You could still hear your family’s usual screeching, and you had no desire to rejoin them. You had always gazed across the backyard at the Carisi house as you grew up, imagined what it would be like to live there. Mrs. Carisi was so kind, always trying to feed you when Sonny tutored you in Spanish. They were loud, but not mean, and there were more hugs and friendly headlocks between siblings and plenty of obvious love. Love that was markedly missing from your own family.
That loud, obvious love between the Carisi family members was the same. There were just more people now, a host of nieces and significant others. Sonny, of course, was alone, and if Mrs. Carisi shot her husband a knowing glance over your head, you only pretended you didn’t see it. You were just the neighbor kid, grown up, desperate mother aside.
But you used your company manners, kept your elbows off the table, declined a second serving of pie despite the desire to eat a third, a fourth serving. You answered their questions politely – they did grill you, wanting every detail of your life from your high school graduation until right now.
You could have stayed there forever. Their home was so welcoming, so cozy. You’d answer any slew of uncomfortable questions if you could just stay there and eat their delicious pie and drink their strong coffee.
And sit beside Sonny, his elbow sometimes nudging you because you were all crammed in around the table so closely.
It was dangerous thinking. You were just swept up in the moment; your family was challenging, and you were latching onto the kind, normal family next door. It was just like childhood again. Sonny probably just seemed extra appealing because he was normal. You weren’t used to normal: you had started repeating the pattern of your parents, dating complete assholes, until you started therapy, and then….you just hadn’t dated much at all after that.
And sure, okay. Sonny was good-looking. And he smelled nice.
And he was single, as his mother pointed out at least three times, probably thinking she was just being subtle when, in actuality, she was being as blatant as a foghorn. For good measure, Bella added that Sonny had been single for a while.
And he was also a life-saver, because the snow was pouring down now, piling up in the street, and you expressed doubt that your Honda could make it back to Manhattan. The thought of spending the night in your childhood home, trapped with your family again made the pie rise in your throat.
“I can drive you home,” he said. “I have a truck with four-wheel drive.”
“My car – “ you started, but he cut you off.
“I can drive you back to get your car once we’re dug out.”
Well, then. You thanked your gracious hosts and walked back to your house to grab your purse and make your escape.
*****
Normally, Sonny would curse how long it took him to get back to Manhattan. Normally, the drive was a haul, and with the snow, it took even longer.
But you sat beside him, and Sonny suddenly wished the drive was twice as long.
He wanted to prod at that sudden bit of new knowledge – that you’d had a crush on him – but he didn’t want to make it weird. You had been a kid, and he had been a kid only a few years older. Ancient news. Sonny only wished he had known. He had no game in high school, and less courage, but he might have asked you out. Whatever that meant, back then.
But how would his life be different, if you’d been his first kiss instead of Maria Forni who (as it turned out) had lost a bet? What if he had lost his virginity to you, and vice versa? What if you’d stayed out east?
“What are you thinking about?” you asked, breaking into his reverie. Sonny shifted in the driver’s seat and glanced over at you. You were turned and watching him, a small smile on your face.
“Just thinking about the holidays,” he lied. “What are you doing for Christmas?”
He saw you shrug out of the corner of his eye. “I need a plausible excuse to get out of dinner with the family,” you told him, and as Sonny piloted his truck across the bridge, into Brooklyn and then into Manhattan, you told him about your family drama. Some of it, he was able to guess at from growing up next to them. Your dad yelled a lot. Your mom cried a lot. Police had been called at least a handful of times, and Sonny thought his mom might have been the one to call them at least once.
From being such a quiet kid, you were refreshingly open now. Sonny had worked enough at SVU to know that there had to have been an impetus for this change in you. Distance, time. Therapy, probably. He felt a surge of pride for you, seeking to change that terrible family pattern. Finding confidence.
“What about you?” you asked. “What are your plans?” He looked over at you again and caught a sly edge to your smile. “You gonna let your mom find you a match in time for midnight Mass?”
“Ha,” he said. “No, I’m actually working Christmas Day. So I’ll just do something alone.”
“Lucky. Want to trade? I can be a detective for a day, and you can go to my family’s Christmas dinner.”
Sonny laughed. “You think you can do my job for a day?”
“Why not? I watch a lot of ‘Dateline’ and all those terrible police procedurals. I can whip off my sunglasses and make a crime-related pun with the best of them.”
He laughed again but didn’t reply. You lived in Manhattan Valley, and Sonny unconsciously slowed his speed even more, trying to draw out the trip. If you noticed, you didn’t say anything. You only watched the street. When he pulled into a spot near your building and shifted into park, you turned back to face him.
“I can’t thank you enough for driving me home,” you said. You gave him that smile and worse – you reached out to lay a hand on his, the one resting on the manual gear shift. You were both wearing gloves, so it must be the same magic that had come over him in the backyard. The snow was still falling, and on an island of over a million people, it felt like you were the only two on earth.
Sonny cleared his throat. “Let me know when you want to go get your car.”
Another smile, and you reached into your purse and rummaged around. You pulled out a little notebook and pen, and he watched as you wrote out your name and your number. You tore the paper out and handed it to him.
“I’m flexible on the car,” you told him. “I rarely drive around the city anyway. So…whatever works for you.” You glanced away like you were embarrassed. “Or, you know. If you need police tips or anything. A Spanish refresher, maybe. Anything at all.”
He realized a beat too late what you were saying. Or implying.
And again, he was left speechless, and he only nodded at your little wave as you opened your door and slid out of his truck, then disappeared into your building without a backwards glance.
i was trying to be normal but now i’m here to make my feelings on nandor’s crisis of self everyone else’s problem
this is going to be incredibly unstructured and biased but i have feelings which are going under the cut
hello friends foes and people that know better!
im here to talk about nandor the relentless
so ok todays episode really did things to me that only pacific rim uprising has in that i am still crying about it over an hour later and now i need to talk about nandor’s crisis of self, namely his rejection of self
we see the house, in this episode, celebrating not nandor’s birthday, but his rise to power in a country long since dissolved and buried in sand, a party that they have apparently been holding every year that guillermo has been in the house! nandor is discontented with the whole celebration, continuing this season’s arc of his existentialism, trying to understand what it’s like to be a vampire, to be lonely, to be someone once powerful and now small, co-leader of a council that only covers, what, just staten island?
and he’s drawn in by this promise of being human again, of being able to eat and drink and see the sun again, because hes so desperate to reject this part of himself that he must see as inherently cursed! when he was turned, his wives all rejected him and his kingdom drove him out, hes spent centuries looking for belonging, and always being barred at every turn but for this one house of perverts who he’s grown to resent for treating him like the big useless turkey of the house, only good for being strong (and now not even that, with guillermo in the house as their bodyguard rather than familiar)! he turned gail, only for her to immediately leave, after asking him to wait FOREVER for her! vampirism really hasnt been anything but a curse for him for as long as we’ve been following him, so it makes sense that he would be drawn in!
and he changes literally everything about himself to do it! cuts his hair, changes his clothes, pulls out his fangs every single day, they CLEARLY arent drinking blood to avoid being vampires so hes weakening himself too! and it makes him happy, because its something new, somewhere that he belongs to without being relied upon to be strong or smart or anything but human, which i dont think hes ever had? he falls for jan, because he wants so badly for her to be right, for this to be his chance to be human again, even when we’ve been given absolutely no sign that it does anything! (and we do see that it didnt do a damn thing at the end too!)
guillermo coming and rescuing him was, to him, a kidnapping and an assault on these people that, for months, had been his family, people that loved him without expectation (guillermo wanting to be turned) or reservation (the household all kind of hating one another in their own ways) and so no wonder hes miserable when guillermo tells him hes taking him home! hes convinced himself the only way he can ever be loved is to tear parts of himself out every single day to make himself lovable by anyone! no matter what he feels for guillermo, and he DOES feel things for him, he’s shown too many times this season and this EPISODE that he feels things, all he sees is this thing guillermo wants from him, to be immortal, to lose all these things that nandor is trying so hard to find, not realising that what guillermo really wants is him!!
and now he’s trapped in the same cage he locked guillermo in, begging them not to leave him alone in the dark because they want him to go back to being himself when he doesnt even know what they see in him besides these things he’s been ripping out every single day for a month, and i just know that guillermo’s gonna falter, because he loves him and wants what will make him happy, no matter how miserable he himself is, and he’ll let him go and nandor is gonna go to this place he thought was home only to find charred bodies, no jan, and the truth that ripping parts of himself out didnt make them love him, that the people that have been showing their love in the only ways they know how are the people he just left behind
these are literally just the feelings i have on nandors crisis i could go on so much longer about the scene where he leaves guillermo but im not going to because im being so normal about this again and not crying for the eighth time in an hour about nandors need to be loved
honesty and promise me part 6 [co-written with @darkmagyk] [read on ao3]
Ah, the age old question: what to get for the guy who has everything and also when you’re trying make up for the fact that you actually missed his birthday entirely while spending as little money as possible?
“Where the hell are you taking me?” Percy asks as they wait their turn to disembark. “I haven’t been to Staten Island in ages.”
Annabeth has never been at all. She knows there’s a handful of Greek revival buildings in the Historic District, but she’s never had a car to get there, or the stomach to get on the ferry. Percy had practically climbed onto the bow, his own personal reenactment of Titanic, arms thrown out to the wind, while Annabeth attempted to keep her breakfast down.
Having spectacularly flamed out last week in Philadelphia, she can’t let Percy’s birthday go without some sort of commemoration. The Staten Island Ferry is just part one. “All in due time,” she says, checking her phone for directions. They still have a bus they need to board, and Annabeth is getting sweaty in her leather jacket. Thank God Percy volunteered to carry the backpack with all their gear; otherwise, when this jacket comes off, it’s going to smell worse than his tights at the end of a long day.
Like a magnet, his gaze is glued to the strips of the bay he can spot through the bus windows, his head resting on his chin, a soft, serene smile lifting his lips. All the tightness, all the stress he’s held in his shoulders the last few times she’s seen him, it melts away at the sharp, salty tang of rust and sea air which suffuses every corner. She doesn’t even mind that he isn’t looking at her.
Hand in hand, finally, they get off the bus, and walk to the overlook. Slinging the backpack off his shoulder, he sets it down at his feet, eyes fixed on the strip of shoreline which can be seen, even all the way over here. “What is that?” he breathes, shielding his eyes against the glint of the sun on the water.
“That,” says Annabeth, “is the Staten Island ship graveyard.”
Still stewing in her guilt over how she missed his birthday--despite the fact that he didn’t even tell her--Annabeth decided to swallow her pride and ask for help. It took an inordinate number of coffee orders and one instance of her actually getting down on her knees and begging, pleading to their long friendship together and swearing that Annabeth would never use this information for evil, but she had finally wheedled the secret out of Thalia: Percy’s greatest love, after the ballet, was sailing. Ship construction, naval battles, maritime history, they were, according to Thalia, the only things which could entice Percy to actually set down the tights and “get some frickin’ sunshine for once in his life.” Annabeth hadn’t believed her, until Thalia had dug up an old photo which had never been posted to his socials--and Annabeth had certainly scoured them for long enough, she would have recognized it had she seen it before--of Percy, on a glittering, jewel-like sea, a rope wrapped around his fist as he leaned over the side of a sailboat, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide in a graceless, unrestrained joy.
“Back in the eighties, there used to be over four hundred ships down there,” Annabeth says, coming up beside him. “A lot of it’s been scrapped or sold, but there are still maybe a hundred or so boats, including the USS PC-1264, one of the--”
“One of the two predominantly African American crewed Navy ships from World War II,” he interrupts, eyes light. “No way!”
“Yes way,” Annabeth grins, unzipping her jacket. The midday sun beats down on them, the air sticky and heavy, and she needs this thing off, pronto. “And, there’s a ship that was supposedly the command post for the General Slocum disaster.” Not that she really knows what that is.
He whirls around. “The Abram S. Hewitt is there? Holy sh--”
His jaw drops. His eyes bug out.
Part two of his present was the ship graveyard. Part three is the outfit.
Annabeth, one hand on her hip, slings her jacket over her shoulder with the other, the leather hot against her bare skin. She has chosen to forgo a shirt entirely, wearing nothing but her nicest pair of black jeans with the thick suspenders and a shiny, red bra. And yes, she had Thalia touch up her hair, five inches of curls lopped off on one side, undercut sharp and severe.
“I thought we could have a picnic here,” she says, a smile curling her lips without her permission. “Then, if you want, we could do some light trespassing? See the ships up close?”
Percy swallows. He breathes in through his nose, shuddering. “Sure,” he whispers, hoarse. “Sounds good.”
Dropping to the ground like a rock, studiously not checking her out, Percy unpacks their picnic, laying out the blanket, something blue, old, but soft Annabeth had knitted in a fit of pre-finals’ anxiety in college. Annabeth had hinted the night before that he should make them some food, as no one could make a grilled cheese like Percy, and she sure as shit wasn’t going to buy them some prepackaged, tasteless garbage.
Percy’s sandwiches, just like the man himself, are stacked: thick, sourdough slices (which she suspects he made himself), bacon, turkey, apple, tomato, lettuce, avocado, mayo for her but none for him. She’d always been under the impression that dancers needed to watch what they ate, endlessly in pursuit of some unattainable ideal of beauty. Nope. Percy eats everything and anything he can get his hands on, high carb and high protein and high everything else. It makes sense, she guesses, for someone who basically has to bench their own body weight daily. Every inch of him is tailored for power and velocity, to propel him out of the grasp of gravity--rabbit food just isn’t going to cut it here.
Munching down, he maneuvers himself into a number of splits and stretches, unable to give up his routine for a single day. “When I was probably thirteen or fourteen,” he says, halfway through a tirade of reminiscence, “my dad took me and Triton and Kym to Cyprus, for some family bonding time.” He rolls his eyes. “You can probably imagine how well that went. Most of that trip was… well, Cyprus was definitely the best part. We went to Kyrenia Castle, which has this amazing museum that holds one of the oldest known ships in the world. Like, this thing was operational during the lifetime of Alexander the Great, and it sank about a mile away from the harbor.” He takes a heroic bite, chewing with his lips firmly shut.
“Cool.”
He swallows. “Very cool. I love really old ships, but you can imagine how few of those are still left, and not just because we haven’t found them.”
Annabeth feels her neck heating up, despite the shade they sit in. “Well, I hope these ones are old enough for you.”
“Oh, these are incredible--don’t get me wrong! I had no idea there was anything like this so close to home. Who needs Cyprus when you have Staten Island?” He grins, placing his sandwich down, throwing his arms in a stretch.
“I know it isn’t Tokyo or Moscow or anything…” she trails off, self-conscious even as she doesn’t actually ask the question that’s on her mind.
Shamefully, she has found that she still thinks about what Will had said at his apartment over a month ago at this point: Percy Jackson, boy toy of the rich and famous. But if she actually asks, it will make her look like some totally jealous girlfriend or something, like she honestly cares about Percy’s past sexual conquests.
She doesn’t care. She doesn’t.
He’s just led a really interesting life, and she wishes she could relate. That’s all.
“It’s not,” he agrees, bending his back with an audible pop. “It’s better.”
“Really? A little ship graveyard is better than the sites of Tokyo?”
“I didn’t see any sites in Tokyo,” he said. “Mostly just Mittie’s hotel room.”
“Mittie?”
Percy looks at his sandwich, suddenly very interested in the crust.
“She’s someone important, then?”
Silence.
Annabeth laughs to break the tension. “Okay, I'll bite--who’s Mittie? Another model?”
Taking a small bite of sandwich, he chews, methodical and deliberate. He swallows, clearing his throat. “Margherita Savoy.”
The name doesn’t ring a bell. “Who?”
“Princess Margherita Elisabetta of Sardinia.”
Her mouth drops open a little. “A princess?”
Percy shrugs. “Technically. The throne of Sardinia doesn’t exist anymore, obviously, but she’s big into the money and the titles and stuff.”
A princess. A fucking princess. “But she lets you call her Mittie.”
He looks a little constipated. “She didn’t… until she took me to Tokyo.”
“Oh,” she says. Because what else is there to say? She’s certainly no princess.
“She was nice,” Percy says, softly. “You know, eventually. Once we got to know each other.”
Her phone is hot in her pocket, like it’s preemptively searching Google for pictures of Margherita Elisabetta of Sardinia, downloading them all so Annabeth can scribble all over her face like a bad high school movie. “A pretender?” She scoffs, exaggeratedly, her fists tight against the grass. “Talk to me when you get a real princess.”
His ears go red. “Um…”
No way. “No fucking way.”
“Look, Eugenie was just kinda pissed when Triton broke up with her, and so she just thought that we’d have some fun.”
“Oh my god.” She says, looking at him in something like horror. And telling herself at least it wasn’t her distant cousin Madeleine.
“It was only for like a week or two,” Percy protests. “We went to a club in Berlin she knew Triton liked to go to so he would see us and get annoyed.”
“A princess dated you because she was pissed at your brother?”
“Only twice,” he says, casual, like any of this is normal and not absolutely insane. “Eleonore is one of Kym’s friends. And she’s technically, like, an archduchess, not a princess. But I don’t know. A couple of his other girlfriends wanted to get back at him, and I was in Europe and available, so we just…” He trails off. She can hear the ellipsis, hanging hot and heavy over them, each dot dropping like a stone. What is this, fucking Mamma Mia?
“When was the last time this happened?” she asks, not really wanting to hear the answer.
He rubs a hand over his mouth, gaze unfocused as he thinks. “Um… not since the week after Frank left, I think. Mittie wanted to go to Bora Bora but she didn’t want to go alone, you know?”
“No, I meant,” she pushes through as her stomach flutters, tight and uncomfortable, “girls using you to get back at your brother.”
His face falls, just a bit. “Oh. Last year, I guess.”
“Who was she?” And where is she so Annabeth can punt her off a building?
“Calypso Atlas.” He sighs, wistful, with more reverence than he had given any of the princesses, and Annabeth’s stomach flops, different from the flutter. Painful this time. “She actually liked me.”
“Everyone likes you,” she says, faintly. Maybe wearing the leather jacket is giving her heatstroke.
“You know, they really don’t. Not how it counts, anyway.” He picks at a blade of grass, rubbing it between his fingers. “Most of the girls who wanted to use me to get back at Triton only did it because they knew how much he liked to bitch about me--the ‘half-breed bastard.’” He rolls his eyes, huffs a laugh. “And even Kym’s friends didn’t actually like me. Like, yeah, they’d fly me all over with them, but they didn’t want to be seen with me. Mittie and I were on and off for years, and she gets photographed constantly. I’m not in any of them.”
Annabeth thinks she might actually be sick.
But he doesn’t stop. “It wasn’t so bad when they went around saying that I was a dancer with the Paris Opera, because I was, and I was proud of it. But it wasn’t… I don’t know. It wasn’t like with Frank, whose family does have a ton of money, but who only ever dated me because he liked me.” He picks another blade of grass, tearing it between his fingers. “Calypso, though. She was different.” And he smiles, a little.
“How?”
That smile grows wider. “She just called me one day, out of the blue, and very publicly asked me to be her date to Milan Fashion Week after she and Triton broke up and he immediately turned around and got engaged. She was super up front about it, didn’t try to sleep with me or anything, even though I know she was friends with some people and probably heard about my various talents.”
She knows exactly which talents he means. He winks at Annabeth, ironic and self-conscious, and she forces out a little laugh, as though the idea of him going down on someone else is charming.
“But then we actually had a good time together, and a few weeks later, she called me up again, and again, and again, until eventually she introduced me to her father--which was a hell of an experience, let me tell you. The Atlas family puts the Olympianides family to shame as far as dysfunction goes. But it was nice, in its own way; if I’d ever asked Mittie to introduce me to her dad, she’d have laughed in my face.”
“Sounds like you were pretty serious,” Annabeth manages.
“That was the problem.” He looks away, towards the sea. Always towards the sea. “She wanted to leave Paris, travel the world. And she wanted me to go with her.”
“To leave the Paris Opera?”
“To leave ballet entirely. I just…” He holds the silence for a moment, lost in the fog of reminiscence, the mist of possible futures long since dissipated. Sighing, he shakes his head. “I couldn’t do it. So, in March, she went to Dubai, and I started making calls back to New York.”
“You broke up with her this year?”
“She broke up with me,” he clarifies, turning back to her. “It was all very romantic. I always left my comp at the box office for her. She didn’t come to my show, but she showed up at the stage door the day before she was set to leave, telling me that she had an extra ticket with my name on it. I turned her down.” And then he looks her in the eye as he says, “I don’t regret it at all.”
She swallows, her face flushing, tongue numb as she searches desperately for something to say to that. “Atlas, you said her family was? It sounds familiar.”
“Oh, you’re probably thinking of Zoe Atlas,” Percy says, easing off for the moment. “You probably know about her because she and Thalia were archenemies in boarding school. Or maybe girlfriends? I have yet to get a straight answer.” Annabeth’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. Thalia, in boarding school? What? “But I like Zoe. She’s an activist, and absolutely hates her father. Like I said, there’s a lot of dysfunction. And she came to my first show way back when, and she wasn’t even weird when I dated her sister when we ran into each other in Paris. So that was nice.”
“She went to your first show?” What in God’s name is up with these one-percenter families? It’s like they all overlap in one big incestuous slurry. And as the daughter of the Chases and the Pallases, she tries not to think where she might fit into that.
“Thalia brought her. Her first not-date. It was Thalia’s first ballet ever, too. It… it meant a lot.”
“What show was it?”
He smiles, wistful. “The Nutcracker. I was one of the kids at Clara’s party. Most scared I’ve ever been. When I got out backstage after intermission, Thalia was waiting for me with my mom. She punched my shoulder, called me ‘Kelp Head,’ and told me I did great. Then I hugged her,” he says, snickering. “She punched me again.”
Annabeth laughs, huffing through her nose. “Good to see some things never change.”
“That’s our Thalia for you--looking out for everyone, even when it kills her inside.” He glances at her pointedly.
It’s her turn to share.
Annabeth’s mouth is dry, like sandpaper.
She grabs her backpack, pulling out a sketchbook and a pencil. Beside her, Percy sighs, deflating a little.
Annabeth flips open a new page, and starts drawing.
Each sketch delivers a challenge: bringing order to the whole through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony. Sometimes, buildings spring to life on the page, fully formed. Sometimes the page stays blank, an empty pencil.
Pencil to paper. Letting whatever wants to come out, come out. “My mom invited me to lunch one day,” she says. Her eyes follow the line of her pencil, ninety degree angles and symmetrical shapes. “I had moved to New York like six months before. Single girl, in the big city, to follow her dreams.” She’d gone to boarding school in New York before that, but it wasn’t the same as picking out her apartment and taking the train to the Manhattan skyscraper her office was held in. Sometimes she’d walk down the street, feeling like she was smack dab in the middle of Sex and the City, which she and Piper use to watch in secret, huddled under the covers in the dorms at Miss Minerva’s. “Unfortunately, my mom didn’t love my dreams.”
“She didn’t approve of anarchist architecture?”
Annabeth’s laugh is hollow. “She thought I should have been charting some new path in business for a woman. But not in a feminist way. In, like, a capitalist way. But architecture was not really negotiable for me. And once that became clear, she had her own expectations about that, too.”
Annabeth has always been a prideful know-it-all. If all her mother had wanted from her was ambition, they probably could have made it work. Annabeth wanted to reshape the skyline, she wanted her name on buildings that would last and impress.
But even Annabeth couldn’t do that in six months.
“She wanted the best schools, the best companies, the best projects.” She sighs. “I was lucky to find a job in New York that wasn’t just carrying coffee.” She had gotten a bigger offer from a more well-known firm where she had interned one summer, but it had been for an assistantship, heavy on the assistant. Her eventual Junior Architect label hadn’t been great, but it had been something, being a rising star at a smaller firm. It seemed like a good fit. “I did not make my mother proud. I… she lived in New York, and I lived with my dad all over.”
Percy frowns. “Your mom didn’t have custody of you?”
“My mom didn’t want custody of me,” she laughs, bitter. God, it feels weird to tell someone else this. Piper and Leo and Luke knew, obviously, but they had witnessed it all firsthand. Telling someone else, out of the blue… Well, Percy had divulged his tragic backstory without complaint. It’s only fair that she does as well. “I mean, my dad didn’t either. But when it became clear my mom wasn’t an option, well, there we were. He stepped up as best he could. That wasn’t always a lot, but when compared to my mother, he seems like a perfectly involved parent.”
“Are you trying to make my parental situation seem more reasonable?”
“Is it working?”
“If you ever meet my dad, we can compare notes.” He shudders at the thought, playfully. “So, what happened with your mom?”
“She made her displeasure known.” Annabeth sighs again, shading a corner. “I mean, she’s always made her displeasure known. I wasn’t getting good enough grades, I wasn’t in the right activities, I wasn’t going to get into the right school, yadda yadda yadda. But for a long time… I don’t know, it at least seemed like she was worried about me.” She thinks of the Eta party, of the man in the brown suit, tutting about Athena Pallas’s druggie daughter, and scowls. “My mother has always had an all or nothing outlook. If I wasn’t the best, I might as well be nothing. But the thing was, this time I thought I was making real progress. And when she invited me to lunch after six months in the same city, I thought she would see that.”
She had not. Because to Athena Pallas, having a daughter who was an architect instead of an executive Vice-President on her way to CEO, having a daughter at a small but growing architecture firm instead of the best one in the country, was like having a daughter who was drunk in a gutter somewhere.
And Annabeth had realized as much that lunch.
All her work was never going to earn her mother’s love.
And suddenly, she wasn’t sure what work had been her’s and what had been her mother’s ambitions.
She’d started crying. In the cafe and right now, on Staten Island, with Percy. “I’m sorry,” she sniffs, wiping her nose on her arm. “Wow, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He reaches over and wraps an arm around her, gently, rubbing her shoulder, and she more or less crumples into his side. “It’s fine. Take your time.”
Her arm, still free, keeps moving. The drawing takes a shape that she can’t quite name yet. A tree, maybe, in a box. A window to another world, possibly. She spills tears on the paper.
“She disowned me.” Her thin line trembles, before righting itself. “I ran out of there. I stumbled into the first tattoo parlor that didn’t smell like piss, and got my owl done.” She brandishes her left arm, the grey shape blurry and faded against her elbow. She had had a stuffed owl as a little girl, her protector against the spiders in the closet. “I cut off my hair, got my eyebrow pierced, found a club, and just… had a rough couple of days. Got really really drunk that night.” Like, too drunk. Crying on the floor of a filthy bathroom drunk. “Thalia found me under the bathroom sink, took me back to her place, helped me kick the hangover the next day, and that was that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” Annabeth says. And most of the time, she isn’t. She wipes her eyes, smudged makeup getting smudger.
“Your mom sounds like she sucks.”
“She does.”
“What about your dad?”
She sniffs. “What about him?”
“You just haven’t really mentioned him. What’s he like?”
Shrugging, she wipes a tear from her cheek. “He’s a history professor.”
“And?”
“That’s about it.”
“I mean, do you like him?”
She shrugs again. “Sure.” There was a lot to like about Frederick Chase. “I haven’t really spoken to him in a while.”
Mouth in a sympathetic twist, he brushes the curls from her eyes, a gesture so sweet it makes her heart pound. “You should call him,” he says. “I’m sure he misses you.”
Her phone burns in her pocket, heavy with the weight of unread texts. “Maybe.”
“Do you want to change the subject?” he asks.
“Please,” she blurts out, digging the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “God, please. Let’s go back to your cute backstory. Tell me more about your first ballet. I want to hear all about the time you were in the Nutcracker.”
Percy fishes out a napkin from somewhere, handing it to her. Grateful, she blows her nose into it, wet and disgusting. “I hate to tell you this,” he says, “But I have been in the Nutcracker, like, fifteen times.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he nods, “It's the big moneymaker. Have you ever seen it?”
“It's a holiday classic,” she scoffs, a little wetly. “Of course I’ve seen it.”
He snorts. “Like, for real, or the recorded one they play on Netflix with Macaulay Culkin?”
“I've seen it live! My dad lived in San Francisco when I was in high school. They have a fancy ballet there.” She’d seen it as a little kid in NYC, she thought, too. Maybe when her parents were still married, or her mother was still willing to take her for Christmas.
“Would you be willing to see it again?”
“Like, for real,” she parrots back at him, “or the recorded one they play on Netflix?”
“Ha ha. I mean for real.”
“I mean… maybe if they switched things up a bit.”
“It's a classic!” He protests. “I mean, it isn’t like we do the Balanchine everywhere, every time. But… it's a classic.”
“I’m sure the dancing is fine.” Annabeth says. She remembers going with Luke in Boston and thinking it was nice, but also hoping Luke would kiss her at the end of the night, so she hadn’t really paid attention. “But they get to design a land of magic and sweets and fairies, and every time the costumes and the sets are just, like, pink glitter and white gauze mixed with weird racial stereotypes. There’s no imagination.”
“Well, okay then.” There’s something in his smile, in the turn of his head that she can’t quite identify. “What would you do?” he challenges.
She holds his gaze for a moment, looking into those eyes that almost reflect the color of the sea around them. Her eyes feel a little puffy still, but he doesn’t look away. Then, without breaking away, she flips open a new page in her sketchbook.
“Space,” she says. “It needs space.”
“Outer?”
“Negative. Lots of space for dancers to move around.” Her pencil scratches over the paper, familiar blocky shapes springing to life. Doric fluted columns split the wings, because of course. “It’s Christmas, so we want color: no sterile, snowy landscape. We know it’s all frozen over--we don’t need to see it again. Obligatory Christmas tree here,” she sketches a crude triangle off to one side, approximately along the golden ratio, “and a big fireplace in the center, preferably a functional one.”
“You know there was this dancer in the nineteenth century that died because her costume caught fire, yeah?”
Annabeth tilts her head, capitulating. “Fair point. We’ll raise it up on a pedestal, keep it out of the way.” She draws a little platform beneath it. “But color is key.” Up above, she draws a pediment crowning the proscenium. She scribbles in the empty space, a placeholder. “Everyone knows the story, so you lay it out up here, episodes merging into each other from start to finish.”
Percy peers down at her page, his chin perilously close to resting on her shoulder. She can’t draw like that. “Kind of reminds me of the Parthenon.”
“You’ve been?”
He nods, his hair tickling the side of her face. “Couple of times. I thought you said you wanted color, though. The Parthenon’s all white, isn’t it?”
“Not originally,” she says. “Do they not explain that on the tours?”
“Um…” Sheepish, he looks away. “I, uh, I’m not always great at listening.”
God. It’s so endearing. What the hell. She kisses him on the cheek, enjoying the way he flushes lightly. “Me either.” He is so fucking handsome. “But no, the original Parthenon, all those white statues, they were painted. Ergo, color.”
He blinks, momentarily stunned. “Wouldn’t--uh, wouldn’t that distract from the dancers? People would just be staring at the ceiling.”
“Then… it’s only lit up before and after the show. During the show, you turn the lights down, bring the focus back down onto the stage.” She considered it. Something she’d worked on for a production once, a fashion show Piper had done at Pratt. “Or, you set it up so the colors are mostly lights. Lights that shine through during the snowflake dance and when Clara rides off with the prince. But then you also get the white for the frosted look. But, they’re still too pink, so I don’t think some color variety is bad.”
“So, not to kill your vibe,” Percy says, pulling back a bit, “but I gotta say, I don’t see how this is that different from the billion other Nutcrackers out there.”
She glares, lips pursed. He’s trying so hard not to laugh. Dick. “The set is only half the problem,” she says. “You'd need to redesign the costumes, too.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t you come see my show in December, and then you can tell me all about how you’d fix it.”
“Me and every tourist in New York at Christmas time?”
He nods, like he was expecting it. “Then come to my current one. September isn’t Christmas, so it’ll be a lot less crowded.”
“I don’t know,” she grimaces, sketching a star in the corner of the page. “I don’t really think I’d fit--'' Fit in with those people like the ones from the Eta awards, who thought not being her mother’s lackey was the same as being in rehab.
“Annabeth.” Percy takes her drawing hand, lifting it off the page entirely. The pencil is caught between them, an ineffectual barrier to the sweet, rubbing thumb on the mound of her palm. “I want you to come to my show. I’ll leave you a ticket. No one will care what you look like, I promise.” He stares at her, baby seal eyes in full effect.
Fuck.
“As long as you leave me a ticket,” she says, weakly. “I mean, I wouldn’t be able to afford a good seat.” The lie slips out, easy as anything. She can’t help it.
He smiles, soft and warm and way too inviting. “And in the meantime,” he says, softly,
you can come with me tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“I’m going to my parents’ for dinner. It’ll be just my mom, Paul, and my sister. They’d love to meet you.”
“I can’t,” she replies, immediately, almost without thinking. “I’ve got--I’ve got work to do.”
She doesn’t. But boys don’t bring girls like Annabeth home anymore. She isn’t meant to settle down. She’s meant for grimy bars and ship yards. She'll leave it to the princesses to be brought home.
He deflates, just the slightest bit. If she hadn’t had so much up and personal time with his naked chest and the movement of his shoulders, she probably would have missed it. “Maybe next time, then?”
“Yeah,” she agrees, not entirely certain if she means to follow through. “Maybe next time.”