After living with her for few years, her rules started making more and more sense to me. She was happy and free and life seemed uncomplicated for her. Once I started following her rules, we had the time of our lives. But then I met Beckett. Something about him kept me responding to his texts and saying yes to hanging out. He showed promise. When I was with him, I thought about my future more than Brooklyn’s rules.
“So this is officially our third date?” Beckett asked as he reached across the table to take my hand.
It was our third date… technically. But it was the first without friends tagging along. We were at Blackbirds, which is mostly cocktails in a dark room. Beckett was sipping a fancy Scotch thing, and I had an eight-dollar, four-ounce jalapeno margarita.
“I like how cheap the drinks are here,” I said, ignoring his comment and pulling my hand back. Eight dollars was in fact cheap for a margarita. In the Bay Area, everything is expensive, especially being young.
Beckett and I hadn’t slept together. We had done other things back at my apartment, but nothing serious; he had been a true gentleman. I often caught myself batting my eyelashes at him like a fucking idiot, but I was smitten and that feeling was all new and shiny to me.
He had the head-to-toe look that made Brooklyn go crazy, complete with a forearm tattoo of a random pinup girl sitting next to a bottle of ketchup. She had been into him first, but he hadn’t shown interest in her, which for some reason made me like him even more. Brooklyn was hard to look past. She had that confidence thing going for her.
“I like that,” I said, pointing at the ketchup bottle tattoo.
“Kind of a Warhol homage,” he said.
“Yeah, I figured.” I smiled and batted my stupid eyelashes again.
He was into me and not Brooklyn, and I wondered if that was driving my attraction toward him. I wouldn’t say I was ever second fiddle, but I let Brooklyn believe that. Being a novelty was a turn-on to her. She was easygoing, intelligent, pretty, and she got a lot of attention, which she needed all the time. Brooklyn would get naked with almost any guy who had a beard and a Mohawk and showed interest in her. If he wore suspenders, he was an automatic shoo-in. Beckett had all of those things, but I was the one he’d set his sights on the night we met him.
We had been hanging out at an old-school dive bar on Market that was usually swarming with hipsters. Brooklyn was the kind of girl who knew showing off her legs in San Francisco was sexier and more exotic than hiding a tiny bit of cellulite. The night we met Beckett, Brooklyn was wearing high-waisted cutoffs rolled up to her ass, boots, and a maroon fedora. I’d had on some variation of black on black because, while I could design high fashion, I never cared to wear it. Brooklyn said I was going all Vera Wang on her, but I just found clothing shallow beyond the art of design.
The truth was that I was insecure for no reason. I didn’t like attention the way Brooklyn did. But my black on black and wanting to blend in with whatever wall I was standing against didn’t bode well for my love life.
That first night when Beckett approached me at the bar, I thought he’d ask about Brooklyn—I was used to that—but he didn’t. He asked about me instead, and now we were on our third date, talking each other’s ears off.
“I’ve been working for this woman, Tracey. She’s a headache. She wants to do a denim line, and I want to cut off my ears every time she brings it up. She’s been on the circuit with these T-shirts—they’re basically like fifty-fifties, and she acts like she invented the damn shit.” I rambled on while Beckett looked totally enthralled. “She’s always trying to get in on stuff after it’s already been done. It’s one thing to know what’s trendy, but it’s real talent to know what’s going to be trendy… I think.”
“Yeah, I get that. It’s the same in my job,” he said. “You have to be creative with these programs, stay five steps ahead of the shitheads writing viruses. If you don’t like Tracey, why don’t you do your own thing?”
“I am. I mean, I’m always sketching. I just need the money right now. I have to stick it out with her for a while until I can get my own studio. She got some Japanese denim in last week and came up to me saying we needed to do a high-waisted bell-bottom. I said, ‘You mean like the jeans that are in every single store right now?’ She’s seriously stifling my creativity. She’s sucking the life out of me.”
“That’s a bummer. Don’t let it discourage you. I saw some of your designs last weekend, and they’re totally deck.”
“Deck?”
“Yeah, like fresh.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks.” I nodded, wondering how I’d missed the memo. Damn hipsters. “Do they have food here?”
“I don’t think so. You hungry? Want to go to 4505?”
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
4505 Burgers & BBQ on Divisadero was a casual meat-fest. I had a root beer float, and Beckett and I shared a half a platter of ribs. There was meat and BBQ sauce in his beard through our entire meal, and it didn’t bother me one bit. I found it charming. Again, all new and shiny feelings. I had only slept with two guys in my entire life and neither was memorable at all, so at twenty-four, I felt inexperienced. But Beckett was sweet and easy to be around.
Afterward, walking toward my apartment, we popped into a local hole-in-the-wall bar to grab one last drink before I invited him up, though he didn’t know yet that I had planned to finally have him over. It was only eleven, and I knew Brooklyn would be out until two in the morning at least.