Taylor pulled the coat down from his face, squinting against the sunlight. “I don’t know,” he said, realizing that neither of them had thought past trying to seek out a meal. “There’s a temp office like ten blocks away. They might have gotten something new in for me.” He said it like a question more than a statement.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Aria said. “I can stay here and wait for you to get back if you’d like.”

Taylor was taken aback, having assumed that she would go with him and wait outside the office instead. “Don’t you want to come with?” he asked.

“No, I don’t want to just stand around outside. Besides, I can talk to her about whatever she was talking about before,” she said, pointing to Imani.

Taylor suddenly seemed insecure about the idea of wandering the city alone. But he didn’t want to risk being pushed away by pressing her to accompany him. “OK,” he said. “It’ll only take me like two hours. I’ll meet you back here and we can go back home.”

He pulled his backpack up onto his back and, before navigating his way to the sidewalk, he said, “Cross your fingers for me.” She smiled and gave him a thumbs up. The way he walked was so obviously gay that she caught herself worrying about his safety, strutting down the road in this part of town unaccompanied. She felt compelled to join him to avoid the guilt she would feel if anything happened to him because she wasn’t there. But Aria wanted to talk to Imani away from Taylor’s tendency to blindly trust people and accept their assistance, no matter the hidden consequence. She wanted to see if Imani’s offer was legitimate or truly full of shit.

Aria watched Imani, waiting for what looked like a good time to cut in. That time never came. By the time she was about to make a move to go over and talk to her, the woman had disappeared inside the building, leaving a younger girl in charge of the table, and didn’t come back out for so long that Aria decided the opportunity had closed. She walked briskly in the same direction as Taylor had gone, hoping that if she walked fast enough, she would be able to catch up with him. Soon she found herself standing at an intersection two blocks away from the church, not knowing which way he had gone. She stopped to lean against an inhospitable brick wall for long enough to decide whether to continue looking for him or to go back and idle at the church, waiting for him to come back.