“Oh?”

“Yeah, here you are only ten blocks from me but you can smell the ocean from your spot.”

“I know. And the chebureki.” She nodded to where two stooped Russian men sat across from one another at a makeshift chessboard. One of them had a little steaming cart next to him, selling the savory Russian pastries for a dollar apiece.

“Oh yeah, I guess this is almost Bath Beach. I heard the Russian population was moving out this way.”

She nodded. “Another Italian neighborhood with no more Italians.”

“I guess we’re all just Brooklynites in Brooklyn.”

She nodded and he wondered if she was thinking about her parents. “Want to come up and see the place?”

She’s nervous to go up alone. The thought struck him like a jolt from a toaster, and he felt warm and weird all at once. God, he didn’t like thinking about her being scared. He sort of hated her boyfriend right about now, this Evan guy. Why hadn’t she called him? He surely had a key. Shouldn’t he be waiting up there with a glass of wine and a fresh-baked lasagna? Bubble bath and a foot rub? Something to soothe her after the horrible day she’d had.

The other half of Seb, the half that he wasn’t as proud of, was glad that he got to be the one to go up there with her. Some ancient, testosterone-pumping part of his chemical makeup pictured himself peeking in her closets with a Maglite, kicking at a misshapen lump in her curtains, making sure the place was safe for her.

“Sure.” He rocked back on his heels, answering immediately. “You don’t mind the dog?”

She looked at him like he’d gone crackers. “Crabby? No. I don’t mind Crabby.”

Via took Matty by the hand and led him through the front lobby of her building. It was one of those old, decrepit buildings that had gotten a bad facelift sometime in the last decade. There were sheets of frosted green glass dividing the entryway in two and a skinny purple carpet leading toward the elevator. But the granite floors were spiderwebbed with cracks, and the pleather armchairs that sat next to a fake fern in the corner were layered over with dust. Such typical Brooklyn.

She walked straight past the row of little metal cubbies and didn’t check her mail. He wondered if that was because she didn’t usually get any or if those mailboxes didn’t open, a problem he’d had at an old place.

The elevator was brass and reflective, old-world. There was even a gate that had to be yanked to one side to get it to start. Matty did the honors, delighting in the smudgy fingerprints he left on the shiny brass handle.

Via led them to the dark wood door of her apartment. All the other doors had crooked, rusty numbers, but hers had a perfectly shiny, aligned number 5C. He knew, without a doubt, that she’d done that herself and it made him want to bury his nose behind her ear. Kiss both eyelids.