Becky stretches and drops a crumpled paper behind her head and onto my desk. It says: If you want sex, don’t fall in love. If you want love, don’t sleep with him.

Her answer feels wrong. Limited. Like, there have to be more than two options.

Wait, I write back, What if I want both?

She never answers, and then the bell rings and I’m too embarrassed to ask her out loud.

James is going to his parents’ house in Connecticut for the weekend, so he’s smoking twice as much as usual.

We sit on the fire escape of his apartment, watching the hookers cruise Ninth Avenue.

You could live in a better neighborhood, you know. I mean, not like you can’t afford it. Wouldn’t your mother freak if she saw this place?

James laughs. Forget my mother. My father would have me locked up.

James sets his cigarette down on the edge of the rail and leans forward, elbow to knee.

This is what I know about James’s parents: His mother is British and rich and beautiful and distracted by her clubs and her foundations and her committees. James loves her, although he wishes he didn’t. His father is a wildlife photographer for a big glossy magazine and spends his life on safari and in the bush and anywhere but at home. James says he doesn’t love him, but sometimes wishes he did.

Wouldn’t your dad be used to this kind of thing? I ask, pointing to the rusty railing and the broken windows, the shattered crack vials and burned-out cars, and the guys sleeping in the doorway across the street.

James picks up his cigarette and takes a long drag before flicking it over the rail and into a stagnant pool of water.

My dad only shoots things he thinks are beautiful, James says, as if his father used a gun rather than a camera. He’d hate this.

Coming down the hall back in our apartment, I stop to listen to Mom on the phone.

I know, Connor honey, she says. I know. I know. Don’t cry.

I retreat to my room, not wanting to intrude. Not sure, even now, how to merge the cocky version of my brother with the one who still needs to cry on the phone to his mother.

Sunday night, I wake up to the smell of smoke curling through my window, which I’d opened so I could listen to the sounds of the rain merge with the drone of the city. I crawl over and stick my head out.

Are you trying to drown your sorrows? I ask James.

I think mine have flotation devices, he responds, and shakes water out of his long hair.

I pull my head back, and he climbs in after me, shivering.

So the weekend was that good? I ask.

James helps himself to the towel from the back of my door and a sweatshirt from my dresser.

My father was almost mauled by a bear, James says. He made the mistake of getting between it and its lunch.