Eye Candy Read Online Free PDF Page A

snorted. “You’re crazy. You picked the three most boring guys.”
    â€œDon’t listen to her,” Ann-Marie said. “You’ll find someone terrific, Lin. I know you will.” She hugged me from behind.
    â€œMaybe you should go out with all three of them at once,” Luisa said. “That might make it more interesting. Or maybe pick five or six of them. Big Fat Loser, too.”
    â€œLuisa, please—”
    â€œYes! This is awesome. You tell them it’s a TV show. Like on Fox,” Luisa continued. “You chain them all to you, and they follow you everywhere. That way, you really get to know them. And then each week, you have a vote. Everyone votes, and you eliminate the most obnoxious one.”
    The idea had us all laughing. It was a riot.
    But the fun ended quickly.
    It ended with one phone call.

7
    I went out with Brad Fisher first. He was almost as tall as me, a wiry, thin guy, lots of energy. He had a birdlike look to him, a beaky nose that had been broken a few times in playground fights, he said. He brought it up—I didn’t. His round brown eyes were perched very close together, close to his broken nose.
    I liked his crooked smile. He talked out of the side of his mouth, like a gangster, and he could dangle a cigarette from his lips and talk at the same time, something I know he learned at the movies.
    We got along pretty well, even though we didn’t have a chance to talk much. He took me to Blondie’s, a loud sports bar on Seventy-ninth Street, just a few doors down from my apartment. We split a huge platter of buffalo wings, very hot and spicy, and he had three beers to my one.
    We had to shout to be heard over the crowd and the music, so we mainly smiled across the table at each other and kept wiping the barbecue sauce off our cheeks with our napkins.
    Then we jumped in a cab, and Brad took me to Caroline’s Comedy Club near Times Square to see Colin Quinn and a bunch of other stand-ups complain about their girlfriends and airline stewardesses and how stupid the mayor was.
    Brad had another three beers to my one. And before I knew it, we were back uptown in front of my apartment saying goodnight. And I’d hardly learned a thing about him. His parents were Russian immigrants and he grew up near Coney Island, and his first after-school job had been taking tickets for the Cyclone, the famous roller-coaster there. And . . . what else?
    What else about Brad? He was working as a reporter at the
New York Weekly,
a free newspaper filled with local news and politics and grocery store ads. But he said he was just doing that for experience. He knew someone at the
Daily News
who had offered to give him a try-out soon. After working in newspapers for a few years, he planned to move to TV news.
    And what else?
    I can’t think of much else.
    It was a chilly, damp evening. Spring just refused to arrive, even though it was May. I climbed out of the cab. Brad followed me out and stood with the cab door open behind him, saying goodnight. A car rolled by, one of those huge Suburban SUV’s, blaring rap music loud enough for the whole block to enjoy, and I still couldn’t hear what Brad was saying.
    And then the SUV moved past. Brad held my hand. “You know, guys stare at you wherever you go,” he said. “Do you realize that? I mean, guys really look at you.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, “Does that bother you?”
    He got this strange smile on his face but didn’t say anything. And then he raised both hands and grabbed the back of my head.
    He wrapped his hands tightly around my hair, and he pulled my face to his. Not gently, but hard. And he kissed me—a hard, dry kiss, pressing his mouth against mine so tightly I could feel his teeth.
    It hurt. And I hated the way he held my head in place, like a wrestling hold. And when he opened his mouth and his tongue started to force my lips open, I jerked