Page 84 of A Very Snowed In New Year
There are so many texts, but I open the one from the maestro first.
BILLY BOSTON: We are good to go at noon, Haircut. The floor is yours.
ME:Roger that.
Good to go…
After replenishing fluids and electrolytes and ingesting a small amount of food, I am a new man. Well, I feel like a man again, anyway. I take a quick cold shower, making sure that Piper doesn’t touch my jeans while they’re folded on the counter by the sink.
Dressed in my jeans only, with damp hair—a look that has received the Piper stamp of approval many times—I emerge from the hotel bathroom to find my girl sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for me. The blackout curtains are closed, the lights are dim.
I go in for a kiss and then tell her, “I think I can deal with light now.”
She switches on another table lamp as I open up the curtains and look out onto Times Square. The plaza. The plaza where all through December, there is a mobile Wishing Wall and all year long it is surrounded by digital billboards above the sidewalks.
“So…” Piper says, still standing by the bed. It’s early summer, and she’s wearing a flowery dress, sandals with heels, and cherry-red lips. Always cherry-red lips. Always kissable. So much has happened for her over the past half a year, but even as she succeeds one way after another, she takes it all in stride. She’s the same girl who wroteSHERcockbLOCKed, with a little more experience. And a lot moremein her life. “You survived the night,” she says. “They didn’t scare you off?”
“I survived. Sorry I didn’t make it back home, though. Were you worried?”
“Billy let me know where you were and told me you needed to sleep it off for a few hours.”
I hold my hand out to her, inviting her to join me by the window.
“Glad to see no one wrote anything in Sharpie on your forehead.”
I have a vague recollection of Nolan holding me down while Billy held a felt pen over my face, and Eddie got Rita on the phone. She yelled at him about my face being my job, but I think it was all the hacking and coughing that scared him. “The shenanigans were just good, clean fun,” I tell her. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
I point down to the plaza. “Hey. The second time I ever saw you was down there.”
She beams. “The Wishing Wall!”
“Yeah.” I stand behind her, snaking my arms around her waist. “You were wearing a miniskirt and tights and boots. There were so many people. So much going on in Times Square, but I still saw you.”
She hums appreciatively.
I wait for her to spot the thing I want her to see on her own, but she doesn’t notice.
“Hey…” I point to a digital billboard across the street, one of the big ones. “What’s that about?”
“What?” There are so many billboards that could distract her. So many people and cars. But Piper zeroes in on the image I want her to see, because…butts. She gasps. “I know those butts…”
Indeed, she does.
I stand back to get a landscape shot of her looking out the window and the billboard she’s pointing at.
Above Broadway, for all to see, is video footage of five mens’ butts in jeans. Good butts, all of them—even I’d say so. Standingside by side, on a digital screen that’s over thirty feet tall, Declan, Eddie, Nolan, Billy, and Piper’s dad face away from the camera.
Across their butts scrolls the text:We approve of him, Piper!
“Oh my God!” she squeals. Without looking away from that view, she says, “How?!”
“I know a guy who owns a billboard company. A company called BillyBoard.”
“We need to go down and take pictures!” she says, clapping.
But when she turns around, she finds me on one knee before her, holding up a diamond ring.
Her hands cover her cherry-red mouth. Her eyes were already wide and glassy. She makes the little kitten sound that I love, stares down at me, and listens.
