Read Sunset Park for Free Online

whole idea and fallen into a pit of despair, drowning my sorrows in PlayStation and refusing to speak to Michael. He’d tried to console me by pointing out a real handball league, but I’d told him to drop dead. His realistic crap had crushed my dreams.
    I felt like that now. Michael, Nunzio, and David were crushing my fantasy by forcing me to go on job interviews for positions I wasn’t qualified to fill.
    They did not get me at all. The three of them were ambitious go-getters—they had all decided on their careers by the time they were twenty-one, and had charged full steam ahead to achieve their goals. I, on the other hand, had only recently decided to get off my ass. They didn’t realize how discouraging it was to be shot down at even one interview, because they’d never been shot down at all.
    It killed my confidence and my motivation. It was safer to stay firmly planted in a fantasy, no matter how unrealistic. Like the handball thing. I would have this shiny, awesome future to look forward to and feel good about it until someone smacked me in the face with the dick called reality.
    Talking about office jobs in Manhattan was super. Coming up with acceptable pay scales—even better. Until I actually applied for jobs we’d discussed and had to sit through an interview while some middle-aged dude with a pasty face and a rumpled suit told me why I wasn’t good enough. That was what had happened the previous day, anyway. David had talked me into applying for a job as a clerk in a law office, and the office manager had made it quite clear that I was only qualified for sorting their stock room. I couldn’t even blame the dude. He was probably right.
    “Next stop—Atlantic Avenue, Barclays Center.”
    I stood up from my sprawl on the gray bench seat of the 4 train and turned to face the doors. As the train rushed through the dark tunnel, I got a clear view of my reflection. It was like looking at a younger version of Michael, even though I swore up and down that I took after my dad while Michael’s features came from our mother. Either way, I hadn’t been this clean-cut since our father’s funeral.
    Shrugging in the slim-cut blazer Nunzio had forced me to buy, I reached up to undo the top few buttons of my shirt. All in all, the getup wasn’t that bad. Nunzio knew how to dress up without looking like a total stiff, but I wasn’t used to throwing on much more than a pair of jeans or basketball shorts. I wasn’t used to the subway anymore either. So far the best part of the ride was the girl checking me out across the train car, not to mention avoiding the steep fees for Manhattan parking.
    The train rocked to a stop, and I glanced over my shoulder. The girl smiled just as the doors chimed and opened. I reluctantly stepped out.
    I needed to get back in the game, stat. Crystal had gone monogamous with her cop guy over a month ago, and I hadn’t been with anyone since. I blamed laziness when Nunzio or my friend Chris asked why I wasn’t even attempting to date, but the truth was I’d been fond of hanging out with Crystal. She wasn’t as easy to replace as people assumed. Finding someone to fuck was easy. Finding someone I could also get along with was a whole other ballgame.
    After jogging up the stairs to catch the R train, it took me ten minutes to reach Sunset Park and another few to find the bakery on 36th Street where Nunzio and David were waiting. I wasn’t too fond of wearing interview clothes for our apartment hunting expedition, but I was pumped about them willingly spending time together.
    While trudging up the hill from the subway, I took in what I could see of the neighborhood. I’d only been to Sunset Park a few times in the past, but it did not appear to have changed much in terms of real estate. There were still, like, five or six bodegas in a two-block radius, the Mexican bakery with the bomb-ass hot pink cookies and lavish quinceañeracakes, the Dominican restaurant with the heaping six-dollar