Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) by Jessica Topper Read Free Book Online

sizable boobs off the counter and pick up a feather duster once in a while. No clutter, no noise. Just the soft sounds of her yoga mix CDs on the stereo under the ever-glowing exotic brass lamp hanging high overhead.
    Sidra strolled up Avenue A in a post-practice haze. It was a short strut from letters to numbers and didn’t take long to get to her brownstone on East 5th Street off Second Avenue. Just a block away, the narrow eye of Curry Row blinked invitingly. Her mouth watered at the smell of
rotli
frying in the pan and rice cooking with cardamom. She felt ten years old again, helping her aunties as they made
dal makhani
, the buttery lentil soup her grandparents’ restaurant was known for.
    While some kids had monkey bars to swing on, Sidra had the front and back doors of every Indian restaurant on 6th Street to zoom through like her own personal culinary playground. There she nicked fresh flatbread
chapatis
hot from the oven and learned how to blend spinach in a cream sauce for
saag
. She’d help her grandma mix chai spices in a baggie to take home and simmer in milk for Seamus and her dad.
    Seventh Street was a whole different jungle gym of memories, sounds, and smells. McSorley’s Old Ale House was there, had always been there, and probably always would be there. It was just one in a long string of establishments that tolerated Jack Sullivan when he could no longer tolerate himself. She recalled pulling her father off many a bar stool to come home for a hot meal and a change of clothing. The smell of sawdust mixed with the sour sweat of someone who spent his summers drinking indoors. She had been ten then, too, the year her mother died.
    She had promised herself she wouldn’t think about death today. Especially today.
    “Where’s yer dot?” was a frequent question from the inebriated clientele on the neighboring bar stools of the Landmark and Molly’s Shebeen when she’d arrive, determined to coax her father home. The lighthearted melody of an Irish reel and the piping of a tin whistle would echo cheerily in her head in contrast to the sick thump of her heart later on as she watched her father piss the bed. The first time she saw such a dark stain bloom beneath him, she thought it was blood, that he was dying, too. But somehow, her dad would always spring back, sober and ready for a good Irish roast with the rest of the Sullivan clan come Sunday.
    The three streets were a blend of unique memories elemental to her blended Irish-Indian upbringing, a mesh tightly woven. But they were also peppered with thoughts of her first love. She remembered the shock, the burst of summer rain, and the cute boy who walked her all the way home from Great Jones Street just because he happened to have an umbrella when she did not.
    That hadn’t been chivalry on Charlie’s part that day, Sidra realized now. It had been dumb luck and opportunity. Charlie Danahy just always fell into things: cool band gigs, great summer shares, lucrative modeling stints . . . and other women’s beds.
    She knew exactly which streetlight witnessed their first kiss—the one covered in tiny mirrors and mosaic tiles the color of Charlie’s eyes. She could barely stand to walk past it now, afraid to get lost in that sea of mosaic and see her shattered heart reflected in each tiny mirror.
    Sidra had lived all her life in Manhattan but had been as ethnocentric as a small-town girl. She could joke with Liz about importing and exporting for the sake of her love life, but, in all honestly, could never imagine being anywhere else. Yet lately, she felt like she was drowning in the melting pot.
    Sidra turned her mind to June and the promise of change. She’d continue teaching her studio classes at night, but her days would be spent outdoors, working at a posh summer camp upstate, away from the dog days of summer in the city. And away from the dogs, like Charlie, who dwelled there. That thought alone became Sidra’s new mental mantra for peace.
    * *