No way could I walk past a person in need.
My shock dissipating, I stripped off my hoodie. The smell of my sweat permeated the cold air. She probably wouldn’t want it but she needed it. “How long have you been up here? It’s freezing.” She could have been up here half an hour. She hadn’t been here when I’d run over the bridge into Manhattan.
For a minute I didn’t think she’d take it, but then her hand reached out. “I don’t know?”
“You know it’s twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, right? You’ll get hyperthermia.” She looked at me, her eyes still dead. “I’m Jason… Were you trying to do what I thought?”
She didn’t answer.
I held out my hand. “Hi.”
She didn’t shake my hand, just looked at it.
“Look, nothing can be that bad. You’ll get over it, and be glad you didn’t jump.”
“Will I?” Her pitch was mocking, although maybe she was mocking her own thoughts, not my words, nothing in her eyes or her face told me though.
What now? I could hardly just run on and leave her here. Dammit. “I…” I could take her to emergency… What would they do? Check her over and spit her out. “Have you got any family locally?”
“No.”
“Friends?”
“No.”
Her large eyes confirmed what she’d said. She had nowhere to go. Her full lips pouted a little. Shit. What did I do?
“Where do you live then? Is there somewhere I can take you?”
She was pretty. Her face glowed in the electric light, showing a clear complexion and perfectly even features, though her skin was yellowish in this light.
“No. Nowhere.”
Why was she here? What had made her life too hard to carry on?
She shivered, and pain etched its expression on her face, then tears suddenly glittered in her eyes, and the coldness in them became a lake of desolation. “I need to get away.”
“From what?”
She didn’t answer, but her teeth started chattering. I lifted the hood of my sweatshirt over her blonde hair.
“Look, obviously things aren’t okay for you. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
I took a breath, looking at her and hoping some magical solution would suddenly hit me. It didn’t, and I was getting cold now.
She shivered again and her arms crossed, her hands gripping the opposite elbows. She’d stopped looking at me. She was looking at the sky, like she was searching for answers too.
I sighed, my fingers running over my hair. She was nearly as tall as me, and I was six foot one. She must be at least five eight. But she was slender, like a model. My sweatshirt swamped her figure. She looked fragile.
Shit. There was nothing I could do. “What are you going to do, if I go?”
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, but she didn’t look down.
My heart was thumping to the same rhythm as the bass beat now pounding out of the earphones dangling ‘round my neck
I couldn’t leave her out here…
“Have you really got nowhere to go?”
She shook her head, making her blonde ponytail sweep over her back.
Shit. What option did I have? What option did she have?
“Have you got any money?”
Her head shook again. But her stillness, apart from her shaking head, made me feel like she didn’t even care. I felt stupid then, of course she didn’t care. She’d just tried to end her life by throwing herself off a bridge. She obviously didn’t care about anything right now.
What to do with her? I could give her money… But I’d have to go back to my apartment to get my card and take her to a cash dispenser. And what would she do with it? Maybe she’d already taken something. Drugs or drink. Maybe that was why she was so dead looking. I’d be stupid to give her money.
I sighed again. I could call the cops and take her to a station. But what would they care? I found this girl and she’s got nowhere to stay. They’d say, yeah, right, join the line of a couple of hundred other homeless people in New York.
There wasn’t any choice. “I could take you home with me, if you’ve got nowhere to go. Just for tonight. It would give you chance to get your head straight, and get warm. If you want?”
“I … ” She looked at me again then, her eyes losing their depth once more and setting up shutters, locking me out.
“What do you think?” I got another shrug, but her eyes suddenly filled with depth, letting me see into the thoughts behind her gaze. They were asking me questions.
“What are you going to do if you don’t come back with me?” Another shrug. “Have you got any other options?” She shook her head, her ponytail swaying, but her gaze was clinging to mine now, like was she was considering me. Maybe she was trying to judge if she’d be safe.
This was surreal, like I’d been lifted out of real life, and placed in the middle of a fucking film. Question was; how was it going to play out? Taking her home was a risk, but sometimes risks had to be taken. Like coming to New York.
I sighed again. Sometimes taking risks didn’t pay off. But I still hoped they would.
She shivered and her hands gripped her arms harder.
I lifted my hands palm outward. “I swear. I’m the nice guy. And if you’ve got nowhere else to go…” Lindy would go mad, but this was devil or deep-blue-sea territory. How could I leave this woman here? She’d nowhere to sleep and it was twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit.
Her shoulders shook as she shivered again.
“It’s not far. I live in DUMBO.”
“Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass…” she whispered. “It’s such a cool name for a neighborhood.”
I laughed. She didn’t.
“Have you got any other choice?”
She shook her head.
“Then on my life, if you come, I’ll not hurt you.”
She said nothing just looked at me.
“My apartment’s warm. You can’t stay out here…” Shit, I was probably just as crazy as her, offering to take a stranger back with me.
“I…”
“I
