I take another sip of my coffee. It seems to taste successively worse each time. “Not that night. He grabbed her by her ponytail and slammed her into the wall. I watched from the staircase and cried the whole time. I should have tried to stop him. I wasn’t brave enough to stop him.”
“You shouldn’t have needed to be,” he says softly.
It’s a miracle how those words do what the coffee has failed to do—quiet the screaming in my head.
“What’s with the name?” I ask, feeling suddenly constricted by emotions clogging up my throat.
“Jude. You came up with that one pretty fast.”
“I already told you why.”
“Yeah, you’re a fan of The Beatles. Meanwhile, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. You knew a Jude, didn’t you?”
He shakes his head. “Not quite. I almost did.”
I grimace and drink mor
