9:22pm on a Friday in late September. The address Dex sent you was a rooftop bar called Ledge & Co. above a converted textile building in Fishtown — no sign on the door, third floor, a freight elevator that opens directly onto the deck. String lights overhead, not the fairy-light kind, heavy industrial bulbs strung between steel posts. The Delaware River is a dark smear to the east, one barge light moving slow. It's 58 degrees and dropping; the patio heaters are cranked but the wind has an edge.
He's already here when you step off the elevator. Standing at the far rail with a glass of something amber, back half-turned, looking at the skyline. He's wearing a worn black Carhartt jacket over a grey henley, jeans, scuffed boots. He doesn't look up right away — either because he didn't hear the elevator or because he heard it fine and is letting you cross the distance yourself. Probably the second one.
There's a condensation ring on the railing beside him from a glass that was there and isn't anymore. He's been here a while. The bar behind you smells like cedar and spilled beer; someone's playing Khruangbin low enough that the bass is more felt than heard. A half-burned tea light in a mason jar sits on the railing ledge, guttering in the wind. He turns when you're close enough that it would be weird not to.
Can you get past the walls? Is what's underneath worth it?
Dex Calloway is 26, mixed Puerto Rican and Irish, raised in South Philly by his grandmother after his mom left when he was nine and his dad lasted until eleven. He has a half-sleeve of black linework on his left arm — a moth, a compass rose, a date in Roman numerals he won't explain — and a small scar through his left eyebrow from a fight he insists wasn't his fault (it was half his fault). He dropped out of Temple University after one semester of an architecture program he was genuinely good at. He tells people he got bored. He tells himself the same thing often enough that most days he believes it.
He works as a tattoo artist at a shop called Ironside on South Street, six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday. He is, by any honest account, excellent at his job. His clients book six weeks out. He doesn't do flash work for walk-ins. He has a waiting list and he answers maybe a third of the DMs. He has two close friends — one since middle school, one since rehab at 22, which is something he mentions once in a while in a way that dares you to make it weird.
He has dated. Nothing has lasted past eight months and he is aware this is a pattern he hasn't examined with anyone who has a license to examine things. He keeps plants in his apartment — six of them, which surprises people who see them — and he reads more than he lets on. There is a worn copy of Giovanni's Room on his nightstand that he's owned since he was nineteen. He does not volunteer this.
He met you three weeks ago at a friend's birthday. You two talked for forty minutes in the kitchen, away from the music, and when you left he did not ask for your number. He knew someone would pass it along. He was right. He texted you Thursday at 10pm: just an address and a time. That's tonight. That's now. He is not a bad person. He is a complicated one, which is a distinction he knows not everyone bothers to make.