Apollo had no intention of bringing Brody along to his meeting with Rosario, but Brody had other ideas, and when Apollo stepped out of the lift into the lobby Brody came running eagerly over, his backpack banging against his back. Ruth trailed behind, her hands pushed into the pockets of her hoodie. “I’m only coming with because I want the driving practice,” Ruth told him. “Are you taking the Porsche? We should take the Porsche.”
Brody looked up at him, all genuine innocence and sweetness and not a conniving bone in his body. “Zoo time! They have dingos. And sea lions. And baboon.”
It was very difficult getting anything even tangentially related to a zoo past Brody, even though Apollo hadn’t mentioned heading to Prospect Park, to Brooklyn, or even that he was going out at all today. “You are so clever,” he told Brody, hauling him up into his arms. “I have to talk to somebody in the park, though. Is Ruth happy taking you around the zoo by herself?”
“If Ruth gets to drive the Porsche by herself,” said Ruth, who did have a number of conniving bones about her person. She was smiling, though. Apollo supposed that a little brother predicting a zoo trip wasn’t nearly as disconcerting as a little brother predicting a woman’s death, and assumed (correctly) that she believed Apollo had told Brody where he was going today, and already arranged it with Cin, who was out taking full advantage of the end of Black Friday weekend.
So Apollo went along with it, because he couldn’t honestly tell Brody that he wasn’t going near a zoo, and lying to Brody was not on Apollo’s list of things to do today. Besides, letting Ruth drive would win him big Ruth points, which were the most difficult kind of Warmoth points to earn.
Though not nearly so difficult as Ortiz points. Rosario refused to be so easily won. Still, if he could get her to understand that he wasn’t actually the psychopath she thought he was, he’d call that a victory. Avery didn’t think he was a psychopath, did he? And Avery was the one who’d actually been cursed. She was just looking for reasons to hate him, now. Cherry picking out anything he even slightly did wrong and twisting everything he said into a weapon aimed right at her.
Apollo didn’t know how to explain that if he was a weapon aimed right at her she’d know it, because she’d twist that too, taking it as a threat (it wasn't!) instead of the reassuring statement of truth he intended it to be. Just because he could destroy her didn’t mean that he was ever going to!
As he parted ways from Brody (thrilled by the promise of baboons) and Ruth (thrilled by her speed run across the Brooklyn Bridge) Apollo was hopeful that he'd be able to score at least a small win with Rosario, and make it three for three when it came to making important people in his life appreciate how much better their lives were with him in it.
"Afternoon," he said brightly, trying to thaw her glacial jawline, and he shifted across from the middle of the parch bench to give her room to sit down.