Re: Billy/Tandy: the neighborhood
“Thanks.” Billy grabbed a dish towel so that he could wipe some of the sauce and pizza grease off his own hands before reaching out to take the bills from Tandy and shove them in his back pocket. He grinned at ‘neat’, because only Tandy could compliment the house like somebody from the 1950’s and have it actually land and be received well - Billy believed him, that he liked it. He didn’t feel like he knew Tandy well enough yet to know for sure when he was bullshitting, but he did get the feeling that the guy was not a bullshitter in general.
“Are you kidding? My dad raised us on vinyl. He knows all the best hidden record shops in every borough,” he said, with a quiet fondness that stretched out into the distance as he did most other times that his family came up unexpectedly. Billy had memories of skipping school just to take the C train from 86th Street out to Brooklyn with his dad and spend hours browsing through vinyl, spreading out to cover different parts of the stores in the most efficient search of whatever they were hunting for that day. “I’d love to get a player for the house, actually. It never really made sense in the trailers.” Plus, y'know, the money.
He brightened at Tandy’s mention of a gift, bouncing up on his toes for a second before he leaned back against the island on the angle of his hip. “Did you get your housewarming present from Alex?” A glint of mischief in brown eyes as Billy remembered the electric shade of crimson that the kid in the comic shop had turned when the conversation landed on Tandy. “What did you do to that guy, by the way? He is crushing hard. I thought his face was going to, like, burst into flames.”