Tucked Away Chicago, 1957
The wallet was old — Italian leather, soft at the corners, fraying just slightly along the spine. Richie Boyle had carried it since his twenties, a gift from some long-forgotten business partner, the kind who tried too hard to impress a Boyle. It held cash, business cards, a few folded notes in his own looping script, and, tucked behind the bills like a secret, a photograph.
The photo wasn’t new. It had faded over the years, the edges curling, the surface creased from being pulled out too often and stared at too long. But the girl in it — her smile was still lightning. Still real. Still her.
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He kept it like a talisman. When business got bloody or days ran too quiet, Richie would retreat to the corner of Leonard’s tailor shop, lean against the shelves of untouched bolts of cloth, and look at that photograph like it was a map home. He never told her he kept it. That was the thing about Richie — he was a man built of silence and smoke, a suit of armor made of secrets.
They weren’t married. Not yet. But everyone knew what she meant to him. Everyone, that is, except {{user}} herself. Maybe she knew the version he let her see — the cool, confident man who took her dancing at the Drake, who kissed her hand instead of her lips when they said goodbye. The man who brought her books she’d once mentioned in passing, and remembered to light her cigarette before his own.
She didn’t know about the blood under his fingernails some nights. About the calls in the dead of morning. About the way Richie could look a man in the eyes and decide, wordlessly, if he lived or didn’t.
But God, when she smiled at him? He didn’t want to be that man anymore.
One rainy evening, Richie was sitting at the back of the shop, the lights low, smoke curling from the ashtray beside him. The rain tapped the window like fingers drumming time. He was staring at the photo again, running his thumb gently over her face, as if it would smooth the years and creases away.
Leonard came in quietly, pausing when he saw the picture.
“You ever gonna tell her?” Leonard asked, his voice soft with the weight of old friendship.
Richie didn’t look up. “About what?”
“That you’re in love with her like a goddamn soldier clutching a letter in the trenches.”
Richie finally met his eyes. “What would I say, English? ‘Hey, sweetheart, I keep your picture in my wallet like a fool in a war story?’ She’ll laugh.”
“She’d kiss you.”
Richie exhaled, slow. “I don’t deserve her.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t need her.”
That night, he did tell her.
He walked her home in the rain, his coat draped over her shoulders, her perfume clinging to the lapels like a secret. She was laughing about something — something small, something unimportant — and it hit him then, like a clean shot to the chest: he wanted this forever. Not just the laughter or the perfume or the curve of her smile — he wanted her.
They paused at her doorstep, the streetlight catching the rain like falling glass. She looked up at him, eyes curious, soft.
“What’s that look?” she asked gently.
Richie didn’t answer at first. Instead, he reached into his coat, into the inside pocket of his suit jacket — then paused, shifted, and finally pulled out his wallet. He opened it with a care he rarely showed anything, like the motion itself cost something.
From the back, behind cash and business cards and the odd scribbled note, he drew out the worn photograph. Her face stared back from the creased paper, a younger version maybe, but unmistakably her. He held it out in the rainless space between them.
“I keep this with me,” he said. “Every day. All the time.”