NEW YORK, N.Y. – JULY 1989

"Kid," I hear a voice say, ripping me out my daydream.

"Huh?"

"I said that'll be one-fifty."

"Oh," I say, fishing in my pocket for change. "Sorry, Lou. My mind is somewhere else today, I guess."

He huffs, grabbing the change out of my palm and handing me a greasy hot dog on a paper dish. "You're lucky I love 'ya, kid."

I try to hide my smile as I shake the ketchup bottle. Lou, the proprietor of Big Lou's Hot Dogs, has been on this corner for as long as I could remember. A staple in my neighborhood for years, I never got tired of his tough demeanor, a paragon of the City. Though his affections are not easily won, I knew he had a soft spot for me.

"Got a lot on your plate?" he asks.

I shrug. "It's always somethin', right?"

He chuckles. "Never nothin'."

"Ain't that the truth."

"Tell your ma and sister I said hi, would 'ya?" he says, tossing me a can of Coke on the house, as he usually does.

I nod, raising the soda in gratitude. "Will do. Thanks, Lou."

I make my way to the park, same as every Friday afternoon. Except this Friday is a bit different.

I sit down on the same park bench, as I always do, and fish through my backpack until find what I'm looking for. An old steel lighter, like the kind Vietnam veterans would carry. It's dented and scratched all over, and no longer functions for its intended use, but that isn't why it goes wherever I go. The top doesn't snap open like it used to and barely stays open. I flip it over in my hand again and again, wishing it would tell me something. A faint engraving reads "D.W." on the back.

"It's the only thing your father ever gave me," my mom had told me when she let me have it."Aside from you, of course."

My father. I didn't even have a photo of him. Growing up, it was easier to pretend like I didn't have a dad at all. I mean, I didn't. But it was easier to think that he never existed rather than someone who had a family and friends and a life that I had no knowledge of. I didn't even know where my mom fit into the picture, or if she did at all.

"It was just a fling, hon. I wish I could say we had a grand romance story. But we were young. He was here one day, gone the next," she would always say. "I didn't even have time to tell him I was pregnant with you. By the time I found out and tracked him down, I called a friend of his and was told that he was dead. I cried for weeks."

I asked questions incessantly, but she withdrew. The more I inquired, the more she pushed me away, refusing to entertain the subject.

"It's not that I don't want to tell you," she said. "It's that it wouldn't make a difference."

It never even begun to bother me until a few years ago. After all, how do you grieve someone you never knew and didn't know anything about? I didn't even learn his name until I was eighteen. And I didn't miss the guy specifically. I grieved the idea of actually having a dad. Someone to play sports with or fix cars with me. My mom said he wasn't the type of person to do things like that, but it was the principle. Scarlett had that type of relationship with her dad, and he wasn't a very good man at all. It seemed like, lately, I was teetering the fine line between jealousy and curiosity.

When I was really young, I grasped for straws at whatever details I could get about him. Sometimes I imagined that he was a movie star or that he worked in the FBI and his identity had to be kept a secret. Naivety can be a great guise for a lie.

My mom would tell me that I looked just like him back then, and even more now. I studied my angular jaw, dark hair, and thick eyebrows in the mirror, looking for him in my reflection. Was he tall and kind of lanky, like me? Did he have any scars or tattoos? How did he dress? What did his voice sound like?

"Is this seat taken?" a voice asks me, tearing me out of my thoughts for the second time today. I snap back to reality, realizing that I'm gripping the lighter tightly and haven't taken a bite out of my hot dog yet.

"Uh, yeah. I mean, no, it isn't. You can sit," I say nervously. I wish I could say I wasn't intimidated by the stranger standing in front of me, but I can't help it. I'm probably not supposed to be doing this.

The man takes a seat on the other end of the bench. He looks to be in his forties or fifties, I can't tell. His face is weathered and his thick hair is nearly white. He has a scar running through one of his eyebrows. He has that cool look about him.

"Levi James?" he asks me.

I nod. "That's me."

"Sal Santoro," he says, extending his calloused hand. I stare at the faded tattoos on each of his knuckles. "I was a friend of your father's."

I shake his hand firmly. Of course, I knew that. After snooping through all of my mom's papers, I finally found an old address book from 1964. Inside, it was littered with names, addresses, and phone numbers, written in both a man and woman's handwriting. I figured someone in there would know who my father was. Or ran in the same circles as him and could at least give me some sort of information. Sal was the third person I called. Talk about luck.

"Dallas Winston," I say slowly. It feels weird coming out of my mouth. I've never said his name out loud before.

He shakes his head and hoots. "Jesus, kid. I've got to say. When you called and told me you were his kid, I had my doubts. But, shit, you look just like him. If I was a betting man… Well, let's just say, he couldn't deny you. How old are you? Twenty?"

"Turned twenty-three in March," I say.

He looks at the sky, doing the math in his head. "Then that's… damn, that's almost twenty-four years since they killed ol' Dally, isn't it?"

"You'd know better than I would," I say. "I don't know anything about him. Don't even know what he looked like. In fact, that's why I called you."

His eyes widen a bit, eyebrows raised. "Well, gee, kid. I can't write a biography about the guy, but what do you want to know?"

My mind goes blank for half a second. Where do I begin?

"How he met my mom," I blurt out. "And where he went after he left New York." That'd be the place to start, right?

He scratches the back of his head, lips pursed together tightly, like he's trying to recall a memory that he filed in the deep recesses of his brain. He looks hardened and tough. If that says anything about the man my father was, then my interest is piqued.

"Back in the day," he starts. "There used to be a gang of us that would hang out down by the levee outside of the city. Used to throw parties and do business down there, where there weren't so many tourists.

"All types of kids would come in and out of there. I'm talking the full spectrum of humanity, here. You hardly saw the same person twice. Your dad, me, and our friend Benny were thick as thieves back then. Never went anywhere without each other. We'd spend all day down there looking for trouble," he says with a chuckle. "One summer, there were a few girls that would regularly come and hang out there, as they used to do back then."

He stops for a moment, like he's pondering a fond memory, then continues. "I remember your mom. She had long brown hair, about down to here," he says, putting his hand in the middle of his torso. "She was what the kids now would call a 'free spirit'. A hippie by all means, but she could hang with the best of us. And, hell, if she didn't have every guy's attention every time she walked by."

I imagine my mom at nineteen years old, young and carefree. His description of her is like watching a picture suddenly come to life. I never considered what she was like when she was younger. Sometimes, I forget she had a life before I came along. His recollection of my mother reassures everything I've ever known about her. In one moment and onto the next. Never dwelling on the past. Always up for anything that'll make for a good story one day.

He nods nostalgically. "Caroline James," he says. "We all wanted her to give us the time of day back then." He scoffs. "Imagine, a group of hoods pining over a girl like that."

"But she didn't want anything to do with any of us. She'd walk right on by like we didn't exist. She was interested in only one kid there. Your old man. One of the toughest kids I ever met, even if he was younger than all of us."

I can't help but smile at the memory that isn't mine. Suddenly, a vision comes into focus. My mom and dad. Young and in love. A happy idea. If anything, my mother was the embodiment of the saying that opposites attract. She liked a challenge.

"From what he told me, he was born in the south somewhere, then made his way to New York when he was young. That's about all he would tell any of us. I'd never seen a kid so independent. None of us did, and that was saying something," he says.

"Him and Caroline went together for a few months, give or take. They stuck to each other like glue. You would've never seen anything like it," he says. "Then Dally got into some trouble here and had to go on the lam without so much as a goodbye. Left your mom high and dry, I imagine. Surprised us all to see him do that."

"Did you keep in contact with her?" I ask. "Did she know where he went?"

He shrugs. "After he left, she didn't want to know nothin' from none of us. Didn't come around anymore. Didn't know if she was even still in New York. I guess now I know why," he says, gesturing to me. An explanation. Of course, Dallas' life went in one direction - an inarguably grim direction - and Caroline's in another: Raising me.

"Do you know where he went?"

"Oklahoma. He went to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Or ended up there, at least. That's where I heard he died."

"Oklahoma?" I ask, confused. "Why Oklahoma?"

"Probably thought he'd be safe there. Cut his losses in New York and started new somewhere else. That's just what you did back then, kid. Last I heard of him, he was going to stay with some friends and an old girlfriend out there."

I open my backpack, grabbing the old address book of my mom's. I flip through it carefully, looking for any address in Oklahoma. Near the end of the book, a name catches my eye. Scrawled in barely legible handwriting, I point to the entry and show it to Sal.

"Sylvia?" I ask. "Sylvia Thomas?"

He squints his eyes a bit, taking the book from me. After a moment, he speaks. "That's her, I'm guessing."

I look at the name. A connection. A lead, of some sort. Maybe I'll call her. Or maybe I'll go and track her down myself.

Sal seems to read my mind, his eyebrows furrowed. "Now, kid. Don't go chasing after ghosts now," he says cautiously. "Dally was an okay guy, and I'm happy to tell you all about him. Shit, there's some stories I'd love to tell you that would raise the hair on the back of your neck. But, I 'gotta be honest, he wasn't really father material."

He pauses for a moment, contemplating his words, then continues: "All I'm saying is, even if he was alive today, I'm not sure he'd be dad-of-the-year. He was a lone wolf. Didn't need nobody that didn't need him. I mean, hell, none of us even got invited to the funeral."

I shake my head. "I don't care about what kind of man he was," I say. "I just want to know who he was. We're still a piece of one another. He's still my father and I'm still his son."

He nods, sighing. "I know that all too well, kid. Been through it with my old man. And I hope you find what you're looking for."

"Me too."

We sit for a moment in silence. Suddenly, he remembers something. He digs in the back of his pocket, grabbing a small piece of paper then handing it to me. "Here, I wanted to give this to you."

Confused, I take it from him. "What is this?"

"A picture," he says, as though it's obvious. "That's your mom and dad."

He points a finger at each small figure in the old photo. A young woman and man sit on a concrete stoop. The woman is mid-laugh, hair tossed over her shoulder and face to the side. My mom, young and happy. Her feet bare and her hair long, I'm sure it's her. Some things never change, even as you get older and life lets you down.

The man's arm is wrapped around her, his mouth in a barely-there-smile. He's wearing jeans and a plain t-shirt. The epitome of old school cool, a style long gone now. He looks directly into the camera, his hand frozen mid-air, as if he were about to cover his face with it. A cigarette balances between his two fingers.

My brain reels. If someone had handed me this twenty minutes ago, I would've thought it were me.

"I took that," he says proudly. "Took me all day to find it, but I knew I had it somewhere. Figured it was rightfully yours now, anyway."

"I can keep this?" I ask, astonished.

"All yours, kid."

I study the picture for a few moments more, then turn to Sal. "Thank you for all your help," I say. "It means a lot."

"No problem," he says. "If you need anything else, you know where to find me."

I nod, shaking his hand again and watching him walk away in the direction he came.

I don't know how long I sit there, studying the photo. I turn it over in my hands again and again like the lighter, wishing it would tell me something.

I think of what Sal said. Chasing a ghost. I feel like I've seen one, that's for sure. Is he right? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Opening a door that the universe wants to stay closed?

I shake my head. For every question, there's an answer, right? My whole life has been a big question. I'm overdue for some answers.

My newfound knowledge of my parents swirls around my head. Two young kids falling in love. A fling, as my mom would call it. That's a starting point.

I think of what my mom would say. She's always telling me to finish what I started. Don't half-ass anything in life. She won't be happy that I've stuck my nose where it doesn't belong, but doesn't it belong? Isn't their story mine, too? I shake the trepidation out of my head. There's no room for doubt here.

Stuffing the picture in my pocket, I start my walk home. A barely-there-smile reaches my lips.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

A backstory. The other day, I had an idea of Jacob Elordi (from The Kissing Booth and Euphoria) playing the love child of Dallas Winston. The resemblance is uncanny, no? I posted about it on Tumblr (staygold-ponyboycurtis), not thinking anyone would want me to write it, but was encouraged to run with the idea & here we are :) I think this will be a fun one. This fic will also be on there if you'd like to chat about it.

Let me know what you think about Levi and his curious mind!