Brooklyn Love (Crimson Romance) Read Online Free Page A

27th Street, the Fashion Institute of Technology. She enjoyed strolling, taking in all the sights and sounds and smells. A world as different from Brooklyn as a French loaf is from rye bread. More than anything, she was happy to get away from the intense dating scene that permeated all aspects of life in Brooklyn. “How are you?” quickly turned to “Seeing anybody yet?” “Could you please pass the mustard” led to “I know the perfect guy for you.” Whatever the situation, marriage was the answer.
    “Think it’s gonna rain?”
    “Get married!”
    “Have indigestion?”
    “Get married!”
    She walked by the flower district, sidewalks teeming with vases and baskets full of colorful roses and lilies and flowers whose names she didn’t know. She passed through the garment district; a region of sweaty men pushing wheeled racks of dresses along Seventh Avenue, notion and fabric shops, and imposing office buildings filled with designers and showrooms. Echoing off the tall gray buildings, a babble of languages buzzed through the air. Smells of roasting chestnuts and pretzels rose from vendor stands, mingled with car exhaust and varieties of perfumes from the endless pedestrian traffic.
    From the outside, FIT was just a series of office buildings, but those buildings probably housed the greatest concentration of raw talent in the city, perhaps in the world. Rachel still couldn’t believe she was a student there, that they’d accepted her over a year before. With no prior art training, she’d competed against accomplished artists from the High School of Music and Art, renowned from the 1980s television series
Fame
. Though she liked
Glee
, there was something about
Fame
that really spoke to her, and Rachel had watched old re-runs so many times that the songs still blared in her head.
    She remembered taking the drawing tests as if it were yesterday. She’d sat next to kids with years of training, who seemed smug and complacent that they’d be getting seats at FIT. Kids with fluorescent-colored hair, rings all over their bodies, and grungy ripped jeans. Real artists. Kids who looked at her as if she were some kind of deviant, with her sleek auburn hair brushed back in a neat ponytail and freshly laundered long-sleeved shirt and long denim skirt.
    She remembered her fear. Why had she even bothered coming to the tests? Who was she kidding? Rachel Shine, an Orthodox Jewish girl from Brooklyn — an artist? She should just walk out and forget about being an artist, she’d thought. She could be a receptionist. Or go to nursing school. Her mother had always wanted her to be a nurse. “Those little white uniforms are cute, and what a great way to meet a doctor!” She’d heard that line so many times that even when they weren’t together, she could still hear Ma’s voice in her head.
    But her father understood. He didn’t talk much, but when he did speak, she knew to listen. “I always wanted to be an architect,” he’d told her, “but in those days, who’d hire a religious Jew to be an architect? Maybe I could have gotten work. But the career path was so undefined then.” His own mother had told him, “Go be an accountant. You’ll always have work.” So he did. And he always had work. And accounting gave him a good job as he’d worked his way through law school. Now he was a successful tax attorney and had Michael Kaufman as a partner. But that didn’t make up for his lost ambition: He’d always wanted to be an architect.
    “Try,” Abe Shine had told his youngest child, his daughter with the dreams. “Try as hard as you can, Rachel. Follow your heart, or you’ll always regret it. You can always be a receptionist if it doesn’t work out.” Then he’d looked at his wife and chuckled. “Or you could always go to nursing school and meet a cute doctor. But give it your best shot.”
    The faculty at her private religious high school did not want her even thinking about FIT. Who knew whom she’d meet