Miriam’s forehead wrinkles. “That’s dumb.”
“Yeah, but he was right,” I admit. “You were a safety net for a really big leap. The biggest of my whole life. But moving to London—because it’s my idea, because it’s the life experience I want for myself—it’s the only way to know what kind of pluckiness I’m made of.”
“Pluckiness,” Miriam repeats, smirking, and I groan.
One of the greatest loves of my life is a platinum blond, foul-mouthed short girl who once pushed Ronnie Wilson off a literal bridge and into a literal creek for making fun of my speech impediment on the fourth-grade trip to the Nature Conservancy. When we were sixteen, on the playground of our elementary school, we sat side by side on the swing set and shared one warm Miller Lite we stole from her older brother. Every year on Mother’s Day, her parents send my family flowers. I have done her taxes twice now.
I throw my arm over her shoulder and set my temple against hers. There’s a quaver in my voice when I say, “Look, the Nashville thing … that’s in a separate box from New York, okay? I promise you I’m not going to vanish into thin air. Through fire and water, remember? We’re tethered, and either of us can tug on the string if we need to.”
I feel her shoulder sag against mine. “Good, because I’m always going to need you, like, at least metaphorically around. And you’re always going to need me to shove a needle up your ass when the restaurant fries your chicken in peanut oil.”
“Masey!” the coffee guy calls through the window of his truck. We stand up from the curb, and Miriam hands me my drink.
Our conversation makes me recall something we talked about years ago: “Hey, didn’t you want to do travel nursing at some point? What ever happened to that idea?”
Miriam blushes. “Brijesh. Happened.”
My lips pull up. “Remind me why you two aren’t just dating?”
“Because. I’m pretty sure he’s the one.”
“Explain that logic to me.”
“Bitch, I can’t even figure it out myself,” Miriam says. “I’ve told him not to wait around for me to stop being terrified of how much I like him—i.e., a fuckgirl—but he’s determined to smoke me out.”
“Sex is that good, huh?”
She punches me hard enough on the shoulder to bruise. Wincing, I turn away and rub at it. A spark of dark maroon catches my eye.
“Is that…”
“What?” Miriam asks.
I grin. “No way.”
“What?” She steps up beside me and tracks my line of sight. “Oh. That’s pretty.”
Sitting there, among perennials, roses, and tulips, is a potted planter of deep jewel-toned red chocolate cosmos flowers with petals like raindrops. The Mexican flower was nearly made extinct, but it’s been repopulated in recent years, though it’s still considered a rarity. I’ve only ever seen them in botanical gardens.
The moment of this moment strikes me as something bigger than an overpriced flower in a Manhattan farmer’s market. I pull out my phone and snap a pic for Jerry. He replies seconds later: In New York City????
Casey: Right?
Jerry: You have to buy that.
In the end, I do buy the chocolate cosmos, but not for me—for Alex. I promised him I would, and his apartment is close enough to our brunch spot that we can drop it right off afterward.
We’ve been texting all weekend.
It started when Alex asked for an itemized list of my shellfish allergies, which led to a shirtless photo of him and Freddy on the beach shucking clams. After that, there was some argumentative back-and-forth about whether it’s recommended to remove your shirt in the northeastern October weather （I argued no, Alex argued that he would not be body-shamed under any circumstance）。 But then he sent me another photo, this time wearing a shirt and a curmudgeonly frown, a trail of sand stuck to one cheek, and it did precisely nothing to improve the fluttering in my belly, so really, I played myself.
The kicker, though, was when he called me last night. I picked up the phone halfway convinced something horrible had happened—like an internet troll photoshopping our talking heads onto naked bodies, or Alex telling me he found out I applied for his job—but instead, he said, “Hey, so I’m at the Cape Cod Target—”
“With your credit or debit card? It’s an important distinction.”
“And I was hoping you could tell me your favorite brand of laundry detergent?”
I was alone in Prospect Park, reading a paperback from Books Are Magic like I always do when I want to romanticize my life. （In London, I plan on frequenting the Spitalfields Libreria and taking my book to Kensington Gardens, where I will sit against a tree and look enigmatic while I read about magical teenagers.） “Um. I use Tide Free & Gentle?”
“Perfect.”
“Is this a hostess gift for Freddy’s mom?”
He laughed at that. “No, I got her a bottle of wine.”
“Did you … Alex, did you take your dirty laundry to Cape Cod with you?”
There was a pause, and then he said, “They’re like family, okay?”
“Were they out of detergent or something?”
“No, I just wanted—” He stopped talking then, and I froze, and across two hundred miles of rocky American coastline, past Providence, past New Haven, all the way to Brooklyn, whatever it was that Alex just wanted left him in an exorcism and slammed into me like a freight train. “To keep you in mind,” he finished lamely.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
He gulped. “Thanks for the recommendation.”
“You’re welcome.” After a stiff silence I added, “Okay, bye.”
“Okay. Bye.”
And then I went back to reading, absorbing precisely zero words, thinking about Alex thinking about me in the Cape Cod Target.
After a vibey, old-school French brunch where the pot of cosmos sits in the third chair at our outdoor table, Miriam and I head to the alley behind Alex’s place.
“Are you finally going to tell me about last weekend?” she asks as I climb up the fire escape to the second-story balconies. “You know, especially considering you guys now co-own a plant?”
I grunt as I heave myself over the flimsy rail. “Toss it up.”
Miriam grabs the ruby-red flowers by the base of the plastic pot. She lowers the planter between her thighs, then granny-shots them up to me. A light dusting of soil rains down on her, and she squeaks and dodges out of the way. I set the flowers against one corner of the balcony.
Miriam holds up a hand as I make to lift myself back over the edge. “You can’t come back down until you spill.” Her voice echoes in the empty alley.
My elbows push against the rail as I glare down at her. Being this close to the mattress where I stayed safe and warm in his arms all night is certainly making me feel warm again, but no longer safe. “There’s nothing to tell. It was late, I didn’t want to chance the subway, and Alex’s place was close. All we did was—”
“Snuggle all night like a pair of lovesick teenagers?” Miriam shifts her weight to her other hip. “Yeah, got that part. I want to know what it means to you, buttercup.”