“You’ll meet Patrick some other time,” Samantha says. “He’s home for the next two months. Maybe we can all do an escape room together.”
“You’re not locking me in a room with Patrick for an hour,” Dylan says.
“Even more incentive for you to solve the puzzles sooner.” Samantha playfully elbows me. “We can totally invite Mario, too.”
“Maybe.” My phone buzzes. “Speaking of Super Mario.” I read his text, saying that he’s walking over now. “He’s on the way. Should we camp out here so we’re easier to find?”
Dylan stares into the distance and points at the Belvedere Castle terrace. That spot always feels like it was plucked out of a fantasy novel and dropped into Central Park. “Tell your boy we’ll be there.”
“He’s not my boy.”
“Yet.”
It’s funny, the last time Dylan and I were at Belvedere was shortly after I met Arthur at the post office. We hadn’t gotten each other’s names before a flash mob separated us, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him, so Samantha did some Nancy Drew-ing using some details from my conversation with Arthur to figure out the best way to find him. She discovered a meetup for Yale students happening at the Belvedere Castle, and since Arthur had mentioned wanting to go to school there, I gave it a shot. Dylan decided we needed pretentious code names to attend the event, and he chose Digby Whitaker for himself, which I only still remember because I gave that name to a scholar in TWWW.
I came here looking for one boy two years ago, and now I’m asking another to find me here.
Without even looking, Dylan’s hand finds Samantha’s and they go upstairs together.
Holding hands is a simple act, I get it, but it’s really nice to see a couple two years in who still like each other—love each other. I’ve never personally experienced that. It gives me hope that someone will feel the same way about me.
We climb up the terrace and stop in our tracks. Normally it’s pretty chill up here, just people posing with the park in the background. But today there’s a wedding happening. It’s intimate, only a dozen casually dressed people and a band playing a soft instrumental version of “Marry You” by Bruno Mars. I’m about to drag Dylan and Samantha away so we don’t photobomb the event when the bride begins marching out.
I’m frozen in my tracks.
I think I know the bride . . .
Back when I met Arthur at the post office, that flash mob was actually a proposal for the teller who was helping me send my first ex, Hudson, a box of his things. It was too pricey, and this woman wasn’t sympathetic to me. But she’s glowing now with a black silk wrap around the shoulders of her simple white dress, smiling with a big lip ring.
First Belvedere Castle and now this woman. It’s like the universe is flashing Arthur Seuss’s name in Broadway neon lights.
I haven’t spoken to Arthur in months, but I have to tell him.
I record a quick video of the bride walking toward the groom on my phone. Dylan and Samantha snuggle together as they watch. I open my chat with Arthur—the last text I got from him was on my birthday, April 7. I didn’t respond because, well . . . yeah. I didn’t have it in me then because everything was going so well for him with his new boyfriend, and I wasn’t trying to pretend my birthday was a happy one. I should’ve said something, though, because now I feel weird saying anything.
It’s like we don’t know each other anymore.
I go on Instagram, where I’ve had his profile muted for my own sanity. It hurt too much to go online and find pictures of Happy Arthur and Happy Mikey being Happy Arthur-and-Mikey. I needed to create some space for myself; life was stressful enough with school and feeling cramped at home and lonely without Dylan or a boyfriend of my own.
Going to Arthur’s profile is like ripping off a Band-Aid.
His blue eyes are piercing as ever in his circular profile picture. The most recent pictures on his feed include one of a box in his dorm room, then a Stacey Abrams quote （“No matter where we end up, we’ve grown from where we began”）， a throwback of young Arthur with his mom, and Arthur and Mikey holding up a Playbill in their college’s theater—which sends blood rushing into my head. Then my chest tightens when I see a selfie of Arthur holding up the postcard of Central Park that I gave him when we said goodbye two summers ago; written on the back is a sexual scene between our The Wicked Wizard War characters, Ben-Jamin and King Arturo, for his eyes only.