“The future wife business,” I say. “Right in this very shop.”
Samantha laughs. “Maybe he says too much sometimes. But at least I know what he’s thinking.” She turns to Dylan and twirls her necklace. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Dylan says.
He kisses her and adds another thirty seconds to the timer.
This is what I want in a relationship.
Now I need to figure out what I want in a friendship with Arthur.
What I don’t say aloud is how much I miss Arthur. It’s been months since I lost sleep over that, but not having him in my life has been weighing on me. There was a time when we were able to talk about little things, like what he was getting up to in college. But I kept my business to myself because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Even stuff like noticing how cute Mario was when I started college. Maybe I shouldn’t have held back—Arthur never did. And even after I muted his Instagram profile, I still had to dodge “How’s Arthur?” questions from my parents. It’s why I wrote our old love out of my book. It was all too much.
But I don’t want to be scared of Arthur and his life anymore. And I don’t want to bury him away like he has no place in mine.
Chapter Fourteen
Arthur
Friday, May 29
The escalator keeps churning out people who aren’t Mikey. There should be a rule against that, something in the bylaws requiring one train-rumpled boyfriend for every dozen pantsuited strangers.
Nothing to do now but hang beneath the Arrivals/Departures sign, cradling a bouquet of impulse-buy bodega flowers. I should have gotten him something useful, like sunscreen or a MetroCard, but how was I supposed to resist two dozen roses for twelve dollars?
My phone buzzes with an incoming text, and I scramble to check it.
Sounds good, see you soon!
A perfectly normal text to receive from my almost-here boyfriend.
But it’s not from my boyfriend.
I stare at the words, stomach fluttering faintly, until—
“Hi, sorry, I’m looking for Chad from corporate?”
Mikey’s face, but he’s not on my phone screen. I fling my arms around him so fast I almost smack him with the roses. “You’re here!”
“I know!”
“I can’t believe it. You were in Boston.” I hug him harder. “Mikey!”
He laughs, short and breathless. “Long two weeks.”
“You’re telling me.” I draw back to look at him, and his cheeks go instantly pink.
I can’t kiss him. Mikey’s so shy about PDA, and it doesn’t get much more public than the main terminal of Penn Station. But him being here feels like the first few steps off a roller coaster, when solid ground feels brand-new.
Good. This is good. The math checks out. Two weeks without Mikey equals I’m so fucking glad that he’s here. I’m feeling everything I’m supposed to feel. Nothing off-kilter. No weird doubts or unspoken questions. Nothing but— Is it cool if we see Ben tonight?
Hey, so Ben’s meeting us for ice cream.
It’ll be fine. I’m not even worried, you know? We’ll talk it out on the subway ride home, and it will be sorted before we even reach Columbus Circle.
Except Columbus Circle comes and goes, and then Lincoln Center comes and goes, and then we’re on Seventy-Second Street, turning the corner past Citarella, and I still haven’t told him.
It’s not that I was avoiding the topic. But the subway was crowded and sweaty, and Mikey looked so wide-eyed and overwhelmed. And now he’s in the middle of telling me about this eighth-grade overnight choir trip, his only other time in New York. Chatty Mikey, his rarest and most fascinating natural form. No way am I going to derail this. I don’t even cut in to tell him we’ve reached my building—I just take out my key and slip it into the lock while he talks.
But the minute we’re alone in the lobby, I kiss him so hard he drops his roses.
I can hardly believe he’s here. Real-life Mikey, in all three dimensions. In New York. In this building. It’s like running into your math teacher at Publix, or seeing a bird fly in through your window. It just doesn’t seem scientifically possible that I could be kissing Mikey in the same place I pick up mail for my great-uncle Milton.
When we finally resurface, Mikey’s adorably flustered.
“Okay!” I say, slightly breathless. “That’s the lobby.”
Mikey picks his bouquet off the floor. “So far, so good.”
On the elevator, we’re weirdly shy around each other. Mikey keeps getting startled by his own reflection in the mirrored elevator walls, and I keep smiling down at my phone, thinking about how Jessie’s not usually home for another hour or so. And, of course, we’re not meeting Ben until nine. Which I’ll tell Mikey about momentarily. For real this time. I’ll tell him the minute we’re settled in at home.