“No, no—everything’s right!” Then she reached out and took his face between her palms and kissed him on the cheek. Immediately she stepped back, embarrassed. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
Ethan bent down to pick up the chair so she wouldn’t see the way he flushed. “It’s okay,” he said, thinking, Do that again and again. “I take it the meeting went well?”
“The second one did,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it. Let’s go!”
He laughed at the way she was nearly bouncing up and down. “Go where?” he asked, following her outside, into the sunshine.
“Let’s just walk,” AnnieLee said. “Let’s walk until we can’t even feel our feet anymore. Let’s look at everything in the city until our eyes start to cross.”
Though he might’ve wished that he weren’t wearing steel-toe boots, Ethan was hardly in the mood to argue. He’d never seen AnnieLee so happy, so alive. And why not celebrate her incredible news? Did she even comprehend how lucky she was?
He decided not to ask her. Instead he said, “North or south?”
“Like I know which is which!” she said, laughing. “Come on!”
Soon they found themselves on Ninth Avenue, walking through the neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. Passing walk-up apartment buildings, pizza joints, and laundromats, they bought bright-green apples from a fruit vendor. They wandered farther south and west, peering into the windows of the Chelsea art galleries, and then came upon Pier 25, with its playgrounds, fountains, and volleyball courts jutting into the Hudson River.
“Want to get whipped in a round of mini golf?” Ethan asked.
AnnieLee laughed. “Not by the likes of you, no thank you.”
So they kept on going, down into the financial district, where the buildings were so tall and close together it seemed to Ethan as if they walked along the bottom of a canyon of steel. He kept thinking about reaching for AnnieLee’s hand. But he didn’t do it.
AnnieLee had explained her deal with ACD—or at least what she could remember of it, the point being that they’d given her almost everything she asked for, including the purchase and promotion of her self-released single, “Driven”—and now she was chattering on breathlessly, sometimes about what she and Ethan were seeing and sometimes about the kinds of songs she imagined putting on her first album.
Ethan was quieter, and not just because he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was wondering what sort of person would live in a place like this, surrounded by traffic and noise and lights at all hours of the day and night.
He’d been here once before, when he was very small. On a road trip north with his parents to see family in New Hampshire, they’d driven into the city. They’d planned to spend the day sightseeing, but his parents were so overwhelmed by the crowds and the giant buildings, not to mention the pedestrians who seemed to fling themselves into the streets without regard for DON’T WALK signals, that they’d headed straight back out again.
“Did you ever take family vacations?” he asked AnnieLee as she was perusing the menu outside an Italian café.
“Not hardly,” AnnieLee said.
“We camped in the summers, if that counts,” Ethan said. “Though once we stayed in a hotel in Kitty Hawk. It had a pool and a hot tub, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I didn’t set foot on an airplane until I went into the army.”
“What flavor of gelato do you think stracciatella is?” AnnieLee asked. “Should we try some?”
She was trying to change the subject, however ungracefully, and Ethan felt what might’ve been a small flare of annoyance. But it was her day—so why not let her talk about whatever inanities she wanted to?
“Sure. One scoop of whatever that is, and another of chocolate,” he said.
“I’ll be right back.”
When she came out again, she had a double-decker cone for each of them. “This represents twenty bucks’ worth of gelato, so it’d better be amazing.” She took a bite and her blue eyes got huge. “It is,” she sighed.
Ethan laughed. The city thrilled her today, and even if she wouldn’t open up to him, he loved watching her delight. Everything seemed brighter and fresher through her eyes. He wished he could tell her so.
But instead, he slung his arm around her as they walked. And when she leaned into him, he felt the world go a little brighter for him, too.
Chapter
45