Page 36 of 72 Hours of You

“Seriously, though, if that’s what you want to do, then let’s go.” He cracks a smile. “Maybe we could even hit up Margaritaville afterward. Get the real NYC experience.”

I roll my eyes and smack him on the arm. But he just smiles even bigger, the dimple on his left cheek creasing, and for a second I imagine letting my finger reach up and touch it. And then in the next second I consider throwing myself in front of a taxi and clocking out, because seriously holy shit what is wrong with me?

“So,” he says, looking up from his phone, “the Times Square location is closed.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “We don’t have to go.” But a part of me actually feels gutted by this news? Which is insane. Like am I really going to be sad that I don’t get to frolic around some cringe candy store with a boy, wistfully thinking of my mother, like I’m the star of some Hallmark movie? I’m not a rom-com. I’m a horror.

“Well, hold on,” Peter says. “Now I’m kind of attached to the idea of getting to see you go hard on some Jelly Bellys.” He looks at his phone. “There’s one in Hudson Yards. We could grab a cab. Or we could walk? It’d be a little bit of a walk, but we don’t really have anywhere else to be right now. And plus, New York was meant to be experienced block by block.”

A section of newspaper blows by my feet and an ambulance blares somewhere in the distance. Two cars honk at each other and then one of the drivers leans out the window screaming a string of fuckyous at the other driver, who flips him off.

I’ve already seen one Clocker since I got off the train. A walk around the city is guaranteed to give me at least one or two more. But …

But maybe it won’t be so bad. Because, god help me, I think being with Peter might actually make this kind of bearable. “Let’s walk. You can bore me with facts about New York’s Gothic architecture.”

“I actually prefer neoclassical buildings.”

“Naturally.”

I make Peter check his phone one more time for directions, even though he insists he knows where he’s going. And then we do it—we just start walking. And I kind of can’t believe it, because only a couple of hours ago I was at school watching everything fall apart. And now here I am, in a place I swore I’d never go. In a place I pretended to tell Ms. Jegstrup I was considering moving, even though I would never in a million years.

The city is supposedly awful in the winter and even worse in the summer, but right now it feels kind of perfect. Sure, there’s still this dingy gray bathwater-y smell lingering in the air, but there’s also this crisp breeze winding its way through the overgrown buildings, and it makes everything feel slightly electric. Like anything could happen. And like maybe that anything wouldn’t have to be terrible.

I stop at a crosswalk, the DO NOT WALK sign bright red. But Peter just grabs my hand and says, “Come on. No one stops.” And then there I am weaving between honking cars and helmetless cyclists swerving between the clog of people, and it’s everything I was afraid of before I came here and yet the only thing I can think is:

Peter Beckett is holding my hand.

Sixteen

WHEN WE MAKE IT TO THE OTHER SIDE, I take my hand back, and my fingers burn but I can’t tell if it’s because of his touch or the absence of it.

I don’t know where to look or what to do. It’s too much. I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t be here.

“Listen,” I say, “I think maybe we should—”

But it’s like Peter can sense that I’m about to try and bail because he gives me a big sparkly smile and says, “You know what I’ve always wanted to do?”

“Lie naked in a stack of best-selling hardcovers?”

“Hardcovers? In this economy?”

“Then I give up. But really, I think maybe—”

“I’ve always wanted to do one of those classic New York stoop sits.”

“A … stoop sit?” I narrow my eyes. “I feel like you’re just making shit up.”

“You know what I mean. Where people casually sit on the stoop of their apartment building and talk and people-watch. It’s a quintessential New York thing.”

“You want to go full indie film.”

“Well, kind of. Or like one of those great scenes in a slice-of-life book, where there’s no plot and nothing happening but it’s just … life.”

Just life. As if there’s anything just about life.

“Sounds pretentious. And anyway, we don’t actually have a New York apartment with a stoop to sit on, so—”

“We can borrow one,” Peter says. “Come on. I see one down the block that looks perfect.”