Page 94 of 72 Hours of You

That question pulls at me, threatens to drag me all the way under. But I still don’t tell him.

Later he asks if my feet are hurting from walking so much, but I say no. I tell him it’s because I’m a runner. My feet are used to much worse. But really, I can’t feel anything right now. It’s like I’m not inside my body at all. We don’t take any taxis or subways. We just walk.

We make it to the bookshop he wanted to visit. A hidden place called Cygnus. It’s this all-brick narrow little place with two dark blue doors. Peter opens one and holds it for me as I slip inside.

I’ll have to get used to opening my own doors again.

The place is cozy and warm, lit tea candles on the antique checkout desk, giant reading chairs tucked away in different corners of the store. The ceiling is painted a dark blue with little golden stars and constellations dotting the painted sky.

I can feel Peter come up behind me and bend down, his lips at my ear. He points to one of the clusters on the ceiling. “That’s Cassiopeia.”

“Really?”

“No.” He laughs. “Well, maybe. I have no idea.”

I turn around to face him. He pushes his gold-rimmed glasses up and grins at me. And I tilt my face up and kiss him, because, Jesus, how could I not?

I spend the next two hours, thirty-two minutes, and eighteen seconds watching him browse the shelves. Sometimes he’ll stop and read me a funny or sweet or sometimes gut-wrenching passage from a favorite book. I watch the way he runs his finger over a spine, feeling the bumps of the letters. I watch the way the corners of his eyes crinkle when he finds something hilariously sarcastic on a page. I love the way he bites his bottom lip when he finds a line that he thinks is so unique and interesting that he has to read it out loud to me. I try to memorize all of him. To collect these little facts, these tiny Peter-things, and hold them, like pebbles in my pocket. Like maybe if I keep collecting them, eventually they’ll weigh enough to keep me from floating away.

Peter keeps asking if we’re spending too much time here, but I keep telling him no. There’s no such thing as too much time anymore. I slip off to use the bathroom—going as fast as I can so I don’t miss any more time—but when I come back, he’s at the checkout, laughing with the old man behind the counter who hands him a small paper bag and thanks him for coming in.

“What’s that?”

“Something for you,” Peter says. But he doesn’t hand it to me. “For later.”

Later. Later is a promise he doesn’t know he’s going to break.

When we push open the blue doors and step back out into the city, the sky is already starting to get dark. The suddenness of this day slipping away takes me by surprise, even though I’ve been watching every second.

Our time is running out.

49:47:12

It’s almost been an entire day. We have two days left. That’s it. And then he’s gone forever.

Panic grips my chest so violently that my knees almost buckle under me.

“Are you okay?” Peter asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think maybe I’m just a little hungry.”

I pull out my phone. “There’s this restaurant close to here that has five stars. Their reservations are usually booked way out in advance, but some people in the comments say if you get there early enough you can get a spot at the bar.”

Peter looks at me for what feels like forever but is actually only three seconds. “Why don’t we just grab some hot dogs?”

Is it better or worse to know?

Hot dogs.

“Cool,” I say, and he tucks the little brown bag under one arm and puts his other around my shoulders. We find a vendor who Peter bonds with over a shared love of some random band, and we keep walking, eating, and talking, the pink glow getting brighter the more light the sky loses.

“You know, at some point we’re going to have to talk about the elephant in the room,” Peter says, taking my hot-dog wrapper and tossing it in the trash for me.

Fear zaps through my body, freezing me solid. “What do you mean?”

“The poetry project.” Peter smiles. “Eventually, we’re going to have to figure that thing out.”

“Oh. Right,” I say. That English class is cursed.