Page 25 of Pining for You

“Bird/fish?” Izaac asks.

Diya sighs deeply. “A fish and a bird may fall in love, but where will they live?”

Izaac cocks his head quizzically. “I have more questions.”

“Better questions include: What if she’s not there? Not interested?” I chime in.

I want to rely on my signature sunny outlook here, but my self-confidence and optimism have taken a hit over the last year, and I’m having more moments of doubt than I’d like to admit.

“Based on the way she came hunting you down with a cider yesterday, I’d say she was pretty interested,” Diya says, and my heart flutters.

“And anyway, what is there to lose? At the end of the day, even if you don’t find her, you and some friends get to have a Christmas adventure in the Big Apple,” Izaac says.

“Friends?” I ask.

“Yes, obviously. We can’t send you into this quest without supporting characters. We’ll make a day of it.” He looks at his screen. “The bakery isn’t far from Audra’s, actually.”

“Ohhh, Audra!” Cash says, looking up from his phone, which at some point returned to his hand. “Let’s go see her!”

Izaac has visited his sister a few times and come back mostly rubbing it in about the bagels and coffee.

“It would be so great to see her for Christmas,” Diya adds.

But after our conversation yesterday, I wonder what’s going through Izaac’s mind. Is he thinking what I’m thinking, that maybe we could convince her to come home for Christmas? Then he wouldn’t be alone with his parents, and his family would be together.

I bite my lip. When I was alone in my room last night, scheming about how to connect with Eve on my own, something like this never even crossed my mind.

Then I overhear the table behind us talking about the weather with Jolene.

“Saying up to two feet… biggest storm in years…”

… Which snaps me back to reality.

“You hear that?” I say, jabbing a thumb back toward the table. “Must I point out that we’re expecting a major blizzard?”

“Does that mean Naomi’s moon gave you an affirmative for a snow forecast?” Diya asks.

“Oh, you know I don’t moongaze and tell,” I say. “It’s against the rules, like giving away your birthday wish.”

“Well then, I guess we’ll have to rely on Diya for the forecast,” Cash says.

“Don’t rely on me,” Diya says. “Rely on science.”

“Of course we’ll rely on you!” I say, doing a full body twist to look her in the eye. Then I turn back to my pancakes. “Or we would, if we were going. But we’re not. We cannot risk getting stuck in New York. We have the biggest day of the year tomorrow—our last Cooper Christmas Eve.”

“Who said anything about tomorrow?” Izaac says.

After another minute of tapping and squinting, he turns the phone to show me a map with location pins.

“If we head out soon, we could be in Brooklyn before noon, find your girlfriend’s bakery, which is here.” He points to a pin. “It closes at five p.m. You’ll have plenty of time to make her fall madly in love with you—”

“And have the most movie-worthy queer Christmas magic kiss!” Cash interrupts, sighing like a lovestruck Disney princess.

“And we can be back on the road before the snow starts.” As Izaac says this, he switches to the weather app. “Which is not supposed to happen until…”

“8:23 p.m.,” Diya says, holding up her own phone with a much more sophisticated radar app she’s been addicted to since she discovered it last winter.

“We’ll be back in time for you all to get your beauty rest before the big day at the farm tomorrow,” he adds.