Page 31 of Pining for You

So maybe she thought she’d enjoy the trip today if she had more information on New York, but the optimist in me can’t help but wonder if Diya was already doing some research before this morning… for her own future reasons?

“Well, I for one am happy to have the surprise tour guide.” I smile wide and throw an arm around her shoulders. “Is it always so quiet?” I was expecting more of a movie scene hustle and bustle, and so far Brooklyn is surprisingly chill.

“Brooklyn is definitely quieter than Manhattan, but not usually this much. People must’ve fled town on account of the weather,” Izaac says. “Probably scurrying off to their upstate cabins to sit by the fire and drink haute cocoa.”

He pushes his glasses up on his nose as he delivers this line, looking like a Black Asian Dan Levy, one of his only nonpolitical heroes.

“I feel like designing ‘haute cocoa’ is Bennie’s true calling in life,” Cash says, eyeing me.

“The fallback, for sure,” I say. I train the lens on Diya as she closely examines some plant species. If there’s a single trace of awe on her face, I don’t want to miss it. I’ll get a lot of mileage out of this footage if she tries to tell me she didn’t enjoy her time here.

“That’ll do,” Diya says, putting a mittened hand over the lens again and foiling my faux blackmail attempt.

“Okay, this way,” Izaac says, eyes on the map screen. The map that will lead us to the bakery.

To Eve.

It’s not that I forgot why we’re here, but I’ve been distracting myself so I don’t lose my nerve. The camera helps me observe the world more closely, but can put a little distance between me and reality too. But now I only have a few blocks to figure out what I’m actually going to say when we get there.

Diya must sense this, because she turns to me with an encouraging smile and says, “You’ll know what to say when you see her.”

I smile back, my snack cake heart getting all gooey at the thought of Diya’s confidence in me. But the reminder that they’re all here to watch me get the girl suddenly feels like a brick on my chest.

A vibration from my phone startles me out of my spiral, and for a beat I’m happy, but then I realize it’s my mom, based on the fact that she’s the only one who can get through my Do Not Disturb.

Instinctively, I reach for it. She’s probably just responding to my note that I’ll be out all day. But then a voice in my head says, Wait! Stop! Remember that whole get-back-to-me-with-an-answer situation? And I decide against looking. I can’t let it mess with my headspace right now.

“There it is!” Cash shouts, pointing up ahead.

I have to take my glasses off and give them a quick polish on my jacket, but eventually I can read the words Panadería Amado on a red awning, and it’s like a shot through my heart. There it is. Which means, there she is.

Well, maybe, anyway. Because she could totally not be in there.

But also? She totally could be in there.

“That was quick!” he adds.

“Really quick,” I say.

Too quick is what I do not say.

“So what’s your strategy?” Izaac asks.

“Strategy,” I repeat, neither a question nor an answer.

I’m so nervous, so unsure of myself, that for a moment my panic transforms to blame. I’m not somehow cooler than I was yesterday, or more confident. Also, this isn’t Fate throwing us together randomly this time. This is me and my friends trying to force Fate. Will there be cosmic retribution?

Since Izaac suggested this trip, he is directly responsible for the chaos in my brain, and suddenly I’m almost angry with him.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot more moments like this and last night on the phone with my mom, when my anger—which has never been a problem for me—catches me off guard, like biting down on an eggshell in sticky toffee pudding.

Whenever this happens, I think about Michelle. When things got bad, she was liable to blow up at anyone in her path—which was mostly Naomi, but sometimes me, too. It made home—where I always felt so safe and comfortable—a pretty scary place to be.

Everything I’ve read online says that what my sister has been diagnosed with—bipolar disorder—and addiction could both run in the family. I’ve worried more than once whether I might be susceptible to the same future, but I cannot go down that road. I have to get my feelings under control, be in the moment, on this Brooklyn street, with my friends. My friends, who are all staring at me, waiting.

“You can practice with us, if you want. It’s what I always do before a campaign speech,” Izaac says wearing his most reassuring You got this grin. He rests a hand on my shoulder, and my anger melts like a snowperson in spring.

“No, it’s all good,” I say.