Page 90 of Pining for You

“Hey, I wanted to give you something quick, if you have a minute,” she says.

My heart skips. My breath hitches.

“It’s no big deal, just a little thing I thought you might like.” She gestures toward the stairs.

Eve wants me to go upstairs. With her. Alone.

Gahhhh.

It is exactly what I was just wishing for, but how does one have any chill in a situation like this?

As she turns and heads up, I’m frozen in place until Izaac nudges me.

“Go,” he hisses. “Go! Shoot your shot, Bosley!”

“I didn’t even brush my teeth yet!” I hiss back, hyperaware of my morning-plus-coffee-plus-pancake breath. He holds up a finger, then disappears into the living room for a moment. He returns with a candy cane snagged from the tree and hands it over to me with a wink, before rejoining the group in the hallway.

I grin. Christmas coming through for me, once again.

I peel back the wrapper and stick it in my mouth, and with a minty burst of confidence, I head for the stairs.

26

I have seen the movie Elf no fewer than thirty-seven times in my life, so I can imitate Buddy’s imitation of a New York City radiator pretty freaking flawlessly. But only upon stepping into Eve’s room do I realize how flawless his imitation was. Eve’s hisses away against the wall, but I can’t say it’s the actual reason I’m so unbelievably hot now and struggling to breathe evenly.

Aside from the radiator, there’s so much here to take in as Eve looks around for something. Curls of twinkle lights frame her mirror, and there’s a bookshelf with a bunch of philosophy books I’ve never heard of.

There are even a few Yuletide symbols. There are two copies of A Christmas Carol and she has a Happiest Season poster, from which Christmas dykon K-Stew is staring down at me as if watching in anticipation. I could spend hours studying all the little things that make up this beautiful human.

“Okay, come on,” she says, and she actually grabs my hand now, just like she did last night when she led me around that corner, but with more force this time. More urgency. And now my eyes are wide open.

She pulls me out of her room and back toward the stairwell.

“Wait, what? Where?” I stammer, but she shushes me.

We head up, not down, though, and once we reach the top of that flight of stairs, we take another, and by the time we arrive at an unmarked door, I’m seriously sucking wind and totally disoriented. The air is way colder in the stairwell than her cozy bedroom. I’m going to have to do some intense cardio conditioning before I move to New York.

“So, I know you guys have to get moving,” she says, putting her palm on the door and turning to me. She’s not at all breathless somehow. “But… I just thought… Well, you’ll see.”

She pushes on the door and it resists a little. There must be snow on the other side. Then she throws her shoulder against it and a layer of ice shatters. She steps through and reaches out to offer me a hand. This feels like a dream, even though I never could have imagined it in a million years.

But then it gets better. On the other side of the door is the most spectacular sight I’ve ever seen. We’re six stories up on the roof of Eve’s building just before dawn. The sky is blue velvet. No, blue agate. Was this rich palette of colors specially selected just to soothe my pounding heart? In the distance, brownstones stand at attention like toy soldiers and those iconic water towers perch above rooftops like sentinels protecting this natural wonder.

When I turn just slightly, the Manhattan skyline comes into view. At this hour, it’s still mostly bathed in shadow, as if it might be frozen just beneath the surface of a lake.

Somewhere, there’s the distant rumble of a train—maybe it’s just started running again—and the grind of an aggrieved snowplow on pavement down on the street. But for the most part, the noise of this chaotic city is nearly eliminated, thanks to the untarnished blanket of white. And in this moment, it’s like the whole of Brooklyn is holding its breath, too afraid to exhale and blow all this beauty away.

I am speechless. I would believe I was breathless, too, if not for the fog rising slowly from my own lungs. And even though the sun is clearly starting to wake itself up, gilding the edges of buildings and scattering glittery light across every surface, there is still a very clear view of the moon.

Our moon.

“Eve,” I say, because I cannot come up with a single other word that would explain the feeling in my chest.

She lets out a new laugh, and I somehow know it means she’s up on this cloud too. “I thought you might want to see where I am when I check the forecast,” she says. “So you can imagine it the next time you’re looking too.”

I shake my head, practically soaring.

“You… you get to see this anytime you want, and you’re telling me you don’t believe in magic?” I ask.