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Terry gives a stifled chortle the moment Kayvon is far enough away. "I gotta admit, when I told you to take it easy, I meant like, come to trivia night. I didn't expect you to start chasing guys across the city."

"To be fair, I did tell you I had a date," I lie.

"Yeah, I guess you did. I can't get over how you never do anything in half measures. Even when you are relaxing." The way he stresses relaxing makes my face turn every shade of red.

"Well, maybe I just got lucky," I huff.

Terry doesn't skip a beat as he smiles while looking at Max, who is circling to offer Kayvon a tray of deviled eggs. "Yeah, it's nice to get lucky."

We linger, smiling and grateful, still caught in each other’s gaze. I say, "But thanks, I think you were right. I needed to step back from my work."

"I'm glad you did," Terry says.

The air between us gets too thick, too tense, and suddenly we both have to shake it off as I ask, "Is Carol here yet?"

"Yeah." Terry manages to recover from the tender moment to his more nonchalant self. "She's on the roof."

I nod as I watch Kayvon try—without success—to get Max to stop offering him eggs. Another perk of Terry’s place, besides its proximity to the museum, is the open rooftop that only he ever seems to use.

I grab Kayvon by the arm, saving him from Max, before pulling him in the direction of the fire escape. As thanks, he hands me an excuse for a lite beer, and we head out and up the narrow steps. The place and night might be different, but the ritual feels the same.

We reach the rooftop, where string lights and friends milling about frame a vast, star-lit sky. One look at Kayvon, and I know, even beneath all those stars, nothing could make tonight feel wrong.

I catch sight of Carol, and for a moment she seems uncharacteristically grumpy before she spots us from across the roof, her face turning to an elated smile as she hurries to greet us. "I finally get to meet him!"

"Hi Carol," I say with feigned exhaustion. "This is Kayvon."

Kayvon takes Carol’s small hands in his as he says, "So you are the famous Carol. I've heard good things."

Carol's wavy black hair bounces up and down in time with her loose-fitting dollar store Greek soldier costume. "Oh, you have?"

At most, I've given Kayvon more warnings than compliments, but like downstairs, he seems to know exactly what to say. "Yep, enthusiastic, steadfast, the only reason Mary gets anything done."

That last one makes me wrinkle my nose. "I’m not sure I said that."

"No, I'm sure you did," Carol says before I have a chance to correct the record.

We drift farther onto the roof and join the party, my gaze shifting between my friends, Kayvon, and the sea of stars overhead. The night only grows more magical, until something strange catches my eye in the direction of the museum.

I take a few steps to the roof's edge to get a good look, and I realize there's a large shadow hanging over the museum. That earlier dimming of the sky, what I must have dismissed as a cloud, suddenly seems so much closer and more solid. I think it might be a trick of the light, but the more I look, the more I realize there's more going on. A massive conic shadow that seems to darken the longer the night continues, no matter how bright the city lights get, centered right over the museum.

Finally, I find Terry and ask, "What's going on over there?"

He follows my eyeline. "Oh, you mean the funnel."

"What funnel?" I ask, confused why he said it in a tone that makes it sound like everyone but me knows exactly what it is.

He pulls out his phone and opens a feed of images, not photographs, but paintings, street art, and watercolors. Some people even have tattoos of a dark conic swirl with sinister figures above the museum. "The Funnel. It’s weird because everyone sees it, but you can’t really photograph it."

He opens the camera app on his phone and points it toward the museum, and to my surprise, I don't see the foggy shadow anymore. I don't even see the stars anymore.

"So it's just there like an optical illusion?"

"Sort of. I mean, animals seem to avoid it. It's like the opposite of when they had those lights that kept attracting geese." True to Terry's words, I watch some pigeons cautiously navigate around the shadow.

I keep staring, keep wondering how I never noticed this before, and quickly realize that I probably never noticed it because I'm always walking away from the museum at night, not towards it, at least not at this late hour.

Kayvon comes to join us as he points to the shadow. "You see that, right?"