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“I’ve already heard all that.”

Henry rakes a hand through his hair and stretches his legs out on the floor, his feet almost meeting mine.

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you like living in New York?” It’s a surface-level question, but if we’re stuck together, I can at least make small talk with him.

“It was always the dream, right?” There’s none of the malice I would have assumed from this statement, given our history. “Not too much like the You’ve Got Mail or When Harry Met Sally life that we envisioned, though, huh?”

I press my lips into a thin line. It feels risky to dance around our past like this. “Not too much,” I echo.

“I like how you can be surrounded by people at any moment and at the same time, no one looks at you twice.”

Loneliness drips from his words. Or maybe I’m just reading into it. After that story about my dad, I’m suddenly greedy for every new insight he willingly hands over to me, even though I should know better.

“You like that?”

“I don’t know, it’s so different from home. It feels exciting, like you could dip into someone’s movie moment just by passing them on the street, as an observer, and then you’ll never see them again.”

So it isn’t loneliness after all. Of course Henry isn’t lonely. Look at him. He’s just doe-eyed about this place where he always wanted to live. “You haven’t been there that long, then,” I surmise.

“Only a year and a half,” he admits.

“It’s nice that you can still see the city in such a romantic light.”

“You’ve been out there since college, right?”

I nod, the novelty of what he finds so enchanting having worn off after eight years there. “It’s my home now. I don’t see myself ever leaving. I guess there is something oddly comforting about being able to weep openly on the subway with no one bothering you.”

“Is that a frequent occurrence in your life?” Henry asks, cocking an eyebrow.

I clutch my chest, feigning shock. “You don’t cry on the subway?”

“Why do you think I have a car? I’m saving those tears for a parking garage, obviously.” The corner of his mouth flicks up, sending a shiver down my spine.

Are Henry and I joking around? Is our temporary truce actually kind of…nice?

“Favorite spot in the city?” I ask.

“Look, I know it’s cliché, but nothing beats wandering around Central Park. My new place is close, and that’s at least nineteen percent of why I moved there.”

“One of my favorite places to run if I can find a reason to be in Manhattan,” I admit.

He smiles. “Where do you live?”

I break off a stack of chips, playing with a strand of cheese that’s starting to congeal. “Oh, just a fun little five-story walk-up in Astoria.”

“Is it a shoebox? My last place was a shoebox.”

“I prefer to think of it as more of a banker’s box, but yes, it’s tiny. I’ve got two roommates but our apartment is rent-controlled, so I can never move.”

“Living alone is great, though,” Henry tells me, taking another bite of his own. “You don’t have to worry about anyone else’s dishes. Walk around as clothed or unclothed as you see fit. I can finally be at peace.”

“One of my roommates has her boyfriend over constantly,” I say, trying not to think about how unclothed sends me right back to this morning, a towel wrapped low around his waist. “They take two hour-long showers every day. One in the morning, and one at night. It’s impossible.”

“They’ve gotta just be having sex in there, right?”

I feel myself flush as the word sex leaves Henry Cole’s mouth. Probably from the wine. And the oddity of this boy I’ve known since I was three years old talking about sex of all things. And maybe because the image from hours earlier, his strong chest defined by droplets of water, hasn’t successfully left my brain. I blink twice, getting the thoughts out of my head.