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“Where’s your bike?” I turned my head back and forth as we continued down the street.
“It’s in the shop.” He pulled me left, toward the dingy and badly marked subway entrance.
“Wait—we’re not taking public transportation, are we?”
He looked at me sharply, alarm widening his eyes. “Why? Do you not want to? Should I have brought a car?”
My lips split in a grin. He was cute when he worried. “No, it’s fine.”
“Yeah?” He angled himself toward me, never releasing my hand. “I’ll have you know, I’ve been in those ‘Just Like You!’ features for taking the subway.”
He had? Not that I read tabloids. Never. Unless I was in the doctor’s office. Or grocery store. Or airport. “Ha! You’re not that big a deal!”
“Yeah?” He lowered his head towards mine. “You sure about that?”
“Mm-hm.” And then I couldn’t help myself. I giggled.
* * *
We spent the evening at Ellis Island. “You’re kidding,” I said when we emerged out of the subway at Battery Park, and stood before the ferry. “We’re playing tourist?”
He nodded across the water. “You ever been there before?”
“Not since I was fourteen.”
“Good. Besides, we’re not playing tourist. I’m giving you a history lesson.”
“Says the jock to the academic!”
“No, says the military history major to the English major.”
The sky stayed grey as the water, and rain spritzed down, inflating my hair to epic proportions. But I didn’t care. Neither of us cared. We played historical tourists and held hands and if I’d been asked—later on about what kind of day it had been, I would have called it more beautiful than any yet that year.
After touring the museums, Ryan pointed out his family’s names to me on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor. I slid him a sly smile. “Do you know what this means?”
He dealt me a look that said he was sure I wanted to tell him.
I grinned at him. “You’re really a New Yorker.”
He snorted. “That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?”
I laughed. “So tell me about your brothers.”
He shrugged. “Older, louder, meaner. I think that covers it.”
“Meaner?” I frowned.
His face softened. “Nah. We were just a crazy group. You know, there’s always the quiet one—Rich was as happy at the piano as outdoors—but the twins were rowdy and everyone yelled. Dad says I was twice as loud since I wanted to keep up with all of them. The runt always does.”
“And do any of them play football?”
“All of them.”
“But you’re the best.”
He raised a brow. “Was that a compliment?”
“No.” I flipped my hair back and walked out of the monument’s silver walls.
