The men I was following step onto a train, vanishing from sight. “Excuse me!” I stop the next person I see, a girl with her nose stuck in her phone. “How do I buy tickets?”
“MetroCard.” She nods to a kiosk in the corner without lifting her eyes.
I stand in line at the kiosk, antsy with anticipation, grocery bag hanging on my wrist. It takes a minute, but it’s not difficult to follow the prompts and push the right buttons, once again using Mom’s credit card to fund my purchase. When my yellow-and-blue card is dispensed, I can’t smother my broad grin. I turn just in time to see doors slide closed and the ice-skating train pull away.
What do I do now?
And that’s the magic question, isn’t it? Use the app. Clover’s rules.
Should I go back to Harrison’s apartment?
Something low in my gut protests angrily as I type. I didn’t come all this way and purchase my first MetroCard just to turn around and go home. So, I’m incredibly relieved when the Magic 8 app says No. With that option off the table, I have no choice but to get on the next train. It’s almost empty, but I stand and hold on to the pole, like they do in movies.
I’m awash in the fantasy of my new metropolitan lifestyle as the train rumbles along the track; it’s never been easier to slip myself into the role of rom-com heroine, the one coming home from a long day at the office when she spies a cute boy reading pensively on the other end of an empty train car. No. Scratch that! The train car is crowded, and we’re holding on to the same pole, and at an abrupt stop I stumble into him, the contents of my purse spilling everywhere (rom-com heroines are terribly clumsy, didn’t you know?) and our eyes meet … and it’s Fitz.
Every daydream, every scenario. It’s always Fitz.
I listen for the words Central Park over the speaker, except I don’t hear them. It’s only after my fourth elaborate daydream (Fitz and me stumbling into each other ten years in the future, me with a bad engagement ring on my left hand, him with his dream career in the major leagues and no one to come home to at night) that I begin to worry I’ve gotten on the wrong train. I glance at the map on the wall of the subway, but as I have no idea where I am or where I’m going or where I’ve been, it means less than nothing. Seeing all those lines crisscrossing across the busiest city in the world makes me feel worse than if there were no map.
I turn back to the app. It instructs me to get off on the next stop, so I do. And then I exit the subway and turn right at the app’s discretion, breezing past a liquor shop covered in graffiti and stepping over a large pile of dog poop. I don’t stop, I don’t question it. I keep my feet moving, my fingers flying, typing faster than I can process what’s happening. I know myself well enough to know that the second I stop and pay any sort of attention to what’s happening, I’ll have a panic attack, alone on a dirty street filled with grumpy faces.
Doubt crawls up my spine. What if I was wrong about New York?
I walk for a long time. Too long. Past not one but two pizza places. My grocery bag digs into my wrist and I consider abandoning it on the sidewalk, but I keep it, cringing with every bump and bang into my thigh. If things were different, I’d stop to admire every brick and building of whatever neighborhood I’ve landed in. As it is, all my energy is spent trying to smother the rising tide of fear. But on the corner of two dark streets in a place I’ve never been, it reaches me. One second, I’m breathing. The next, I’m drowning.
I’ve been very, very stupid.
The sun must be low on an invisible horizon, the temperature is steadily dropping, and my phone battery is at 9 percent.
My shaky hands fumble over my phone as I call Mom.
“Hello?” A male voice answers the phone, sending another hot thread of panic clean through me.
“Where’s my mom?”
“I’m sorry, who’s calling?” Harrison asks primly.
“Give the phone to my mom now. It’s important.”
“She’s not here. Our parents went for a walk, and it looks like she accidentally left her phone in the apartment.”
“Did she say when she’d be back?” I hate how high-pitched and screechy I sound. A large man bumps into me, sending me stumbling back into a wet, sticky pile of snirt. I’m soaking from the shins down, and I want to cry.
“Nah.”
If I wasn’t so busy panicking, I’d be annoyed by his nonanswer answer. “Will you give her a message for me?”
“Sure.”
“Tell her that I tried to get to Central Park but I got lost and my phone is at, uh”—I check the battery—“three percent and it’s cold and I don’t know where I am and I don’t remember where you live.” I jam the palm of my hand into my eyes to wipe away the tears as my heart throbs painfully in my chest.
“Walk to the nearest corner and look up at the street signs.”
“Okay, I, um, I’m at Franklin and Lincoln.”
“That’s way down by Julian’s place. How’d you get to Brooklyn?”
“I was on the train for a long time.”
He curses under his breath. “I think there’s a Starbucks nearby. Do you see it?”
I scan the block, and I do see it. I breathe a small sigh of relief. “Yeah.” I check the battery again. Two percent.
“Go inside. Do you have money?”
“A little.”
“Order something cheap, find a seat, and stay there. Do not move. You got that?”
“Yeah, but what about—”
“I’ll be there are soon as I can. Whatever you do, don’t—”
My phone dies. I grip it with frigid fingers and do my very best not to freak out.
As if that’s ever been an option.
The thing about Magic 8 is this: I’m pretty sure it’s trying to destroy my life. Thanks to my question and its regrettable response, Fitz and I are wedged in a dark stairwell beneath a sprig of mistletoe.
Because of course we are.
Because obviously this day hasn’t been stressful enough.
Because I’m completely in the right mind-set to handle the fact that his chest is brushing up against mine every time he breathes and that his knee is resting against my thigh—said no girl ever. Not in respect to Fitz Wilding.
“Did you know that mistletoe is poisonous?” I say desperately.
An amused glint sparks in Fitz’s eyes, smoldering right through me. He crooks his mouth to the side, lazy grin growing. I sense the joke coming. It’s the eyes that give him away; they’re shining in anticipation of a punch line.
I get there first.
“Name five things you see right now.”
His lips part. I watch, mesmerized.
“Other than the mistletoe,” I add.
His mouth snaps shut, and he grins. “I can’t. It’s the only thing I see. I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing in the whole damn room.”
I roll my eyes. What a typical Flirty Fitz thing to say.
I lean back against the wall, creating an illusion of space between our bodies. But that’s all it is: an illusion. Because the fact is this: Awkward or not, being close to Fitz lights my senses on fire, and I never want it to end. “On a scale of one to The Notebook, how romantic is this place?” I ask. Fitz cocks an eyebrow. “I don’t want to be falling into any more of these dopey rom-com traps,” I amend, slanting my eyes to the mistletoe.