Chapter 2
DOVE
Exactly seven years later:
From up here, you can almost believe that the world isn’t as cold a place as it truly is.
Icy wind whips through my hair, pasting blonde and pink tendrils across my face. I brush them back, shivering. My bare toes curl against the concrete as I look out over the sea of lights twinkling like jewels in front of me.
New York is beautiful when it wants to be. I think that’s why Lark loved it up here—even if I hated the gallows humor jokes she made about how she might get down from here.
But that was before she found happiness and love.
And died anyway.
Happiness and love…
I smile wryly as my gaze slowly drifts over the glittering city around me, past my bare toes gripping the very edge of the building and down to the busy streets eighty-three stories below.
Seven years later, I’m still looking for both of those. I’m also pretty sure that some things aren’t meant to be found, not by everyone.
I highly doubt happiness and love are anywhere to be found on the eighty-third story mechanical maintenance decks of the Empire State Building. Maybe you'd find them a few floors higher, on the iconic eighty-sixth story observation deck, like in that movie.
What’s the name? Right.
Sleepless in Seattle. Which has its climactic scene in…New York. Not Seattle.
That always bugged me.
A lot bugs me. Gets to me. Worms its way into my blood like poison or ink, until my veins run black like death.
I used to point this out to Lark when she’d convince me to come up here with her. Not the part about everything bothering me—she already knew that better than most. The part about Sleepless In Seattle having its big romantic moment here in New York City instead of the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s a meet-cute!” she’d argue.
I’d point out that meet-cutes—those sappy moments when the two main characters meet for the first time in some diabetes-inducing way, like Hugh Grant spilling OJ on Julia Roberts in Notting Hill—happen at the beginning of stories, not the end.
Lark would tell me to quit ruining the moment.
To this day, I have no idea how she discovered the secret way up to the northwest corner deck on the eighty-third floor of the Empire State Building. I mean it isn’t exactly open to the public.
But she did, and we'd come up here maybe once a year for no reason other than wherever Lark went, I went. And similarly, wherever I went, Lark went.
Until the night seven years ago, when I couldn’t go with her.
Seven fucking years.
She’d be twenty-four now, like me.
I look down at the smudges on my yoga pants from Lark’s route up here, which involves picking the lock of a maintenance storage room, shimmying through the extra-large air vent at the back of said room, and hoisting yourself up through a hatch onto the main deck itself.
When we’d come up here, we had no agenda other than to look out over the city. We’d share a set of headphones, one ear bud each, listen to bad emo music, smoke pilfered cigarettes, drink a little stolen vodka, and just…watch.
Watch the city twinkle, and the world keep turning.
Not having a clue about what was coming next for either of us.
This is the sixth time I’ve been up here since the last time I came up with her, seven years ago—every year on this cursed anniversary.
I missed one year. But I like to tell myself she’d totally understand why I couldn’t come that once.
In any case, there’ll be no Sleepless in Seattle meet-cute tonight. Just me finally taking the next step, one that I’ve been too chicken-shit to take the last five times I was here.
I exhale slowly, looking past my toes to the street below.
This has been a long time coming.
I close my eyes and think of her, and the night her life ended and mine went to hell.
It wasn’t your fault.
I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly that colored lights explode behind my lids.
Yes, it was.
A shudder ripples through me as a particularly strong gust of wind tears up the side of the building, blowing my hair into crazy pink tangles. My hands close to fists as I steel myself, lifting my head to the sky.
The familiar gnawing sensation pulls dull and empty inside me. The itch. The hunger that’ll always be there, lurking, daring me to cave.
You’re never a former addict. You’re one forever. The trick is not to be one that uses. I guess after tonight, that’s one more thing I won’t have to stress about.
A wry smile twists my lips as I look out at the world, knowing with supreme confidence that I will never use again.
There’s a lot of things I won’t ever do again.
Some of those I’ll miss—a lot, actually. Ballet, for instance: the one constant in my life that arguably saved me.
The few friends I’ve come to rely on, like crutches.
Painting, my newer artistic release.
My half-sister Chiara…maybe.
I allow myself another smile.
Okay, I’ll miss her too.
That’s it, though.
I inhale shakily, looking out over the city below. Lark used to say the streets looked like airport runways, all lit up to guide a plane as it swooped down from the sky.
That’ll be me soon; swooping down to land. Guided by the lights.
It’s beautiful, in a way. And no, I didn't decide to jump from here for attention, or to make a scene. I picked it because, well, Lark.
She always joked that if she were to do it, it’d be from here.
Honestly, she has a point. It’s beautiful up here. I’ve always loved this city, and one last gorgeous view from high above it all…well, it seems like a nice way to go.
I glance down to my shoes, and the letter tucked inside one of them.
I’m genuinely not sure why I took them off. I mean, I watch a decent amount of anime, and I know in Japanese culture, people always take their shoes off before they jump, so they can enter the afterlife without them. For respect, same as you wouldn’t walk into someone's house wearing them.
But I’m neither Japanese nor religious in any sense.
I guess it just…felt right.
I let my eyes close. I take a slow breath, filling myself with the sounds of the city. The rush of traffic, humming like a living thing. The dull honk of horns. A siren. The wind in my ears.
I wonder if I’ll have regrets as I hurtle toward the ground.
The sound of wrenching metal sends my heart into my throat.
My entire body jolts, fear and adrenaline exploding through me as I whirl and almost fall backward over the edge. Just as I right myself and jump down onto the roof deck, my gaze lands on the trap door.
It’s open again, and someone is climbing out of it.
I dart to the side, sinking into the shadows.
The figure climbs all the way out and stands tall. For a second, I assume it's someone from building security. But then he—it’s a man, I see that now—rolls his shoulders and shoves a hand through slightly shaggy hair.
It’s not security. It’s just…some guy.
I press myself flat to the wall as I watch him calmly walk to the edge, about twenty feet away from where I was just standing. My eyes go wide as he steps right up onto it.
He's tall, with wide shoulders and a tapered, athletic waist. His arms are muscled and covered in sleeve tattoos. I can see that because despite the chilly temperature, he's just wearing black jeans and a t-shirt. His arm ripples as he pushes his fingers languidly through his hair.
The fuck is he doing up here?
A flame flickers in his hands as he cups them to his face—a lighter. I watch the cherry glow at the end of his cigarette as he inhales, tucks the lighter into the back pocket of his pants and tilts his head up, removing the cigarette from between his lips and exhaling slowly.
He calmly drops his chin to look down past his feet, then takes another drag of the cigarette before he plucks it from his lips and flicks it behind him onto the roof.
He rolls his shoulders, takes a slow breath, and spreads his arms wide as he raises a foot. My nerves jangle.
“Don’t!”
The man turns to stone. He doesn’t flinch or wobble or freak out, like I did when he opened the trap door. He just…stops cold and goes totally still, mid-step into nothingness, like he’s daring gravity to do the rest.
“Why not?”
His voice is deep and slightly rough, but with a smooth, honeyed tail to it.
I slowly step out of the shadows. He doesn’t turn, but his extended foot “un-steps” from thin air, casually lowering next to the other one.
My brows knit at his question. “What?”
“Why not,” the man murmurs, pulling a pack of cigarettes and the lighter out of his pocket.
“Because...don’t?” I hug my arms around my body as I walk closer to the edge, near where I was standing before. “You shouldn’t jump.”
He chuckles quietly and lights the fresh cigarette. The Zippo flicks shut in his hand with an audible click of metal, and he tucks it and the pack back into his pocket. He glances my way, but the shadows that I feel draped across my face are similarly hiding his.
“You're one to talk,” he grunts.
My brow furrows. “Excuse me?”
“You trying to tell me you’re up here for the view?”
“I…” I swallow heavily, squaring my shoulders. “I am.”
It’s…half true, at least?
The man just takes another pull of his smoke, and nods a clean-shaven, sharp jaw my way.
“Is the view better if you take off your shoes?”
A stab of shame zings through me as I whip my head around to look at my shoes, still on the ledge.
“And that envelope,” he chuckles darkly. “That’s your grocery list for tomorrow, right?”
My face heats as I drop my eyes to the ground. My hands meet in front of me, fingers twisting together, picking at my cuticles. I do that a lot these days, which is why my nails always look like shit.
But hey, it beats using.
“Tell me why I shouldn't,” the man repeats, a smoky note to his voice. “Jump, that is.” He clears his throat, pulling my gaze up to his shadowed face. “If you’re selling any good reasons, I might be buying.”
I don’t know how to respond to that.
He chuckles dryly, without any real mirth. “Yeah. Tough when you don’t know the answer yourself, isn’t it.”