18
“PENELOPE. HE TRIED TO KISS ME, AND I THREW UP ALL OVER HIM.”
“Right,” she says on the other line. I hear her moving some stuff around. “So, when can I expect you? Tonight? Tomorrow?”
“Penelope, I threw up on him, and he still wants to date me.”
“What?”
“I mean, fake-date me.”
“Sure.”
To my surprise, Parker didn’t seem to care about his shirt or the fact that I literally threw up all over both of us. He only cared about me.
While I was dealing with an antibiotic-resistant level of mortification, he was taking me home. Running to CVS to get me Pedialyte. Asking, every fifteen minutes, if I was okay.
“Yes,” I said. “Just dying of embarrassment.”
Imagine my surprise when, the next morning, instead of ghosting me for eternity (which I would have understood), he showed up at my door, with a latte and my favorite pastry, asking if I was doing okay.
“Last night, I told you I would never be able to eat anything again for as long as I live, right before you left,” I reminded him.
“I know,” he said.
He put the pastry on a plate, pushed it toward me. I ate every last crumb.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I have a day planned,” he said. “But if you already have plans, or if you want to rest—”
“Wait,” Penelope says, butting in my story. “He planned a day ?”
“Will you let me finish?”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked Parker.
“Yesterday, when we were racing across the city, it made me think. I’ve lived here for years, on and off, and there’s so much I haven’t experienced. I have a few things on my own New York City bucket list. I’ve planned everything. None of it is expensive,” he said. “Let me surprise you.”
“So, here I am,” I tell Penelope, “talking to my best friend, standing in front of my closet, wondering what to wear.”
“Well, did he give you any hints?”
“He said to dress casually and comfortably. And that we would be outside.”
Penelope takes a second to think. Then she says, “Have you gotten a package lately?”
“It might be with the doorman. Why?”
“I thought I might come to visit you soon, so I mailed a bunch of my clothes over in a box.”
“What?”
“You know I hate checking bags at LAX.”
It’s true. We travel exclusively with carry-ons, unless we can snag a flight out of Burbank.
I would die to have Penelope visit. I haven’t gone this long without seeing her since we met. I go downstairs and collect the box, then open it.
Inside, there are summer clothes galore. I thank Penelope again.
Then I think that I might have to start buying clothes that aren’t exclusively meant to be worn inside, now that I have a reason to.
NOTHING ABOUT PARKER WARREN REALLY SCREAMS NEW YORK Botanical Garden. I stare at the sign in wonder. “This is where you wanted to go?” I say, glancing at him.
He looks back at me. “You love plants,” he says, like it’s obvious.
Oh.
I do love plants.
“Wow, everyone’s doing merch these days,” I joke, as we walk through the garden’s version of a gift shop—an area full of plants available to buy. “Should we get a plant in case there’s paparazzi in the hedges? Nothing says committed relationship more than sharing a gardenia.”
“No, we should get one of these miniature Christmas trees,” he says in mock seriousness. “It’ll show we see this going past the holidays.”
I’m pretty sure the thing he’s standing next to has a technical name that is not, actually, miniature Christmas tree, but it looks enough like one for me to laugh. “The ornaments would have to be so tiny,” I say.
“Or just, like, three regular ones.”
It’s sunny outside, and I’m happy with my choice—okay, basically Penelope’s choice—in clothing: shorts, a tank top, and an unbuttoned cotton button-down shirt. I can stick it in my bag if I get too hot, according to Penelope’s texts. She added fire emojis, so I actually, in retrospect, don’t think she meant the sun.
“They have those in the Amazon,” I say, grinning, pointing at a set of massive water lilies clustered in the center of a pond. “I would love to take a nap on one, wouldn’t you?”
Parker looks amused. “I move around when I sleep. I’d end up in the water.”
“Remind me to get my own water lily, then. I wouldn’t want you dragging me down.”
“Noted.”
We walk down endless paths, framed in trees and flowers. Little signs next to them tell us a little bit about themselves. I keep saying, “Did you know flowers could look like that?” and Parker doesn’t seem annoyed.
No, he seems just as interested. I become momentarily obsessed with a patch of aggressively tall flowers with thin stems leading to a halo of tiny purple flowers. “How do these not fall over?” I marvel.
“Strong core.”
Some flowers have their bulbs closed, like miniature turnips. We see daylilies.
We walk into a massive conservatory. The ceiling and walls are glass. We’re greeted by palm trees, and it feels like a little slice of home. There are ponds. Plants with leaves larger than our heads. Vines that curl down from the ceiling. Bright purple tropical flowers.
The gardens stretch on outside. There’s so much nature, so much variety, colors that I haven’t seen around me in a long time. “I can’t believe this is still the city,” I say.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
We stop in front of a rose garden. It’s sunken below—the wind carries its bright scent.
Moments later, we’re in the center of it. “I didn’t even know roses grew in this color,” I say, staring at a magenta bulb. Roses, it turns out, can be almost any color, almost like diamonds. Butter colored, cherry colored, ballerina pink; some are striped like candy.
He’s wearing a crooked smile as he studies me. “So, I should get you roses.”
I shake my head. “No. I . . . hate getting flowers,” I say, meaning it. “I hate watching them die.”
A memory makes my throat go tight.
No, I much prefer seeing them like this. Alive. Thriving.
I turn around, only to see Parker lowering his phone. I frown at him. “Did you just take a picture of me?”
He nods.
“Why?”
“Why does anyone take pictures? I want to remember this.”
I don’t know what to say, except for “Well, then, at least be in the photo with me.”
A passing older woman stops and asks if we would like her to take one for us.
“Yes, please,” I say, and Parker looks like he would rather die. Still, he stands there while I smile next to him.
The woman frowns and lowers the phone. “You should look happier for someone with such a pretty girlfriend,” she says.
I look up at Parker, who scowls. “Yeah, Parker,” I say. “Try to look like you like me for a second. Who knows where this photo will get picked up?”
He’s glaring as he glances down at me. Slowly, his arm curves around my waist. He’s staring at my lips. I’m staring at his. I’m wishing I didn’t throw up on him the last time he tried to kiss me.
“Perfect!” the woman says, and Parker breaks our stare to get his phone back.
My skin still feels like it’s on too tight as he says, “Next stop?”
I can’t believe he’s planned this day. For someone who admittedly hasn’t had time in years to spend with anyone but his company, he’s doing a good job. “How many are there?”
“Just two more.”
Before we leave, I stop to marvel at the forest behind us. It looks so undisturbed. So unlike the glass, steel, and concrete we’ll eventually go home to.
“It’s the original forest that used to be New York City,” Parker says. “It’s an old-growth forest.”
That sounds almost like a fantasy. I look at the last remnant of the original, untouched forest and feel sad, then relieved that at least a tiny piece of it is still here.
Then . . . I feel a surprising surge of peace. Forests are dead plants feeding new ones. Forests are proof that nothing dies forever.
The Bronx Zoo is nearby. But that’s not where we’re going. “Should I even try to guess?” I say, sitting up in an attempt to see the Uber’s screen. Parker shakes his head.
We drive and drive. We’re still in the Bronx when I see it: Yankee Stadium. I turn to him.
He looks amused. “Has any piece of you ever wanted to go to a baseball game?”
“None. Absolutely zero piece.”
I hate crowds. The idea of sitting outside, on a sticky seat, surrounded by people, watching a game with rules I’m not sure I understand, sounds like my personal hell.
But not right now. Right now, next to Parker, after the day we’ve already had . . . it sounds like something I want to do with him.
“We don’t have to go to the game. We can go to the next stop.”
I shake my head. “No, I want to go.”
We follow the crowds through security, through ticketing, then make our way up different sets of ramps. Our seats are right in the middle, behind home plate. I can tell they’re good seats, but it’s nothing wild, nothing extravagant.
“Is this good?”
“It’s perfect,” I say, and I mean it. Because he listened. I told him how I felt, and it’s clear he heard me. Something in my chest seems to give way as he smiles down at me.
“Wait here, I’ll be right back.” And then he’s gone.
I wait in the seat, furiously googling the rules of baseball while people find their places around me, holding my phone to my ear to hear a video about the different parts of the game, and nearly jump up when something overtakes my vision.
A baseball cap. Parker’s just pulled it down over my head. He’s wearing the same one, his dark hair curling around his ears beneath it, and . . . it’s a far cry from the suits I’m used to seeing him in. I swallow, stuck in my surprise, as he hands me a bucket of popcorn, a hot dog, and a water bottle. He has his own. Finally, I recover enough to say, “You really don’t half-ass anything, do you?”
“Never,” he says, still standing there, watching me.
The sun is blazing down on us. The seat is, yes, as sticky as I imagined it to be. I’m holding a flowerpot-sized popcorn box with a hot dog resting inside it. I’ve just put a fresh coat of foul-smelling and far too pasty sunblock on my cheeks and nose. And, somehow, I’m smiling.
Penelope would never in a million years believe this. Good thing there’s proof.
Parker takes out his phone and takes a picture of me.
Then he sits down.
After the first pitch is thrown, a section of the crowd starts a chant at the players. The players chant back.
“Do you think it’s real grass?” I say, watching the players run across it.
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. All my plant knowledge was left back in the botanical garden.”
Parker surprisingly knows a lot about baseball. He leans over and explains the rules to me. Every time, he gets a little closer. So close that I’m nodding without really listening to what he’s saying. I’m just focused on the way his shoulder is brushing against mine. I get closer too. So close that he eventually just puts his arm around my waist, pulling me to his side.
I look up at him, but he’s watching the game. His hand starts to make small shapes beneath the button-down shirt, against the side of my tank top, and I’m suddenly too aware of my skin. There’s no sunblock for this, no way to temper the heat of his touch, and I try to breathe through the want that curls in my stomach with every scrape of his fingers.
“Hey, aren’t you that guy?” someone says. We look up to see a guy who looks around college age, stopped in the stairs, right next to our seats. “It is you!” he says. “Whoa. Congratulations on everything. Can I get a picture?”
Parker politely declines. The guy seems to take it in stride, though, and asks Parker a few questions.
Parker might not be generous with his likeness, but he is with his time. When their conversation gets a little too long, he stands to talk to the guy a little ways off, so they’re not interrupting anyone’s game. Then he comes back down to me.
To my delight, his arm immediately reaches around my waist again. His fingers resume their roaming.
I look up at him. “Why’d you say no to the photo?”
“I fucking hate taking pictures.”
I nod. I remember the photo of him on the cover of the magazine now, how he was practically scowling at the camera. “Right. So that one of us in the rose garden is already in the trash, right? Already ‘are you sure you want to permanently delete this’ deleted?”
“No” is all he says.
People around us eat buckets of chicken and fries and drink the largest beer cans I’ve ever seen. A man is selling them in a giant cooler, up and down the stairs. Parker gets one, and we split it, passing it back and forth between us. I’ve never had beer before, but it’s good, especially when shared.
“How do you know so much about baseball anyway?” I ask him.
I watch his eyes almost wince, like the question is a scalpel poking at something sensitive.
“It’s okay, you don’t—”
“My dad taught me.” Our eyes lock. “It was one of the only things he liked, so I pretended to like it too. He would take me to games occasionally. Most times, we’d watch them on the couch together. I guess . . . the pretending turned real. I started actually liking the game.”
He seems conflicted about sharing this with me, as if it might erase what he said before, as if it might make his dad sound like a good guy, when he clearly isn’t.
But I know what that’s like. Before my own dad left, I remember going to rent movies with him. My mom might have taken me to the daily summer showings, but my dad introduced me to my favorite film. And it’s complicated, knowing someone I resent planted a seed in me that grew into something that became almost everything.
Relationships are complicated. People are complicated. There’s a gamut from good to bad, I know that.
I don’t think too hard about the fact that Parker took us here, of all places, like he wanted to paint over the bad memories with good ones. The same thing he told me to do with the city.
The game is hours long, but the time passes quickly.
When there’s a home run, we both stand. We grin at each other.
It’s easy, sitting here with him. Putting our popcorn in one bucket so we can rest it between us. Leaning against his shoulder. Looking up at him and discovering that small crinkles appear next to his eyes when he smiles and they make him look boyish, so far removed from the man on the cover above a ridiculous number.
It would be so easy, I think, to fall in love with him. To pretend life is as simple and straightforward as a baseball game in the middle of the summer.
It isn’t, though. This is just pretend. It has an expiration date. And, unlike Parker’s love of baseball, pretend rarely becomes real.
When the game’s over, I find myself grieving something. Maybe those carefree moments, where I didn’t think of my screenplay at all.
Come to think of it . . . today is the only day this summer we’ve done something technically outside of our agreement. This wasn’t for his image. It wasn’t for my movie. It was for us. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
It’s late afternoon by the time we leave Yankee Stadium.
“There’s one more place,” he says, “if you’re up for it.”
With you, I’m up for anything, I want to say, but I don’t. Instead, I just nod.
It’s called Arthur Avenue, in the Bronx’s own Little Italy. Some shop owners tell us, very emphatically, that it is the real Little Italy. Freshly made bread is stacked in the windows, lines across their crusts; fold-out signs advertise different types of cheese. We go into a bakery and leave with pane di casa, or “house bread,” a round variety that we eat from the bag, tearing off pieces. We both look at each other, giving the same expressions from yesterday, no words needing to be spoken.
There are butcher shops, markets with fruits and vegetables, and restaurants with their menus outside, encased in glass. We haven’t eaten anything but the snacks at the game all day, so we head into a place called Enzo’s. There are brick walls, white tablecloths, and homemade pasta that we quickly devour.
For dessert, we walk to Gino’s, another shop that is clearly family owned; you see the family on the walls, in shiny gold frames, with flowers pressed to their portraits. The walls themselves are faded white, there are colorful cookies behind the glass, and a dollar is pressed just behind the register, covered in tape.
We’re told we need to try the cannoli, so we do. We get two, and they’re massive, or maybe I’ve just never had a real one. They’re filled with cream and rolled in chocolate chips on one side, bright green pistachios on the other, then topped with powdered sugar.
It gets everywhere as we eat, all over our fingertips and faces, but we smile at each other, never breaking eye contact, like we’ve quickly developed this rule when trying new things. It’s oddly intimate, seeing his eyes widen, watching his smile grow, as we have these new experiences together.
I mourn the last bite of cannoli, only to find Parker grinning down at me.
“You have some sugar on your nose,” he says, and wipes it off with his thumb. “It’s all over your mouth too.”
Powdered sugar has to dissolve, it doesn’t get wiped away, I want to tell him, but I don’t want to imply anything. Instead, I quickly lick my lips, and that was a bad idea, because now, he’s staring at my mouth.
I’m remembering yesterday, when he was about to kiss me. Look how that ended.
“We should get coffee,” I say quickly, spotting the machine in the corner.
They serve massive cappuccinos in mugs you might find in someone’s home, topped with freshly whipped cream. It’s too late for coffee, probably, but I finish half of it before passing it to Parker to try.
“Sharing your coffee with me,” Parker says, giving the mug back. “Now I’ll never truly believe you hate me.”
My skin prickles, remembering that night in his kitchen, only his T-shirt between our bare chests. You hate me, remember?
I do. I hate you so much.
We walk around some more. We visit a deli that sells a dozen different types of olives, in a variety of colors, and fresh mozzarella.
“You’re right,” Parker says, “everyone has merch these days,” when we pass a shirt that says “No Pasta, No Party?.”
By the time we’re done for the day, and are in the car going home, I feel . . . full. And not just because we went back and got another cannoli before we left. No, some part of me, some part I didn’t quite realize was so empty, has been poured into.
I fall asleep on Parker’s shoulder on the way back, to the rhythm of the shapes he’s tracing down my arm.
“YOU’RE ALWAYS FALLING ASLEEP ON ME,” PARKER SAYS AS HE wakes me up. “I don’t know if I should be offended.”
I laugh, then yawn. “Actually, apparently it’s a good sign if you’re always falling asleep on someone. It means you trust them. It means you feel safe.”
I’m just repeating something I saw online one time, but the way he looks at me, like he’s suddenly honored I was probably drooling on his shoulder for the past forty-five minutes, makes something inside me flip.
“I lied,” he says. “There’s one last thing, if you’re up for it.”
I look around. We’re back in Manhattan. The clock in the car says it’s just past eight. For all we did today, I expected it to be far later.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
We’re dropped off on a corner, not too far away from our building. There are crowds outside, like people are waiting for something. I turn to Parker, frowning.
He points at the street. There’s nothing there except for some cars waiting at the intersection. “Just wait,” he says.
I do. And, a few minutes later, rays of gold begin to fill the place between the buildings, like the sun is trying to squeeze through them.
Of course. Manhattanhenge. Penelope and I caught one of them in college. The sunset is completely aligned with the street grid. It happens only four days a year.
I don’t remember it being so beautiful, but for a few moments, it’s like the city that never sleeps has gone still. Everyone stops, facing the same direction.
The city, I think, can be wondrous.
I don’t realize I’m smiling until I look over at Parker and find he’s watching me. I roll my eyes at him and turn his head toward the sunset. My hand brushes down his arm, and he takes it. I let him.
These minutes feel enclosed, like a moment trapped in a snow globe. It seems like the gold could keep spilling down the block forever. But, just like summers always end, so do sunsets. The city goes dark. We walk home in silence.
Upstairs, we linger outside our doors.
“Next weekend,” he says. “There’s a party. I wasn’t going to go, but I thought it could be fun. With you.”
With you. Those two words make me feel warm, like some of that sunlight has been trapped in my pockets. “What kind of party?”
“The magazine is throwing it to celebrate the cover.” His expression slightly darkens. “It’s at—it’s at the club.”
The same one where we met.
The words sink through me, and suddenly, the empty place, the place he filled, feels hollow again. The warmth withers.
I remember the stairwell. The words he said.
He looks at me, something like hope in his eyes. Part of me wants to crush it. Part of me wants to slam the door in his face, and I wonder if I’ll haunt him the same way he and that night have haunted me for years.
But the other part wants to go, wants to look for proof that he’s not the guy in the stairwell. He’s the guy who took me to the botanical gardens and a Yankee game, and ate cannoli with me, and let me fall asleep on him on more than one occasion.
“I’ll be there,” I say, if only because it will be a reminder that no matter how good today went, this was never meant to last past the summer.