Chapter 18 #2
I take his face in my hands and pull his mouth reluctantly from my collarbone.
“Sometimes words aren’t enough,” I say, hoping he comprehends what I mean.
I don’t need him to say the perfect thing, because I already know.
As he presses his forehead to mine, I think he understands.
I lift my arms as he pulls my shirt over my head, and we spend the rest of the night trying to tell each other how we feel without ever saying anything at all.
On our second full day in New York, West uses my phone to take my photo under the elm trees at the Central Park Literary Walk.
As I scroll through the hundreds of nearly identical pictures, I try to imagine my face on the inside of a book jacket.
I’m smiling so hard I look like I’ve got a secret that I’m bursting to tell, and with the golden-hour sun on my face, you’d never know that I was shivering the whole time.
“How’d I do?” West asks, blowing into his hands to warm them up while I survey his work.
I delete a handful of pictures that really emphasize the vein in my forehead and keep scrolling. “If this writing thing doesn’t work out, you can become my full-time Instagram boyfriend.” I maximize a photo where the breeze has picked my hair up just right and save it in my favorites.
“How long do we have until we meet your agent?” he asks in a tight voice. He’s stuffed his hands in his pockets, and his nose is turning red. We need something warmer if we’re going to survive the rest of the trip.
We have a couple of hours before drinks with Danielle, so we kill two birds with one stone by walking to Times Square and finding a gift shop with cheap hoodies.
West clasps my hand in his as we walk, and while I chatter about the cute shops and my favorite neighborhoods and how if I moved here, I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe, West is quieter than usual.
He doesn’t say more than a few words until we pass a piercing and tattoo shop advertising a flash tattoo event.
“Remember when you got your nose pierced on our first date?” he asks as he draws us to a stop in front of the window.
I touch the ring in my nose as I smile up at him. “You consider that night our first date?”
“Obviously.” West’s eyes darken with the twilight sky. “Do you remember what we did in the library?”
I press my cold hands to my warm cheeks. “I still don’t think you can call that our first date.”
“Why not?”
“Because it took you two and a half years to ask me out again.”
He rolls his eyes. “And whose fault was that?”
“Beth-any’s,” I declare with a grin, unable to stop myself.
West laughs, but then his smile fades as his eyes rove over my face like he’s trying to memorize the pink tint dusting my cheeks.
“Any particular reason you’re thinking about that night?” I prod.
He runs his fingers through his hair with a sigh. “School’s almost over, and, I dunno, I’m upset about all the time that we missed.”
“What are you talking about? We have nothing but time,” I insist, although the future is looming in front of us, wild and heavy, hard to ignore and even harder to see. We don’t talk about the specifics of it.
He drums his fingers on his thigh, looking more nervous than I’ve ever seen him. “Maybe.”
I wonder if he knows that I’m in love with him. We haven’t said it yet, and this moment doesn’t seem like the right time. But I want him to know that I’m all in. I don’t know how to picture a future without West.
“Let’s get tattoos!” I point to the flash designs in the window, my finger landing on a small orange surrounded by flower blossoms. “It’s kismet.” All of campus smelled like orange blossoms on the night of our first kiss, and now I can’t think of anything else when I smell them.
West narrows his eyes. “Aren’t matching tattoos bad luck? What if you break up with me?”
“Please.” It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “If you break up with me, I’m going to have bigger problems than an orange tattoo.”
“Such as?”
“Such as a character known as Fox Caldwell, remember him? I still have at least two books to write, and I need the inspiration, so you’re stuck with me.” I nudge him playfully to distract myself from the painful thought of losing him. “Not to mention I’d be devastated.”
His eyes bore into mine, steady but wary. “Me, too.”
I pull open the door to the tattoo shop, and an hour later we walk out with orange blossoms on our inner forearms. I can’t help but stare at mine as we walk side by side in the dark, and I like how permanent it feels.
West hates Times Square. He doesn’t say it, but he scowls as we shoulder our way through the crowds and moves closer to me, his fingers tightening on my waist every time we nearly collide with other tourists.
“I think most New Yorkers avoid Times Square at all costs,” I shout to be heard over a band of street performers.
I wonder if he picks up the subtext beneath my words: If I lived here—if we lived here—we wouldn’t be tourists anymore.
Over the last forty-eight hours, I’ve been unable to stop myself from imagining a life here.
Every coffee shop we pass could be the one where I write the sequel to my book.
Every train stop could be my stop. It feels like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
“I can see why” is all West says, and my heart dips.
We stop for a selfie and get scammed into tipping five dollars to an unknown character who photobombed us.
Minutes later we come face-to-face with a wall of I NY merch, and West’s scowl deepens as he dons his new beanie and gloves.
“We look like a gift shop threw up on us.”
“We look hilarious. Danielle’s going to laugh.” I glance at my phone, looking for the fastest train to take us to the Lower East Side.
“Are you sure it’s not weird for me to be there?”
“Why would it be weird?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Because I’m not her client.”
“I told her you’re coming, and she said it was fine,” I say, regretting it instantly. “More than fine. She’s excited to meet you!”
“I’m worried I’ll feel out of place,” he confides, which is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid.
“I can hang out here until you’re done.” He gestures to the famous red stairs in the center of the square, and I know instinctively that if he sits here for the rest of the evening, his opinion of the city will have fallen into hell by the time I return.
“I want you there,” I say. He presses his lips together, thinking. “I always want you where I am,” I tell him seriously.
“That might not always be possible,” he says, as if my skin isn’t still sore from my fresh tattoo, as if we didn’t just do something to permanently cement our relationship. He shakes his head like he’s shrugging off a bad thought. “Ignore me. I’m coming. I can’t wait to meet Danielle.”
“West’s a writer, too!” I tell Danielle an hour later as we sit in a booth, an expensive and foreign cocktail in front of me. The dark and bustling bar has an industrial feel. The walls are exposed brick, and pipes and beams are visible where the ceiling should be.
“Barely,” West says quickly before taking a big gulp of his soda.
Danielle is shorter than I expected—barely five feet—with a mane of curly brown hair.
Her size and Southern accent are immediately disarming, and I can see why her other clients refer to her as a “shark in disguise.” She is charming and friendly, and after the past few months of phone calls and emails, we fall into an easy conversation about my book, how excited she is to submit it to publishers, and her recommendations for the best pizza in the city.
West has been polite but uncharacteristically quiet, and he’s resisted all my attempts to pull him into the conversation.
“He’s being modest, but he’s an incredible writer,” I tell Danielle.
“What do you write?” Danielle asks him.
“Nothing worth talking about,” West says quickly.
Under the table, I nudge him with my foot.
He shifts in his seat. “Fiction. Um…literary, I guess.” He grimaces, and I feel a twinge of annoyance.
Writers pay good money for the opportunity to pitch their books in person, and he’s wasting this chance.
I shoot him a curious look before turning back to Danielle. “He blurs the line between fantasy and reality in a really beautiful way that always leaves you guessing what’s real.”
West fixes his eyes on the table, and I remember how uncomfortable he gets talking about his own stuff. Luckily, I’m here and can do it for him.
“His writing inspires mine so much. I can’t even tell you how good he is. He was always the best in our writing classes.”
“Do you have a manuscript?” Danielle asks.
West clears his throat. “I’ve been working on something, yeah. It’s sort of like a coming-of-age thing.”
“I’d love to read it when it’s ready,” Danielle says, and I nearly jump out of my seat in excitement.
He looks stricken by the offer. “Oh. Um, thank you, but no,” he says abruptly. I shoot him a look. Why is he being so rude?
“I mean, it’s not even close to being done. I’m not as fast as Mars,” West adds.
“When you are, it’s a standing offer,” Danielle says. I squeeze his hand under the table. He takes another long drink. Danielle flashes me a hesitant smile, and I force one in return. This is not going at all how I thought it would.
“How are you liking New York?” she asks West, trying again to make friendly conversation.
“I don’t think it’s for me,” he says bluntly.
“It’s not for everyone,” she says diplomatically. “Fortunately, you can be a writer from anywhere. I have a client who lives in Noorvik, Alaska. We’ve sold three books together, but she’s never once stepped foot in New York.”
“Lucky her,” West says flatly.
Danielle raises her eyebrows at me, and my stomach squirms in embarrassment. She excuses herself to use the restroom. When she’s out of earshot, I turn to West.
“What is your problem?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re being rude to Danielle!”