Chapter 32
As my eyes crack open, a revolving door spits me out onto red-carpeted steps. I lurch forward, nearly tumbling down them.
But before I fall, two hands loop around my waist from behind, like a seat belt from nowhere, saving me.
This person is embracing me now. Big spoon, little spoon. It’s an intimate gesture. One that shoves me into a panicky spiral.
I scan the city square in front of me.
Yellow cabs, lofty buildings, the fountain across the street . . .
I half squeal lamely, like I very well might be in trouble but can’t be sure. My horror is half committed.
A man in uniform jogs toward me from the taxi line. I’m comforted immediately by his white hair, gray mustache, and black double-breasted peacoat lined with gold piping. He’s proper, old-fashioned, a grandfather clock, grabbing the bill of his chauffer’s hat with one of his white-gloved hands.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
Gideon, reads his name tag.
Gideon won’t let me die, I think—Gideon commands armies—just as my balance officially tips and I brace myself for the spill.
This person is still on my back, though, hugging me for dear life like a skydiving instructor.
We tumble forward together.
“Owwwww!” I cry.
Just as I hear the female voice say, “Geez, Sutton! You stopped right in front of me!”
A few feet to our right, Gideon spreads out his limbs in a stance of protection, but his effort does nothing. He probably couldn’t bear our weight, anyway. We land in a tangle on the landing.
At least it’s carpet.
I rub the knees of my tight black jeans, annoyed, before looking over to my assailant.
“Quinn?” I cry at the sight of her, my voice full of pitchy relief. “Quinn!”
She squints at me with curiosity. Her panther-black hair is shorter now, blunt to her collarbone. She looks older to me, in a good way—so chic in a tan belted trench coat and riding boots, even in a heap on the floor.
Her green gaze traces my face, searching my own eyes deeply before hers crackle with realization.
Unlocking.
Click.
She inhales. “Are you—did you just—”
I help her out, nodding. “Yes. It’s the old me! I mean, the new me. But old. The forty-year-old.”
She looks to Gideon, to the cloudy sky, to the street.
“Here. New York. Of all places. You’re really here?” Her voice is breathy, the words clipped. She seems either thrilled or horrified, but no middle ground between.
“Is that a bad thing?” I ask nervously.
She stands up first, offering me a hand. Once I’m up, she embraces me, full-on this time. I return the hug, patting her spine, eyeing Gideon. But he just shrugs and walks back to the street, leaving us to whatever this is.
Quinn keeps her hands on my shoulders. The chill through my own white peacoat—fur collar tickling at my neck—tells me it might be winter. I glance back at the building we came from, and sure enough, a giant Christmas tree flickers through the clear glass.
I meet Quinn’s face again. “Is it December?”
“It sure is.” Her lips curl. “Tomorrow’s my thirtieth birthday.”
“Oh my gosh,” I whisper, clasping her forearms. “What a dream.”
This must be why she’s so excited.
We have never taken this trip before, despite the number of times we’ve discussed it.
Visiting New York in December and doing it all, shameless and merry, hot cocoa toasting our hands.
Every tourist stop, rom-com cliché, and tinselly, Rockette-kicking bell ring of yuletide cheer.
Here in the city that does Christmas better than any other city on earth. Quinn’s birthday is December 13.
I couldn’t have planned this better myself.
“Are we here with anyone else?” I ask, cutting my gaze side to side.
She shakes her head. “Just us two. Alan’s taking me to dinner next week, organized the sitter and everything.” She glows brighter at this announcement, which makes me glow too. She looks happy. “But this—New York, with you—is all I wanted to do.”
The sitter.
I think of Cat. She exists. Relief floods me.
I do a further quick mental rewind to our other life, back to the other December.
For that first version of Quinn’s thirtieth birthday—the one I already lived—we went to dinner with a big group at Javier’s in Crystal Cove.
Fine Mexican fare and the best margaritas in a low-lit tropical ambience.
Las Vegas luxe meets Cabo nightlife. It was a fabulous dinner, but I was hugely pregnant with the twins, pushing thirty-six weeks.
There had been no possibility of a trip back then, at least not with me involved. We’d settled on one fabulous night.
“Wow,” I whisper with another glance at the door, digesting the brushed golds, the glamorous people, the air of holiday royalty. Recognition slides through me; I know this hotel. “Is this—”
“The Plaza?” she finishes lavishly. “Just call us Lost in New York. Four nights in luxury, baby!”
Well, ding, dang, dong. I cup my cheeks like Kevin McCallister in the mirror. I went to New York once, as a kid, for two quick days in summertime, a stop on our way to vacation on the beach in Cape Cod. Walking into the snow globe version has been one of my dreams, forever.
But a nightmarish feeling seizes me then.
I touch my ring finger. Press my flat belly.
I gulp. Quinn’s a mom—and I’m not. Cat but no Max.
No twins. One kid between us, not four. I’m smacked by this truth, but simultaneously even more touched that she made this trip happen.
I appear to be single, alone. I probably need this.
She snatches my hand, pulling me down the steps. She waves a bold hand above the street. “Taxi?”
In less than a minute, Gideon opens the door to our ride. Round and pock-cheeked with thick curly hair, our driver asks for our destination in an accent so strong and local it rivals the Yankees.
“Serendipity 3, please!” replies Quinn.
I palm her thigh. “Stop.” She knows I’m obsessed with the movie. “Seriously? I’ll die.”
“Well, don’t die.” She smothers my hand with hers. “It will be appropriate. Serendipitous.” She pauses. Her tone drops in gravity. “I have a lot to tell you.”
Through an ample skylight, Manhattan sun pours into the second story of Serendipity 3, illuminating disco balls, Tiffany lamps, and eccentric antiques.
In a wonderland all its own, the café combines the kitsch with the cool, the brash with the beautiful.
Perched at our white parlor table, I can’t help but look around for John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale huddled over frozen hot chocolate, bantering about a glove.
It’s all a whimsical fantasy.
I’m the happiest tourist on earth, my chilly shock thawing in the dim glow.
“You sly thing,” I accuse. “Unbelievable.”
Quinn eyes the menu the size of a school-project poster board. “As if we’d fly to New York and not come here. Are you crazy?”
“Among other things,” I respond, eyeing the laminated catalog of desserts and choice comfort foods, all of them over-the-top. “Truffle-parm fries?”
“Peanut butter frozen hot chocolate?”
“We need both. And more.”
“I agree.”
We request the two items, plus the Thai peanut salad.
Quinn falls quiet after we finish ordering.
“Okay, you’re going to have to spill it,” I say. “What’s going on? I mean what else, besides that we’re pulling off the trip of our dreams for your thirtieth birthday?”
She drums her nude nails on the table.
I expect to watch her brows crinkle, but rather, they rise with expectancy. Give a hint of possible joy.
She reaches down into her black leather purse, businesslike, retrieving her iPhone. With a steely expression, she thumbs the screen—swipe, tap, yes—before setting it face down on the table like she’s playing poker.
She lasers me with a gaze. “When you last left me, after Holden, you were . . . unwell.”
My mind skitters back to Coachella. “Well—yeah. That was pretty messed up. The jerk.”
She sighs. “Yeah.” She doesn’t say, I told you so.
You knew and I should’ve listened, I say to her with my eyes.
“I think, though,” she continues, “that the forty-year-old you was ready to handle round two with him. Take it like a champ. See his true colors—again—and then bolt. But your younger self was left with the aftermath. It felt . . . complicated.”
I chew the inside of my cheek.
This part of the game and the process really starts to chap my brain, but I try my best to follow the crazy train.
Okay.
So, I left my twenty-seven-year-old body and soul with that stinging rejection, while I jetted off to Zermatt.
I guess I just figured, whatever, all versions of me would be fine, right?
I remember the broken-heart balloon.
Twenty-eight.
I wince.
“I didn’t think about that,” I admit. “That some version of me . . . would need to go through the healing process. Differently, I guess?”
I’m fascinated by this idea.
Quinn nods. “It was . . . not good. Thank God for your job. It’s saved you. You’re killing it. One of your designs was in Architectural Digest last month. You’re explosive.”
I beam, so proud of Young Me.
Yes!
I pump a fist into the charming atmosphere.
“At home, though”—Quinn tucks a stray hair behind one silver-hooped ear—“you kind of tanked. It’s like . . . something malfunctioned within you. When I say you hit the dating sites hard—I mean you smashed those URLs within every inch of their life.” She pauses. “And yours.”
Well, that didn’t sound very good, did it?
Unwell, as she said, sounded like the correct word.
I squint, giving permission: Go on.
But immediately wish that I didn’t because my chest contorts at the stories.
Boys. Men. More boys. More men. Booze and more boys and more men. Calling and texting Holden to berate him until he—finally, apparently—blocked me.
I gulp, regretful.
Why couldn’t I just be cool?
The anecdotes sit between us.
“Yikes?” I offer.