Chapter Sixty-One
Sixty-One
I BOLT UP, MY HEART HAMMERING in my chest. “PETER!” His name comes out in a scream.
“I’m here. I’m here. It’s okay.”
Peter is next to me in the bed. Holding me.
14:22:22
Oh my god we fell asleep.
Tears burn my eyes. Stupid. Fucking stupid. I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep. I wasn’t supposed to waste all that time.
“It’s all right. We had to sleep. It’s okay.”
“No it’s not,” I say. He’s already sitting up. “Were you awake before me?”
“A little.”
“You let me sleep? Fuck, why didn’t you wake me up? This is your time. This is …” I’m such a bitch. It’s after six a.m. It’s already tomorrow. I get the urge to grab a lamp and throw it across the room.
“It’s okay, really,” Peter says. “We had to sleep.”
I throw the covers off me. “What should we do? What should we do?”
Peter takes my hand. “Sydney.”
And then I start crying.
Peter brushes my hair back. “It’s okay.”
I pull him into me, holding on. Fourteen hours. Fourteen hours with Peter. That’s all I have left. It’s nothing.
“You know what?” Peter says. “Why don’t we get out of here?”
“Leave the hotel?” Suddenly the idea sounds terrifying. Right now we’re in this little world of our own, but out there … who knows what’s out there? What if something happens? What if I get on a train and the doors close, and he doesn’t make it, and we’re apart and we can’t get back to each other?
“Come on,” Peter says. “Let’s go do something.”
Everything in me is screaming No no no no. But I have to say yes, so I do. “Where do you want to go?”
“Out to breakfast?” He laughs. “Just kidding. I might not ever eat again after yesterday. Literally.”
“Not funny,” I say.
“Kind of funny.”
We get up and brush our teeth together. The bathroom has two sinks but we use the same one, our elbows bumping and neither of us caring.
And then we walk out of the hotel room. Stepping out the door feels wrong.
It feels like that hotel room is the only safe place in the world, and we’re leaving it.
Our little bubble. I almost tell him no and drag him back into the room, back into our cozy nest. But he smiles down at me while we wait for the elevator, and so I smile back up at him and pretend like every part of my body isn’t screaming in fear.
We take the elevator down and step out onto the already busy New York streets, the morning sun stinging my eyes after all those hours inside.
“Where to now?”
“Wherever.”
We walk to Central Park and people-watch for a while, Peter making up nice stories about their lives, me guessing at their worst secrets.
10:25:49
“I want to take you somewhere,” I say.
“Where?”
“Just … come on.”
We walk for a bit, letting the faster people pass us. We’re not in a hurry. Or maybe we are. I don’t know anymore.
We stop. “Okay, you probably haven’t heard of this building. It’s very under the radar.”
Peter laughs and looks up at the Empire State Building. “Wow, yeah. Never heard of this one. What’s it called?”
“No one knows,” I say. “It’s a big mystery. They think maybe aliens built it. Like the pyramids.”
“I’m pretty sure the pyramids were built from enslaved people’s labor.”
“Shhh,” I say.
“The Starrett Corporation built the Empire State Building,” he whispers.
“God, you really can’t help yourself, can you?”
“No, I really can’t,” he says, leaning down to kiss me.
I breathe him in, trying to hold on to that feeling for as many seconds as I can.
“Have you ever been to the top?” I ask.
“Actually, no,” he says.
“I thought we could go up to the observation deck. I thought maybe you’d like to see the city from up there.”
“That sounds great,” he says, squeezing my hand.
We walk inside and go up to the counter. “Can we have two tickets to the observation deck?”
A middle-aged white guy looks up from his copy of the Times. “Sorry,” he says, “we’re closed for maintenance today.”
No fucking way.
This cannot be happening.
I squeeze my hands together, trying really hard to keep my voice calm. “You don’t understand. We have to go up there.”
“We’ll be back open tomorrow.”
“No!” I yell. “It has to be today. We have to go up there. Now!”
“Listen, miss. That’s not happening.”
“You don’t get it!” I shout.
The stupid asshole behind the counter stands up. “Do I need to call security?”
“Yeah! Fucking call them!”
“Sydney.” Peter tugs on my arm. “It’s okay.”
“No it’s not!” I turn around to him. “Nothing is okay. Nothing is ever going to be okay again.”
09:13:24
He puts his arm around me and leads me back out of the building.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry. I just … fuck. I wanted you to be able to go up there. And I had this whole speech and shit.”
“Let me hear it.”
I bite my lip. “No. Now it’s stupid and pointless.”
We walk over to a bench and sit down. “Tell me. We can close our eyes and pretend we’re up there. Oh, don’t give me that look, I’m serious. Just tell me.”
“Fine,” I say, taking a breath. “There’s this thing. In physics. The farther away you are from earth’s gravity, the more time you get.”
“Relativity.”
“Yeah. And you have to go really far up in outer space for it to make a noticeable difference. But even if you can’t really notice it down here, it still exists.
Time changes, the higher up you go. The clocks—” I stop, pushing down the urge to cry.
“The clocks don’t go in micro-nano-seconds.
So I wouldn’t have been able to see the extra time.
It isn’t measurable, you know? But it does exist. And I thought maybe, maybe if we were up there and maybe if we tried hard enough, we could’ve felt them.
” I put my hands over my face. “It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud.”
He gently takes my hands off my face. “No it doesn’t. It sounds beautiful. You’re beautiful. You know what?” He pulls out his phone. “Let’s take a picture.”
“I haven’t showered in days.”
“I don’t care.”
He opens the camera and we angle ourselves so the Empire State Building is in the background. He doesn’t tell me to smile this time. We just take the picture. The two of us in this one moment.
And I think, maybe Bubbe was right. Maybe these clocks can be magic. Because they gave me Peter. They gave me this second. Right now. With him.
He brings his phone down and looks at the image. “I want the last pictures on my timeline to be of you.” He uploads the photo to Insta—no filters, no editing. The caption: I’m on top of the world with this girl, even when I’m on the ground.
“Peter, you …” I say. Shit. I’m getting choked up again. But I have to say it. I have to say all the words. “You changed my life.”
A small smile starts at the corner of his mouth. “So … does that mean I’m the manic pixie dream girl?”
We both laugh. “Let’s go back to the Plaza, yeah?” he asks, and the relief I feel is massive.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s go back.”
The entire way back to the hotel I’m on high alert, looking three or four times before we cross the street, constantly searching for any sign of danger.
But we make it back. We make it to the elevator and into our room.