Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Connor takes me on a guided tour of the neighborhood, which is, I learn, not only where he grew up, but where his mom still lives.
It’s like the whole city springs to life before my eyes.
He points out all the little landmarks of his childhood: the homes of his school friends, the playground where a friend accidentally split his lip open, the dessert restaurant that was the site of his first date.
He doesn’t recommend it. The relationship only survived as long as the ice cream sundaes, he tells me, so in a way, this was also the site of his first dumping.
I need no further urging to look around. I have always loved yard sales, and this one is huge. There’s all the usual junk sellers you’d expect at a flea market, but also lots of vintage clothing too. I hand my coffee over to Connor and get to work.
He trails behind me from stall to stall without complaint, one coffee cup in each hand, amusement writ large.
“You really love this, don’t you?” he asks me, a smile hovering around his mouth.
“I’m addicted,” I admit.
When I first moved to New York I was single and didn’t know anyone, and never had anything to do on weekends. I’d literally spend hours just going to little vintage sales and hunting around the racks. Practically everything I own is second-hand. It’s a very jazzy wardrobe.
Connor, as it turns out, is well-trained in the art of vintage shopping; his mom is also a connoisseur. He spent a lot of his childhood trailing around after her at this very flea market.
“You two would get along great,” he assures me as I sling two denim jackets across his waiting arms.
“I’d like to meet your mom. I bet she has a lot of embarrassing stories about you.”
“Millions,” he agrees.
This flea market is even bigger than I realized. When we finish outside, he points toward the doors and says it extends all the way into the cafeteria too.
Before we get inside, though, someone hails him, and Connor turns.
“Young Mr. Reid. We haven’t seen you in a while,” the man says, standing from behind his stall and reaching out to shake Connor’s hand. He is in his sixties, maybe, with a huge salt-and-pepper mustache.
“I haven’t been here in a while,” Connor admits. “How are you, Mr. Shaw?”
“I’ve got something for you,” the man says, hunting through the stack of records in front of him, eventually brandishing an album with Talking Heads emblazoned across the front.
Really, it’s for his mom; she sold off all her old records years ago, regretted it instantly, and has been painstakingly rebuilding her collection ever since.
Connor agrees this is a find, and the two merrily haggle back and forth until the man cracks a huge smile and says: “Only for my best student.”
“This was one of your teachers?” I ask, as Connor counts the cash out of his wallet.
“One of his favorite teachers,” Mr. Shaw amends. “I taught him science in that room right there,” he says, pointing up to a window in the building behind us.
“Oh my god,” I say, looking around me with renewed interest. “This is your school?”
“It is,” Connor confirms.
The flea market is forgotten. Mr. Shaw is now the most interesting man in the world. I beg him to tell me stories about Connor, peppering him with questions until the tips of Connor’s ears burn bright red.
Mr. Shaw reveals he was not just a science teacher; he was also the supervisor of the chess club. A club that Connor founded. He was also, Mr. Shaw tells me grandly, a very active member of the computer club for several years.
Connor looks ready for the ground to swallow him whole. I have never been happier.
“OK, and that’s enough,” Connor says, turning me away from the stall by the shoulders. I protest immediately—Mr. Shaw was just remembering something about a seventh-grade winter formal.
“Mr. Shaw, it was great to see you, I’ll see you soon,” he says, waving off his former teacher. “Annie, the exit is that way, you’re fired, you know too much.”
I cackle, and move toward the school’s back entrance instead. Two enormous doors have been propped open to let people in and out and I’m determined to keep exploring. Connor follows with a resigned sigh. Secretly, I think he’s also loving it.
“I’ve never played chess,” I muse, as we pass through the doors. “You’re going to have to teach me.”
“Not sure you’d be able to sit still long enough to learn it.”
I am riveted as we make our way down the hallway.
It’s lined with vendors, and most of the school is closed off to visitors, but I can see down a long corridor covered in red lockers.
He walks me right up to the metal shutters, pointing at a bank of red lockers beyond it, and the one that used to be his.
I would kill to slip under the gate and check it out for myself.
The cafeteria is basically like any other, the pillars covered in huge murals proclaiming what I assume must be the school’s stated values: determination, honesty, inspiration, bravery.
“Kind of intense,” I say, pointing at one of the pillars, which simply says dream.
He looks at it, then looks back at me, his mouth quirking.
“Am I going to tell you this?” he muses, as if he’s handing me a classified state secret. “It’s a school for gifted kids.”
I burst out laughing at the revelation. Of course. Of course. This day just gets better and better.
“I’m so surprised,” I tell him. “But also not surprised at all.”
Connor being gifted makes perfect sense to me—he has a certain intensity that reeks strongly of getting his homework done before he’d even consider going out to play with the neighborhood kids. All things considered, he’s turned out to be quite normal.
We do a loop of the room, then head back outside, our time at the flea market at an end. I quiz him on his school days the entire time. A gifted kid and a childhood chess champion. Truly a gold-plated geek. I love it.
We turn and wander up Columbus Avenue, and the area is bustling now. It’s a perfect spring day, and the sidewalk is lined by a farmer’s market. We stop at each stall.
Gradually, it dawns on me that Connor and I are on a date. There’s no other way to describe the events of this morning. We have spent the last two hours flirting our way up and down the Upper West Side.
We stop by a few more of the stalls, then Connor turns to me with a smile and says: “Well, there’s only one thing for it.”
We are now strolling through Central Park, as lovers colleagues do.
“Am I keeping you from anything?” he asks.
“Not really. My plan today was just to get ready for my sister.”
“Oh?”
“She’s coming to visit on Friday for the first time. I want it to be perfect.”
“Define perfect.”
“Just the usual,” I say. “A weekend so fun she leaves convinced to dump her fiancé and move here instead.”
“I think there’s a ‘36 Hours’ guide for that.” He nods. “What are your ideas so far?”
“Not that many, to be honest.”
“Well, what do you usually do on the weekends? What did you do last night?”
“Went to a rave in an abandoned warehouse.”
He pauses. “I was not expecting that.”
I start to tell him I’m not much of a raver, but then I have a flashback of the three of us losing our minds to a remix of Avicii’s “Levels,” me screaming over and over that it’s my favorite song, and think better of it. “Carrie loves house music,” is what I admit to him instead.
“Carrie as in, Carrie human resources manager who you accused me of taking on a lunch date?”
I cut him a look. “Yes.”
“I wouldn’t have taken her for a raver.”
“It comes and goes.”
“OK, so no raves. What else have you got?”
“Um,” I stall, knowing he’s going to make fun of me. “Visit Times Square.”
“I thought you said you wanted to have a fun weekend.”
“Ha ha,” I say, shoving at his arm. “I feel like she’ll want a picture of it for her Instagram.”
“I think we can probably source you some better options. Luckily for you, I was born and bred right here in Manhattan. They rarely let me leave.”
“You said you live in Brooklyn,” I point out.
“They let me leave to sleep,” he concedes.
“Didn’t you tell me you went to college in California?”
“Yes, but if you read my Wikipedia page, you’ll notice I came right back.”
“Why did you?”
“Mostly because I didn’t want to be so far away from my mom. Is this the same sister whose engagement party you were at?”
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
“What’s her fiancé called again?”
It pains me to even speak his name. “Dan.”
“I can tell he’s a good friend of yours,” he says, dryly. “But good news. It’s time for your next cookie.”
Somewhere around cookie number four, Connor implemented a thirty-minute rest period between flavors, so we don’t get too hopped up on sugar. But deep down I wonder if he did it to give us a concrete reason to spend more time together. We still have three flavors to go.
“What sorts of things does your sister like to do?”
“I don’t—I don’t really know. We’re not that close.”
I turn to look at him. He says nothing.
“I’m nervous, I guess. Before I went home last month, we hadn’t spoken in more than two years. Not since their last engagement party, in fact.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“That’s—why?”
“Uhh…” I’ve always stood by my actions at the party. I know it was shitty, but I did what I had to do. But something about saying it out loud to Connor makes me feel uneasy. Like the memory doesn’t sit so well with me anymore. “So, remember how I said my sister’s fiancé was a shithead?”
“Yeah.”
“Well. So.” I rub my temples. I don’t even know where to start. “So, at their first engagement party, I made a toast and called Dan out, in front of everyone, for having sex with someone who was not my sister at town hall.”
Connor chokes on the piece of cookie he’d just popped into his mouth. “Come again?”
I shrug. “He was never going to tell Shannon, and I was pissed off that he was going to get away with it.”
“What did people do?”
“The place went, like, deathly silent. And then Shannon turned to Dan and said, ‘Dan, what is she talking about?’ and everyone just exploded. Shannon stormed off, Dan went after her. My mom flipped out at me. And the party just kind of…dispersed.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Long story short, Shannon was obviously super pissed off at me.”
“Not sure I blame her,” Connor says.
“No, I know. I don’t either, honestly. I didn’t mind being the bad guy because the ends justified the means, you know? But then she and Dan got back together. And she still wouldn’t talk to me.”
Somewhere over the course of my confessional, Connor has slung his arm over the back of the bench.
It’s almost, almost like he’s put his arm around me.
“Anyway,” I say. “So now they’re engaged again and she’s coming to visit, and this is my chance to make her see reason and get my sister back. I have to get it right.”
“Hmm,” Connor says. “And if she marries this guy anyway?”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You might not get any say.”
“If I honestly thought she was happy I’d butt out.”
I definitely would. Maybe I would.
“But Dan is the same as he always was. And I don’t even think she wants to marry him. I just need to show her she can have a different kind of life.”
“That’s a tall order for one weekend,” he says eventually.
I give him a weak smile.
His arm does come around me now, and he pulls me into a reassuring squeeze.
“Well,” he says decisively. “I guess we’ve got work to do.”
I look up at him. “We?”
“What, you think I’m going to leave you to make this itinerary on your own? Your best idea was Times Square.”
“That wasn’t my best idea. That was one idea. I have many more.”
“Really.” I can tell he thinks I’m full of shit. He’s doing his Annie you are full of shit face as he rises from the bench.
“I do,” I insist. “I have a list.”
“Let’s see it, then.”
I should have foreseen this would be his response. “It’s more of a…bucket list, from when I first moved here. Of all the things I wanted to do in the city.”
We’re up and walking again, meandering down the path past dog walkers and people out on their afternoon stroll.
“Now I really need to see it,” he says, swerving to let a toddler zip past on her tiny pink scooter.
“Absolutely not. It’s private.”
“OK, how about this, I’ll guess what’s on it and if I’m right, you have to tell me.”
“Fine.”
“Perfect. Now, what would be on Annie’s bucket list?” he muses.
He stops walking and turns toward me, looking me over carefully while he pretends to think. My tote bag full of cookies hangs from his shoulder.
Not for the first time this morning I wish I’d taken the time to look more presentable, especially since Connor looks, and I am reluctant to admit this even to myself, irresistible. But how could I have imagined this is how my Sunday would pan out?
“Is it written down?”
“Yes. On my phone.”
“Get it out. How many items are on the list?”
I roll my eyes but comply, pulling up my Notes app and scrolling until I find it. “There’s ten.”
“Ten. Wow, OK. Ten.” Again he makes a big show of thinking about it, then starts firing off guesses. “Cycle across the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Incorrect.”
“Smart. It’s steeper than it seems, you know.”
I start walking again. He falls back into step beside me.
“Sit in the audience of The Tonight Show.”
“No.” My list seems lamer and lamer with every good suggestion he makes.
“I’m going to die of curiosity. Please tell me what’s on it.”
I consider denying him but instead meekly pass my phone over, feeling more and more self-conscious as he scrolls down the list.
“Go up the Empire State Building…?” His tone is completely incredulous. “Annie, haven’t you lived here for like, six years?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Your bucket list reads like an alien’s who’s beamed down to earth with a travel guide from the mid-’90s.”
It’s an oddly accurate observation. I do feel like an alien here, sometimes. Wandering around wondering how to make myself a proper New Yorker.
“OK, finally, here we go. Something normal.”
I pinch his elbow. Hard.
“Ow,” he says, holding his arm.
“Which one?”
“Find the best pizza slice in the city,” he says. “A worthy yet impossible goal. Many brave people have tried before you.”
“Connor, I’m surprised at you. Of course it’s possible. It just needs a dashboard.”
He laughs at this, and my stomach does a little flip of satisfaction. Making Connor laugh is one of the best things.
“You’re right, what was I thinking. All we need to do is input the datapoints.”
“Exactly. Ergo, it stays on the list.”
“It stays on the list,” he agrees, smiling at me as he passes my phone back. “But we’re going to need some better options for your sister.”