Chapter 46
Miles
Monday
I’ve told myself that I’m not the same person I was in my teens, and that Ella almost certainly isn’t, either.
But when my eyes shift to hers, I notice she’s still that small-town girl.
She still walks along the edge of the sidewalk, carefully balancing like she used to, like, even in its most mundane parts, the world was still worth playing with.
Ella’s conference today was only in the morning.
We came back from Liberty Island an hour ago.
It was a full afternoon of ferry rides, strolling around the details of Lady Liberty, learning about the history behind it at the Museum, and plenty of cheese and bread sitting in the grassy area all wrapped in many coats.
Now we sit at Central Park in front of the Bethesda Terrace Fountain.
Ella said she wanted us to have dinner somewhere chosen by her, being her last night here, and I accepted it.
“This is one of the New York places where I feel most like I’m inside a New York movie,” she says, watching the water cascade gently into the fountain, observing those who pause to admire it.
Her phone starts ringing and she takes it out of her purse for the first time today. My eyes drift unintentionally and unauthorizedly to its screen — how impolite of me.
“I have to take this. Do you mind?” She turns the screen to me, seamlessly, allowing me to read what I swear I wasn’t trying to read just now, and gets up.
Bill. That’s what it said.
I lean back on the bench and watch her walk as she talks on the phone. I’ve seen her do this plenty of times before at her house, pacing as she talked, walking endlessly without much sense of direction, lost in conversation.
I try to behave, to not be nosy and eavesdrop on her call.
She’s drifting further away. I run my eyes over her and see her smile. It makes me wonder who Bill is in her life. There’s so much I still don’t know. We’ve spent the last two nights and today’s afternoon together, and yet I wish she would say yes if I asked her to stay a little while longer.
The idea of losing her to her evolving, busy, grown-up, accomplished life tightens my chest.
Her call ends and she walks back to me to say something while I stand up.
“I have to tell you—”
“Miles!” A manly voice calls my name, and it takes me one second to know who he is. Asher pops up out of nowhere and hops onto my back, catching me off guard. “Man, it’s like we have a magnet!” he says to me, and smiles delightfully at Ella. “Hi, I’m Asher. The good guitarist and better catch.”
I’ve barely seen Asher these last few days, which is a weird sentence for the two of us.
I’ve spent a lot of time at the studio working on musical compositions for the romance movie, and the other hours of the day touring around with Ella.
And he has spent the week with the two smiley dressed alike humans walking behind him toward us.
“Miles, look at you! We were wondering when we would see you.” Mrs. Potathead, Asher’s mom, offers me a hug.
And I greet them with the same enthusiasm.
They’ve known me for a long time now, and request to see me every time they see Asher (which is every week, ever since they learned how to use Skype).
Mr. and Mrs. Potathead introduce themselves to Ella, who smiles tenderly and starts a conversation with them and Asher about their tourist day and how pretty New York is during the winter.
“See, Asher? It’s so easy to invite a pretty girl out,” Mrs. Potathead tells her son.
“You should have seen him talking to this girl at the Museum of Natural History. He was so nervous that he bumped into a door,” Mr. Potathead adds, while his wife nods along in agreement with the story, and Ella grins.
“Oh, I’m guessing it’s the same girl who made him get distracted and walk into the wrong bathroom at the bar the other day,” I add to the fun.
“Alright alright,” Asher interrupts our laughter and the outburst of new questions from his parents. “We have a dinner reservation, remember?”
We say our goodbyes with the fluidity and ease of people who have known one another for years, parting ways and heading in different directions.
“They’re all so lovely!” Ella says when it’s just us on our path. “And is it true about that girl and Asher?”
“Oh yes, it is,” I answer, and she giggles. “Carly. She works at the Museum. He always embarrasses himself in front of her. The bathroom mistake was the last one, and the guys and I erupted into laughter.”
“Poor Asher!” she exclaims. “You know, that happened to me not long ago.”
“You got distracted talking to a guy in the corridor and went into the men’s bathroom?”
She shakes her head no. “The first time I got up on a stage with an audience of more than 30 people. I was so nervous that I went straight into the men’s toilet before the lecture started. And this is just one example. I have the feeling this has happened to me more times than is acceptable.”
I chuckle. I could perfectly imagine the episode. And then, another memory came to my mind.