Chapter 1
The moon is full and purplish through the gap in Danny’s curtains, which twist in on themselves when a warm breeze ambles by. The clock on the nightstand says it’s just past three, but a haze of humidity still hangs in the air.
It’s the night of Eve and Danny’s first date.
Around midnight, they started saying they ought to get some sleep, but it’s begun to sound less like a real suggestion and more like an inside joke. We should get some sleep. Ha.
They lie in Danny’s bed on top of the sheets.
Boxers, one of his old T-shirts. Their knees are curled toward each other and their foreheads angled together.
Occasionally, an ambulance will blare past the window, and Eve will watch Danny’s face blur in soft crimson light.
It’s the kind of night that just goes and goes.
They could go to sleep, but what could be more important than falling in love with the possible probable love of your life?
Not sleep. Sleep is for people who are still weighing their options.
“Do you remember your graduation?” Eve asks. “When we all went to dinner at that Italian place?”
“Didn’t we all get food poisoning?” Danny says. “I don’t know that we’ve reached the stage where we can talk about food poisoning.”
“Before that! I made up an excuse about the chair hurting my back so Julian would switch with me. I wanted to sit next to you.”
“Really?”
“Of course, really.”
“And then we spent the whole time talking about what you would include in a city on Mars,” Danny says.
“You remember that?”
“I’m pretty sure we named our city Marzipan. It had a lot of parks.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Of course I remember that. This was around the time it occurred to me that you were very pretty.”
“Am I pleased you noticed or annoyed it took you so long?”
“You were sixteen when we first met,” Danny says. “I think I was right on time.”
“You should’ve asked me out,” Eve says.
“You know, I think I was going to? But then. Food poisoning.”
“I can’t believe we were kept apart by something so undignified,” Eve says.
“Not kept apart,” Danny says. “Merely delayed. Do you remember Julian’s twenty-sixth birthday?”
“We went to Maine.”
“Yeah. All the Our Parents Are Friends gang, and then me wandering around hoping no one noticed I had never once owned a house in the Hamptons.”
“I remember making pancakes with you when everyone else was still sleeping off their hangovers,” Eve says. “And you kept insisting this pancake you made was in the exact shape of a goose.”
“It was in the exact shape of a goose,” Danny says.
“It was not. And also may imply some room for growth on your pancake technique.”
“I almost broke up with Kyra after that trip,” Danny says.
“Really? Why?”
“Because you looked at the goose.”
“It wasn’t a goose.”
“I said the pancake looked like a goose. And you put down whatever you were doing and stood next to me and said, ‘Danny, I don’t think you know what geese look like.’ ”
“And that won you over?”
“You were just so there,” Danny says. “You made me feel so there.”
“I was dating Fletcher, though.”
“Oh, I know. It never occurred to me that you and I would start dating. I just thought—if someone like Eve is out there, maybe there are other Eves out there. Maybe I’m settling for something that’s not really that happy.”
“But you didn’t break up with Kyra.”
“No. But then, when she broke up with me, I thought about that, the goose, and I thought, maybe it’s for the best, if I end up with someone more like Eve.”
“You didn’t.”
“I most certainly did.”
Eve never took improv, but Shannon was part of a college troupe, and she would sometimes make Eve practice with her.
They played yes, and endlessly, but there was little difference between yes, and and their normal conversations.
When Eve talked to Shannon, it felt less like finding the next thing to say and more like stepping into a river of things to say.
The things came whether or not Eve asked them to.
They were always just there. That has become Eve’s litmus test of whether a person is someone she will love—a sort of thereness.
A sort of flow state—like writing a song.
And then? And then? And then? That’s how it feels with Danny, and she tells him so, and he says (of course he does) that he understands completely.
“Exactly,” he says. “It feels like creativity. But instead of making art or an app or something, you’re making the relationship.”
“I like that,” Eve says. “Like, there are three parts. There’s the first part, which is me, and the second part, which is you, and the third part, which is, you know, this.”
“Right. And sometimes, something might be wrong with you, or something might be wrong with me, or something might be wrong with the third part.”
“Can I just say that we’re doing a really excellent job of talking about what we consider key values in a relationship without daring to suggest that we might end up in a relationship?”
“Thank you,” Danny says. “I’ve been choosing my words with the utmost care.”
“Gotta keep me on my toes.”
“Not too on your toes. Could be bad for the arches. You know, long term.”
“Oh,” Eve says, “so you think this’ll be a long-term thing, do you?”
“If I say, I’ll scare you.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“It’s 4:00 a.m.,” Danny says.
“We should get some sleep?”
“Maybe,” Danny says. “But I get the feeling I’ve been waiting for this to start for a really long time.”