Chapter 2
I made a graceful exit, by which I mean that I shot through the warren of tables and chairs like a misfired cannonball, colliding with a pair of kids in tie-dye T-shirts and getting tangled in someone’s dog’s leash at the door.
When my green jelly sandals finally touched the sidewalk, the change in temperature hit me like a gale-force wind—like I needed another punch after what had just happened in there. The desperate need to not be there when Milo came out propelled me the rest of the way down the street.
At least I’d gotten my say. I should have felt triumphant about that, but as I walked back to my apartment all I could think of was the glint of Milo’s wedding ring.
Seeing it had felt like suddenly dropping into an old, forgotten well—the dual shock of what you thought was solid ground unexpectedly opening up beneath you, only for your breath to be snatched again when you hit the cold water.
Or maybe it was like becoming a well yourself, one that had once been full and now held no more than a puddle.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought of what it would be like to run into him, even though I’d made a point of avoiding the places he used to frequent.
I’d carved up Manhattan into little Milo-free zones.
And even when I stayed firmly within those boundaries, every once in a while I had moments of feeling my heart squeeze inside my chest as my imagination chased itself over a cliff picturing him coming out of the grocery store I was about to walk into, or hanging out at the Thai restaurant around the corner from my place.
All that effort, only to be blindsided by a metal circle.
I was dripping more than coffee by the time I got back to my shoebox of a studio, conveniently located at the top of five flights of stairs. Leaving my stained dress bunched by the door, I stepped into the shower.
I should just leave the city. It wasn’t like I had anything tying me to New York anymore—not a boyfriend and not a job. I could pretend to write my screenplay from anywhere. Preferably somewhere cheap. Or free, like Yaz’s couch.
The last thing I wanted, though, was to be the source of another fight between Yaz and Amal, who had a lot of opinions about the way I leaned on Yaz for, well, everything.
And now that they were only a few months away from getting married and had purchased a couch—not to mention a condo—together, she had a say on who got to sleep on it.
And honestly, I was also sick of the way I couldn’t seem to get my shit together. Things needed to change. I needed to change.
But how, when it felt like the foundations of me were built on fault lines where everyone else got solid ground?
Sighing, I wrapped myself up in a towel and went to find my rattiest pair of pajamas.
I’d met Milo at the absolute lowest point of my dating life.
I’d been single for a long time—scratch that.
I’d been single always, too flighty to focus on a single hobby, much less one person.
But then I moved to New York, and all of a sudden I was alone in a new city and full of doubts about whether I should have stayed in Miami.
Tía Nena, Yaz’s mom, had just moved to the DR to open her own restaurant, Yaz and Amal had just gotten engaged, and my own mother was on her sixth or seventh year of Eat Pray Love?ing around the world.
I guess it was no surprise that he had slid in so easily, with his promises and his plans and his bow ties and rumpled hair.
And it wasn’t like things had gotten better since him.
Take the date I’d gone on the previous week.
This guy I’d matched with on one of the apps asks me out for coffee, right?
We meet up at this cute cafe, chat about food and travel and all that fun stuff.
He even walks me to the subway to give me a soft, lingering kiss goodbye.
A couple of days later, I try to go onto his profile to thank him for a nice time and maybe talk about a second date…
only to find out that it had vanished. Because he’d unmatched us.
Which, let’s face it, is the most cowardly form of ghosting.
And then for it all to have happened again last night, with a different guy?
I was so tired.
Pretty much everyone I’d ever dated ended up ghosting me. Even my mother hopped on the trend when she barely bothered to wait until my eighteenth birthday to peace out and take to the open roads or whatever. Milo doing it too was only the cherry on top of a shitty sundae.
I’d given finding love a good try and it hadn’t worked out, so it was probably time to move on to another pursuit. One that was less soul-sucking and confidence-destroying.
Like screenwriting!
Snorting at my delusional self, I reached into the laundry pile next to my bed and started rooting through scratchy T-shirts and sweatpants with stretched-out waistbands. It wasn’t like I needed something fancy for another afternoon of pizza and YouTube.
I grabbed the shorts I had discarded earlier and looked down at them for a long moment.
“You know what?” I told the shorts. “Fuck this.”
Flinging them aside, I yanked a fresh dress over my head instead and was halfway down the stairs before I could think twice about it. I was done crying over Milo. It was time to pull out one of my Weapons of Mass Distraction. I was going to the movies.
The way I saw it, I had two choices—I could either stay home and wallow, or I could go sit in front of a gigantic screen and consume enough popcorn and M&M’s to make myself forget there was such a thing as feelings.
I could have trekked all the way downtown for the Alamo Drafthouse, but there was no way I was descending into the bowels of the subway in this weather, so the slightly greasy theater in Times Square would have to do.
I made my way down to 42nd Street at a surprisingly fast clip, considering that the summer air had turned my blood into pancake syrup.
And here’s the thing. As much as I pretended that I had become yet another unimpressed New Yorker, striding up and down the streets of the city like I didn’t even notice all the amazing sights around me, I had to admit to feeling the teensiest bit of awe whenever I saw Times Square.
Yes, it was true, the slow-moving tourists could be annoying.
And I hated being stopped every few minutes by people dressed up like Marvel characters and people trying to sell me tickets to comedy shows.
But this tiny section of the city was a shot of concentrated energy and color, all flashing lights and Broadway marquees reflecting on skyscraper windows and gleaming cars and sidewalks that literally shimmered.
Maybe it was just that Yaz, theater kid in denial that she was, had made me rewatch the pilot episode of the canceled-too-early series Smash so many times that the image of Katherine McPhee bursting out from the subway and into the glory of Times Square while the music swelled was just engraved in my brain. But more than that…
This was the New York City thousands of people dreamed of. The New York City that had lived in my imagination for years, that shiny place full of well-dressed people where things might go awry every once in a while, but where everything always works out.
Even in the daytime, when the lights were no match for the blazing summer sun, there was something magical about Times Square.
I know, I know. It was deeply uncool of me to be so wide-eyed, especially after having been in the city for a couple years.
Especially when it came to movie theaters.
The cool ones were all south of Union Square, where there were small cinemas that were managing to stay in business by playing independent films and the classics.
You know, the stuff of film buffs’ dreams. I was a blockbuster girlie, though, and the Times Square AMC was good enough for me.
I mean, if nothing else, it beat being parked in front of a DVD by my mom as a kid whenever it was her turn to look after Yaz and me.
Maybe that was why I’d been so quick to tell Grace Hong that I was still writing.
After being dumped by Milo and getting fired a couple of months later, I’d needed the kind of comfort that only movies could give me.
Just watching wasn’t enough—I needed to live in them, and pull them apart, and refashion the pieces into something that spoke to me. Or spoke for me.
I swallowed back a groan. I didn’t want to think about Milo, and I didn’t want to think about my failed attempt to write a screenplay, either. I wanted two hours’ worth of oblivion, and a lot of snacks.
But as I skirted a little kid throwing a tantrum in the middle of the sidewalk, I couldn’t help but think that maybe there was a reason why I was finding it so hard to write my romcom.
How could I expect myself to write convincingly about finding love when the one time I had come close to it had been an utter lie?
I used my sleeve again to wipe beads of sweat off my forehead.
Times Square felt like it was more crowded than ever.
I caught snatches of conversations as I trudged to the theater, weaving around groups of tourists standing in the middle of the sidewalk, gazing up at the screens, and at a couple of guys who were dancing in what looked like Disney prince costumes.
None of it registered—at least not until I walked past a couple of blonde girls in denim shorts and matching crop tops.
“OMG, that’s Lady Cerulean,” one of them squealed.
“Where? On a billboard?” her friend asked.
“No! There! Right there!”
“Where?” I blurted out, whipping my head back and forth to look around me.