Chapter 8 #2
I swallowed, and took a faltering step backward.
“Wonder,” I said, and even I didn’t know if I was agreeing with what he’d said or simply echoing his word back at him because I was too full of this wild longing to ever come up with a suitable one of my own.
I turned around, putting the skyline at my back and gazing instead at the leafy dark of Roosevelt Island. “I hadn’t realized that people actually lived here. Can you imagine the commute? Getting to work by tram or ferry?”
Dash said something in reply, but honestly, I barely heard it. I was already moving down the path, eager to leave the disappointment of not kissing him behind.
“Hold on,” Dash called from behind me. “Your shoelace is untied.”
Before I could do much more than glance down and confirm with my own two eyes that yes, that was my shoelace flapping in the grime, he had crouched down and was tugging my foot onto his thigh. More out of reflex than anything, I grabbed his shoulder to keep from stumbling.
He tied my shoelace for me, quickly and without fanfare, without doing anything weird or overly flirty like grazing my bare ankle or running his fingers up my leg.
Honestly, I wasn’t altogether sure whether or not I wanted him to.
I mean, I obviously wanted him to, but I didn’t really need anything testing my resolve.
I had already done the responsible thing once tonight—there was no way I had the strength of will to do it again.
I’m only human, you know?
When he had pulled the knot tight, Dash glanced up at me and offered me a smile. It wasn’t even a hair flip, or one of his patented dazzlers, but I could feel my stomach turning somersaults at the sight of the perfect curve made by his upper lip as it curled.
And ugh.
He had no business being this gorgeous. And sweet.
If you asked me, Dash didn’t need yet another person drooling over him.
Although, from what I’d seen, he was so used to people staring at him that he was kind of oblivious to it.
That didn’t mean, however, that I wanted to make him uncomfortable with my inability to keep my eyes off his plush mouth.
Even if he didn’t notice the staring, I’d still feel like a creep.
So I made myself glance away. And I must have done the right thing, because the universe rewarded me by making my phone buzz with an incoming text from Tía Nena. She didn’t check in as often as Yaz did, but she never let more than a week go by without at least texting.
I opened WhatsApp to see a picture of a bowl filled with my favorite rice and chicken stew. Made asopao and thought about you, Chiquita.
“Look at what my aunt is cooking,” I said as Dash straightened up and resumed walking next to me. I passed him my phone and let out a noisy sigh. “Sometimes I wonder why exactly I thought it would be a good idea to live away from my family and their magnificent cooking skills.”
“Chiquita?” he said, his mouth dancing over the syllables. “What does that mean?”
“It means little. A very original nickname,” I added sarcastically, “due to the fact that I’ve always been shorter than Yaz by like a foot. I’m also technically the youngest, by a little over four months.”
“Chiquita but mighty,” Dash observed, and I had to laugh.
“That’s my superhero name.”
I tucked my phone away as we continued strolling along the path, not talking all that much, just taking in the view.
Roosevelt Island was much longer than I’d thought, and it took a while to get within view of the small stone lighthouse on the northern tip.
There were still quite a few people out and about, though the park itself was closed at that hour.
We spent a few minutes looking at the brass sculptures shaped like gigantic disembodied heads, then Dash happened to glance at the time.
“Shit—the last tram leaves in less than ten minutes,” he said. “We’ll have to make a run for it.”
We took off at what was probably a slow jog for Dash, but for me felt like whatever Olympic category Usain Bolt competes in. Starlight and flair is all well and good, except when you’re suddenly in the need to run the equivalent of twenty city blocks in the sultry air of midsummer.
But then the tramway came into view and Dash put on a burst of speed. And I swear it was mostly because his legs were so much longer than mine that I was terrified of being left behind, but I kinda… slipped my hand into his. Like I’d done when we ran out of Times Square the day we met.
His closed around mine and he didn’t just hold my hand, he threaded his fingers through mine as if to make extra sure that we didn’t get separated.
And he didn’t let go, even when we reached the station.
Suddenly we were walking hand in hand and I was alternating between trying not to hyperventilate and telling myself that this meant nothing. It was just… convenient.
Not to mention, far less annoying than having to camp out on Roosevelt Island overnight.
I can tell you one thing, though—the feel of Dash’s palm pressed against mine, grazing lightly as we walked, our fingers firmly twined together? I was soaring again.
Hear me out. There is such a thing as platonic hand holding. What Dash and I were doing as we switched from the tramway to the subway, though? Yeah, it wasn’t that.
We were doing that thing where we were pretending not to realize that we were still holding hands, even though it was more than obvious that we were both hyperaware of it, especially because we had to kind of edge around people as the crowd inside the subway car ebbed and flowed and we were jostled around.
I wish I had the excuse of having had too much to drink, but it had been a couple of hours since the bar and I was as clear-eyed and sober as I’ve ever been in my life, which was actually kind of unfortunate because the subway is all kinds of harrowing when you’re sober.
“Are you hungry?”
I pounced on the distraction. “Starving. What did you have in mind?”
“Three words—Prince Street Pizza.” He said it like it was a headline, bolded and in a bigger font than the rest of his words.
With my free hand, I checked the time on my phone, then slid it back into the pocket of my shorts. “Would it be open this late?”
“They’re open until three.”
“And you know that, why?” I asked, laughing. “How often are you going downtown after midnight just to grab a slice of pizza?”
“First of all, Prince Street isn’t just pizza.
It’s an experience. And just so you know—someone who has as much caffeine as I do is by necessity a connoisseur of late-night snacks.
” His eyes sparkled as he tilted his head down to look me in the eye, and, um, yeah, I did actually feel my knees quiver. “Is that a yes?”
“I mean, I would never say no to midnight pizza. So yeah, sure, you have my enthusiastic consent.”
He studied my expression. “You have no idea what Prince Street Pizza is, do you?”
“I’m assuming it involves dough and cheese and tomato sauce,” I told him.
“That’s the general concept, yeah. But—you know what, just wait till we get there. I won’t spoil it for you.”
And that was pretty much all I got out of him.
I truly didn’t understand why he was getting all mysterious over it, but then we got there—and by there I mean all the way to Nolita, a good sixty blocks south from where we’d started off—and I saw the line unfurling out from a fairly nondescript storefront and halfway down the street.
“This isn’t some cronut type situation, is it?
” I wrinkled my nose as we attached ourselves to the end of the line.
If it hadn’t been for the turnstile you had to go through to exit the subway, I had a feeling that we would still be holding hands.
The memory of his touch still clung to my fingers, even as I pushed my hair back.
“I like weird combinations as much as the next guy, but I’ll have you know that I’m a pizza purist.”
“Come on, Mariel. Do you really think I’d lead you astray? Especially when it comes to pizza?”
A pink neon sign advertising cupcakes blinked at us from the bakery across the street as I pretended to give Dash the side-eye.
“I don’t know,” I said musingly. “If anyone could lead me down the wrong path, it’d probably be you.”
The corners of Dash’s eyes crinkled. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”
“Maybe a little bit of both?” I suggested, inching forward as the line advanced. “Everyone should strive to be a little bit of a bad influence, at least sometimes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, let me work on influencing your pizza order.”
“He’s right, you know.” This came from one of the people in line in front of us, a brown-skinned woman with a dusting of freckles on her nose, pale green eye shadow on her lids, and fuzzy barrettes speared through her middle-parted hair.
She finished taking a selfie and twisted around to face us.
As she glanced Dash over, her face took on an expression I was starting to recognize—like she couldn’t quite believe that the man in front of her was indeed real and not some cartoon prince.
“Prince Street Pizza defies description. You just have to experience it.”
“Somehow, I’m not reassured,” I answered.
The brunette she was standing with hooked her finger through Barrette’s belt loops and pulled her forward as the line shuffled a few inches closer to the door. “Do you eat meat?”
I nodded.
“Then just wait till you try the pepperoni. It’s a religious experience.”
Someone behind them snorted. “None of you are from here, are you? You have to check out Joe’s Pizza before you go around saying stuff like that.”
Before I could quite figure out what had happened, half the line was bonding over a friendly argument about where to find the city’s best pizza. I was too new to New York to contribute much to the conversation, so I just stood back and basked in the moment.