Thirteen
Frosted cupcakes, brightly colored macarons, and elaborately decorated cakes fill the bakery window. Charlie waits outside, per Wes’s request—he disappeared into the shop five minutes ago, a sly smile on his face.
A woman and a young girl with black braids approach the shop, the girl bouncing with excitement. Her puffy winter jacket flaps open, and when the woman calls for her to slow down, she only bares a mischievous grin before disappearing inside, a bell chiming to signal her entrance.
Wes exits a moment later, carrying a white box wrapped with pink string.
“Hold this, please.” He passes it to her before guiding her to an empty table on the shop’s small patio. Once they’re seated across from each other, he gestures to the box. “Open it.”
“What is it?”
“Rogers,” he drawls in that voice that makes her feel like she’s standing next to an open flame. “You’ll see if you open it.”
Her mouth waters at the sight of a dozen colorful half-dollar–sized cookies resting on a bed of pink tissue paper. “Macarons?”
“I didn’t know what flavor you liked, so I got a variety,” he says. “This place wins awards every year.”
“Are they all for me?”
“No, they’re for Theo, but I wanted you to look at them.” He laughs at the look she shoots him. “Yes. They’re for us, actually.”
A light breeze drifts through her curls, and she tucks one behind her ear. “Which one should I try first?”
“Let’s play a game,” he says. “We’ll try to guess the flavors.”
She hesitates a moment before she says, “All right.”
“Close your eyes.” He laughs when she frowns. “I should probably be offended by how quick you are to think the worst of me.”
“I do not—”
“Come on.” He leans forward, his eyes glimmering with mirth. “Close your eyes.”
Her insides feels like they’re melting into a puddle on the ground.
She closes her eyes.
“Open your mouth.”
His voice dips, and she has to suppress a shiver. She doesn’t know if he’s doing it deliberately.
Something smooth and round presses against her tongue.
Instinctively, she bites down. When his thumb glides over her bottom lip, her body erupts with fissures of heat, and she has a sudden image of pulling those fingers into her mouth, licking and sucking cream off his fingertips.
She’s light-headed from the sensation, but she tries to focus on the sweet flavor bursting across her taste buds as the macaron practically melts in her mouth.
Her eyes flutter open to find him watching her, his gaze dark and full of something heady, piercing her with another rush of heat.
His lips curve. “Good?”
She swallows. “Pistachio?”
He nods, revealing the other light green half in his palm. When he pops the rest of it into his mouth, her skin flushes at the thought of his lips touching the same place hers were moments ago.
Despite the crisp autumn air, she’s warm, overheating under her jacket.
Wes closes the box of macarons and rises to his feet. “Come along, Rogers. We’re on a tight schedule. Places to be, things to do.”
He slings her backpack over his shoulder before she can grab it off the ground.
“I can take that—”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be silly.” He passes her the macarons instead.
She follows him, glaring at his confident stroll, the long lines of his legs, his broad shoulders.
“You’re so annoying,” she mutters.
He laughs. “I’m aware.”
They pause at a crosswalk. Across the street is a large stone arch and the entrance to a park.
The trees are already half bare, the remaining leaves various shades of red and orange.
People mill about in front of the arch—tourists taking photos, parents chasing children, bikers navigating down the walkway.
The signal changes, and they cross. Wes presses a hand to the small of Charlie’s back, guiding her out of the way of a group of sightseers standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
She jumps at the sudden contact but doesn’t pull away.
She faces straight ahead, the feeling of his hand, warm and reassuring, confusing her.
What is he doing? She’s certain he has better things to do than take her to award-winning bakeries and stroll around New York City, certain he wouldn’t have a problem with her returning to the train station and hanging out in the terminal by herself.
This feels too similar to how things used to be before, when it was easy and natural to spend any extra time with him.
“How far are we from Times Square?” she asks, desperate to occupy her turbulent thoughts with something other than Wesley Quinn’s motivations and the sensation of his hand pressed comfortably against her back.
He gestures vaguely to his left. “It’s quite a ways up there. If we stayed on this street, we’d run into it, but we’re not going to Times Square. We can do the touristy things next time.”
Next time. What the fuck is he talking about, next time?
She files it away as a slip of the tongue and casts it from her mind. “And Central Park?”
“Same direction, but farther.” He grins. “If I knew you’d never been here before, I’d have planned a full itinerary and insisted you take a later train.” He shrugs. “But New York will still be here when you come back, so I’m taking you to a place I know you’ll love and might have trouble leaving.”
She laughs. “Oh? You know me that well?”
“Please.” He smiles, but her chest throbs when she catches a hint of sadness at the edges. “Don’t insult my knowledge of you.”
He drops his hand from her back, and they lapse into silence.
They’ve never spoken about what happened freshman year.
After leaving the party in tears, Charlie spent the entire next week avoiding him, ignoring his texts, and finding new places to study in the library.
She’s not proud of it, knows it was cowardly and immature.
But she was so hurt, and she couldn’t bear the thought of facing him, of telling him the truth, of seeing ridicule—or worse, pity—on his face once he found out she thought there was something between them.
That she thought Wesley Quinn could ever be interested in her.
Eventually, he stopped texting and stopped trying to speak with her after class. That shouldn’t have felt worse, but somehow it did. But she clung to her self-respect, knowing she couldn’t be friends with him when she wanted so much more, and he thought so little of her.
After crossing a few more streets, her gaze snags on a familiar building in the distance, one she’s only ever glimpsed in movies and television shows. A surge of warmth and excitement fills her chest, and she wonders what it would be like to visit in the summer.
“What is this magical place you insist I won’t want to leave?” she asks.
Wes gestures to the store in front of them, bold white letters blaring the name on a bright red awning, the windows full of books.
Whatever he felt earlier has passed. His eyes glitter with excitement, his grin bright and effusive.
“Why don’t you see for yourself?”
She loses him within five minutes. Not because she wants to, but because every bookstore is a magical new land meant for exploration. Whispers float around her, the tendency of book lovers to speak softly while browsing, even though there’s no explicit rule about being quiet.
She loses herself in the smell of paper and ink, running her fingers down spines.
The tranquility she feels amidst books almost makes her forget she’s here with Wes, who broke her heart.
Wes, who says mystifying things that can’t possibly be true.
Wes, whom she’s allowing to get close to her again despite her better judgment.
She feels an urge to share her favorite books, the pages she loves, the words that leave her in tears and wanting more. She’s always thought that there’s a direct path to a person’s soul through the books they love and that sharing them, baring the secrets of your heart, is a sign of trust.
A while later, she rounds a corner and freezes.
Wes’s peacoat is unbuttoned, his blond head dipped over a book.
He’s oblivious to her presence, his long fingers flipping idly through the pages, and she’s thrust back to a time when she watched those fingers dance over a keyboard, dexterously twirl a pen, gesticulate while emphasizing a point.
When she imagined those fingers tracing patterns across her skin.
He closes the book, replaces it on the shelf, and retrieves another. She hears the crack of the spine, and he scans the words, expression soft and contemplative. She remembers how his eyes used to light up when he debated a point, teased her, coaxed a laugh from her lips.
Her heart aches.
When she tries retreating, the floorboards creak, and his head snaps up. Her stomach swoops at his grin, and she flashes a smile without teeth, giving a short wave.
“There you are.” He closes the book.
She edges closer, feeling self-conscious, like he can see her thoughts written on her face.
“Here I am.” She makes a jazz hands motion.
“Thought I’d have to send a search party for you.”
She shoots him a look of mock indignation. “Excuse me, but I believe I found you.”
“So you did.” Neither of them looks away. He gestures to the store. “What do you think?”
She smiles, the ice around her aching heart melting a little more. “I love it.”
His grin is infectious, the dimple she remembers so clearly appearing in his left cheek.
“Need help finding anything?” a male voice asks.
Charlie springs back two steps, pressing a hand to her chest. Wes turns to the employee, unaffected by the interruption, and thanks him.
She directs her focus to the shelves, scanning the section they’re standing in. “American history?”
Wes shrugs and returns the book he was skimming—something about twentieth-century democracy. “Just browsing.”