Sabrina

It’s three in the morning. I’m bleary-eyed. I’ve drunk all my tea. I’ve consumed enough caffeine to power a small planet.

I’m pretty much done with the first draft of my article. This is a dream. This is what I’ve always wanted to write. Something deep and rich that tells a thrilling tale, with ups, downs, conflict, and hope.

As I lean back in the tiny chair at my tinier kitchen table, staring at the laptop screen, satisfaction flows through me. This is a good piece. This is a fair piece.

The next step is to show it to my brother. I don’t have enough distance to know if I’ve done the job. If I’ve been critical enough in my observations.

I email him.

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to apply those finely tuned ethics to my piece. Let me know if I’ve been fair. Let me know if it’s patently obvious I like the guy, or if you can’t tell one iota that I have a massive crush on him.

He must be up late too, because his response is swift.

Mission accepted. I have a test tomorrow, so let me read it later in the day. Also, I knew you had a crush on him. And I’m glad you’re being so introspective and thoughtful about whether you can even do this piece.

I blink. Whether? No, I’m doing it. I’ve done it. It’s done. All I want to know is if I pulled it off, or if it needs more wordsmithing.

But I don’t need to get into those details yet. I send him a thank you.

It’s funny how feedback from my little brother is what I needed. He’s been my benchmark for how to behave for the last several years, and I needed his input after the kiss with Flynn.

My stomach drops with guilt.

But it’s more than a morsel of guilt. It’s snowballed into a too-tall boulder.

I don’t regret kissing Flynn.

How could I? When he kisses me, I feel it in my bones, it radiates to my soul. He kisses me like I’m cherished. Like I matter. Like I could matter for a long, long time.

My regret comes from the work.

From my fear that somehow my feelings for him could hurt the reputation of Up Next. Bob Galloway put his neck on the line for me, and I want to deliver. I don’t want to bring scandal or gossip to his publication.

As my stomach dive-bombs in a nervous loop, a part of me thinks I should tell Mr. Galloway I have feelings for the subject of my piece.

But as I stare at the mail on my table, and the bill for divinity school, I can’t. I can’t risk this assignment, and really, it was only one bone-shatteringly good kiss.

What happened before doesn’t count.

What happened at the costume shop was a mistake, and I can’t let it happen again.

I can’t have both Flynn and the job. Mr. Galloway would ax the piece if he knew I’d been involved with the subject. Editors love to wield their scepters of impartiality and fairness. I get that—it’s the foundation of the field.

That’s why my best bet is to make sure there’s nothing to know. It was one kiss, and it’s over. Nothing more will happen now. Maybe one day in the future, a year down the track, if we’re both still single. But that’s a lot of what-ifs and you can’t plan for what-ifs.

I click on the website for Up Next, hoping that it will remind me of my new dream—to work there full-time. I read a few articles posted online, including a gripping piece on new trends in wearable technology. That could be me next.

Not wearing technology, per se.

But writing a gripping piece for Up Next.

It’s a dream job, and I can’t let one kiss derail my attempts to land it.

When I’m done, I fire off emails to other editors I know, sending in clips, checking on work, and pitching potential stories. If Up Next doesn’t pan out, I need to be prepared. No one writes back yet, since it’s not even dawn, but at four thirty a new email rolls in.

The name makes me tense.

The message makes me tenser.

My stomach dives painfully. I wonder if I can be eaten alive by worry. Maybe it is possible.

I write back, asking when he’s free. That ought to buy me some time. That’s what I need right now. I shove Kermit out of my mind when he doesn’t reply right away.

As the sun begins to rise, I read my article one more time.

I’ll be ready to turn this in once I have Kevin’s feedback, and after I meet Flynn for my final fact-check.

I have to fact-check in person. There is no other reason for me to see him, especially not the memory of that kiss I can’t get out of my mind.

* * *

We are nearly done.

This time he chose another one of my favorite places. We stroll along the Central Park Mall, one of the many beautiful places in this park that’s home to countless beautiful places. The walkway runs through the middle of the green land, with huge beds of flowers south of us and a gorgeous bridge north of us. I can imagine that years ago on this path, carriages filled with glittering men and women, perhaps heading to masquerades, clip-clopped across these stones.

We walk and we talk, as has become our custom, while I check the final details for the piece.

“My T’s are crossed and my I’s are dotted.” I turn off the recorder and a wave of sadness wallops me out of nowhere. Like I’m standing on the shore, and a tsunami clobbers me without warning.

This is the last time I can devise a reason to see him. We might run in the same circles, we might even wind up talking more regularly if the job comes through, but this is the end of the line for us.

For whatever we’ve been.

For Angel and Duke.

For this pretend-not-pretend brief little New York love affair. A lump rises in my throat, and I try mightily to swallow it down. But it lodges there, and I hate that a dumb tear forms in the corner of my eye. I glance toward the trees, towering canopies hanging over the walkway, and blink away the thoughts of how much I want this to continue.

I hate my lot in life right now.

I hate my last newspaper and the fact that it couldn’t survive.

I hate my mother and her inability to take care of the two of us when she was supposed to. I hate that I had to do it before my own time.

What I hate most, though, is that I was assigned a story that invigorated me professionally and shredded my heart personally.

But I’m a big girl. I’ve been through tougher times.

Raising my chin, I suck in the emotion and tell myself I’ll live off the memories of this man and how he made me feel like my life was easy, because being with him is the easiest thing in the world.

He sighs. “So, this is it.”

I smile sadly. “I wish I had something else to fact-check.”

He licks his lips and steps closer to me. “Me too. Maybe next time we could fact-check at the Met. Another one of your favorite places.”

“I feel like we’ve gone to all my favorite places these last several days. What about yours?”

“I have new favorite places now.” He reaches for a lock of my hair, running his finger over the end as it curls.

Something inside me melts. The final piece of ice that encased my heart when Ray left me cracks, splitting down the middle, leaving me raw but also ready for another chance.

No more ice. My heart is open.

It’s telling me to take a chance with him.

I can’t let the heart fool me though.

Life isn’t a fairy tale. The modern-day maiden must be practical above all. I might want to toss responsibility into the breeze like dandelions, then skip and tra-la-la my way home with him, but I have bills.

And, more importantly, bills have me.

But if I keep looking at his handsome face, his square jaw, his gorgeous green eyes, I’ll buckle.

I tear my gaze away from his magnetic eyes, and something catches my attention on a nearby park bench—the plaque on the top slat of wood, shining as if it has been polished today.

I point to it. “What’s that?”

We walk closer and we read it together out loud, our voices forming melody and harmony. “Tony, win, lose, or break even, you always have me. Love, Karen.”

I look at Flynn. We both shrug then smile.

“One more adventure?” I offer, a note of hope in my voice. “We need to know what that means.”

“Clearly.”

We whip out our phones in unison, and we google like it’s a race.

“It’s an inscription,” he says excitedly.

“A wife surprised her husband,” I say, the words piling up in a rush.

“For his sixty-fifth birthday,” he adds.

And we laugh as we each read the details from an article on the many benches in this park. We learn Tony was a retired investment banker. When he came home from work, his wife, Karen, used to ask him if he won, lost, or broke even.

We spend the next hour or two on a treasure hunt around Central Park, searching for more of the four thousand inscribed benches, reading quirky details of the memories and loves and lives carved into plaques in this park, each inscription costing about ten thousand dollars.

“We rarely notice them. We sit on these benches and we read, drink coffee, make phone calls, or maybe we just text or tweet,” I say.

“Maybe we feed the pigeons. Or wait to meet a friend and meanwhile, we’re surrounded by memories of other people and things that were important to them.”

I spot another one with a fantastic inscription and tug his sleeve, pulling him closer to read. “We would make the same mistake all over again! Vic and Nancy Schiller. Still best friends.”

He finds the info. “When they told her they were getting married, her mother said it would be a mistake,” he says, smiling.

“Guess they had the last laugh. Still together and happy. Okay, this is seriously the coolest thing I’ve ever discovered in New York City.”

“I think so too.” He sets his hand on my arm, running his fingers down my bare skin. “I want to keep discovering them. I want to go all over the park and find the best ones. I want to do that with you.”

My heart soars, terrifying me with how much longing is in it, so much I feel like I’m going to burst, to drown in it.

I meet his gaze.

The look in his eyes is different than I’ve seen before. It’s vulnerable and hopeful and perhaps the slightest bit nervous.