“Cute town,” Jennifer says. “Funny, I can’t imagine you growing up here.”

I follow her gaze around the low skyline and wide streets of Payson. There’s more space here than in New York.

There’s room to breathe.

I nod toward Molly’s Café, tucked down a side street, with the same curling red letters hanging above its door. “That’s where I drank my first espresso. Hated it.”

Jennifer laughs. “What happened? Nowadays I know I better not even talk to you until you’ve had your morning coffee.”

“I guess I found a taste for it eventually.”

My eyes linger on the run-down, cramped café with the cracked curb out front and smeared windows. I smile.

* * *

I sniff the toxic black liquid and reach for the warm milk sitting in a plastic jug on the fold-down table by the counter.

Lily stops me. “You’re meant to drink it black!”

“What? Why?”

“That’s just what you do.”

Holding the chipped white china, I pick out a spot for us at two bar stools by the window, looking out at the street. There’s a barber shop opposite. A large man with at least three chins is having what few hairs he has left on his head trimmed by an elderly barber with a terrific gray mustache.

Lily takes a tiny sip from her cup, pretending she likes the flavor, and leans her head against my shoulder, shutting her eyes, content. “I like it here.”

“There’s a better coffee shop opening up the street, you know. They’ve got lattes and Frappuccinos. Stuff that tastes half decent.”

“I know,” she says, “but it’s not the same. I like it here. It’s understated. I can think in here.”

“Really?”

She sits up and smiles. “Sure.”

Her eyes wander around the other people in Molly’s. They all look down and out—a workman with embedded dirt under his nails, a waitress on her break with a blank stare, an elderly woman sitting alone in a booth. Everything inside Molly’s seems to be in slow motion.

“You go to a chain store, and what do you get? Everybody rushing in and out and pretending they’re a part of something. People come to a place like this because they’re outside all that rush and buzz. They’re out of step with the world.”

I look around at the same people, raise an eyebrow, and grin. “Or they’re broke.”

“Artists are made in places like these. They’ve got soul.”

“They’ve got stains.” I look at a damp patch on the ceiling that’s been steadily spreading for months.

Places like Molly’s have lost their appeal to me since Mom died. It depresses me that she worked in joints like this for years, under damp ceilings, surrounded by the outer circles of society. It feels empty and sorrowful in here.

“You take everything too literally,” Lily tells me. “Sometimes you’ve got to tap into what’s under the surface. Yeah, I like this place.”

I turn to face her, a teasing smile on my face. “Okay, Miss Artiste—and what exactly do you spend your time thinking about when you’re here?”

She smiles and reaches above her head, stretching. Her top rises, and I see the smooth skin of her navel, the ridge of her hip. I remember prom night—the first time we made love.

“I think about all sorts of things,” Lily says, that dreamy smile growing. “Traveling, and what I’ll do when we get back. The next thing I’ll paint. Whether a flower chooses when to blossom, or is surprised when it sees the sun. How many books have ever been written. I make up stories for the people sitting around me: who they are, where they’re from, what they’re struggling with. I think about how I’d capture it in a picture. I allow my mind to do whatever it wants to do.”

I listen, and I both admire and envy her. Lily’s mind is truly free; she lets it wander fearlessly. I have to rein my thoughts in, or else they drift into guilt and then blame, and I grow bitter. “I can see why you like the café. Coffee is another thing.”

She grins. “You’ll learn to like it. Trust me.”

We stay for hours and talk. Nobody asks us to leave; they refill our cups for free. I guess it’s nice that we’re not rushed. We’re allowed to just be.

After a long monologue about all her dreams, she says, “Only a few days left until graduation,” she says. “Then we’re both free.”

I smile, but don’t reply. Inside, I’m panicking. I haven’t told her I’ve been accepted to Columbia. She still doesn’t know I’ve decided to go.

“We can spend the summer planning where we’ll go first.”

I know I won’t stay for the summer. I have a job lined up in New York that will help me save for the first semester. I’m leaving three days after Lily’s graduation.

“Our time has finally come.” Her eyes are filled with fantasies. “Thank you for waiting for me, Ethan. I know these last two years have been hard.”

I’ve been working in a factory and hating every second. Since my own graduation, I’ve grown more and more indifferent to work, and life. Even Lily’s dreams don’t inspire me anymore.

She deserves better than a man who can’t make her dreams come true.

* * *

“It’s beautiful out here,” Jennifer says, tilting her head back to gaze at the peaks of the Mogollon Rim. “Very different from the city.”

“It gets old after a while.”

Jennifer rolls her eyes. “Trust you to take the romanticism out of it.”

“What romanticism? It’s just hills and dust.”

“And New York is rats and Broadway. Sometimes you truly connect with the soul of a place. This place has got something about it.”

“Lily used to say the same thing.”

Shooting me a sideways glance, a knowing smile creeps onto Jennifer’s face. “It’s sweet how much you remember.” She looks around again. We’re almost at Main Street now. “And this is where it all happened, hey? The love affair that brought Ethan Steele out of the Big Apple. I can’t wait to meet this girl.”

“I have to make her forgive me first.”