So where to first?” Dylan rubbed his hands together outside my front door, scanning the street, taking in the little shops and bodegas. After we’d made love that morning, he’d had his bags delivered—they’d been held by his hired driver so he wouldn’t have to drag them around. He was now standing before me, being his most low-key self. For Dylan that meant designer jeans and a T-shirt that may have made him look like a living version of the David, but could not be accurately described as casual.

He gripped my hand and tried to move us towards the black sedan parked outside my door, and a driver emerged. He didn’t get far though—I stood my ground.

“Nope. Sorry, mister. There will be no town cars today.”

He turned questioning, but a look of acceptance crossed his brow. “Right. Well…then let me just get my jumper,” he started, but I pulled him back. His sweater would be the absolutely gorgeous designer cream cable knit I loved so much.

“No, that will be our first stop. If you’re going to date me like a Brooklyn boy, you need to dress like one. This way,” I said, practically giddy, and pulled him towards Union Street. I was wearing a loosely fitting floral dress, a pair of flats, and a denim jacket, with a messenger bag slung across my body. He couldn’t be in one of his I-regularly-talk-to-sheiks outfits.

“Do tell, what does that involve?” he asked, part laughing and part skeptical as he enveloped my body from behind.

“Trust me,” I said, leaning into him and gleefully throwing the words he said to me so frequently right back at him.

We walked the three blocks to the Brooklyn Industries shop, its windows lined with mannequins sporting various Brooklyn T-shirts and hipster garb, and he laughed heartily as we entered the store.

“Lydia.” The pierced blue-haired woman folding T-shirts waved at me as soon as I was inside, and Dylan gave me a side-glance. I used to come into the store weekly when I lived there, and the woman had been working there for years. I caught up with her while Dylan perused, and then I did what I usually did in that store—bounced from table to table and longingly held up cute witty T-shirts and tried on the jackets and bags they had on display. When I looked back at Dylan, whom I hoped would be trying on sweatshirts, he was just staring at me.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, but he was definitely thinking something. I put down the shirt I was holding and went up to him.

“What?” I asked again.

“It’s silly.”

“What?”

“You. I love seeing you here. I love you. Let’s go back to your apartment”—his voice fell to a whisper—“and I’ll do that thing to you—”

I interrupted him with my laughter. “You can’t stand not knowing where we’re going or what we’re doing, can you?”

He shrugged and smiled sheepishly.

“No. This is going to be great,” I said as I reached behind him and grabbed a navy-blue hoodie that said BROOKLYN across it in orange letters. “And I’m getting you this.”

He leaned down to kiss me and tried to grab the sweatshirt out of my hands. “I’ll be buying the sweatshirt, you saucy little thing.”

“Nope,” I said, pulling it back. “Today is my treat.” He reached to try to grab it back, but I walked straight to the register and gave the clerk, who’d been watching us, a help-a-girl-out-and-don’t-let-that-guy-pay look. Meanwhile, Dylan’s body was pressed against my back, his arms trying to reach past me, but I reached behind me and playfully pushed him away with one arm as I handed the clerk my credit card with the other. Finally, he shook his head in defeat.

As we left the store, Dylan looked down at his new sweatshirt while I ripped the tag off the sleeve with my teeth. He stared at me, horrified, and I couldn’t help but laugh and shake my head. This was going to be fun.

“Trust me, babe, if you were one of the guys I dated before you, you’d have been jumping for joy that I was willing to pay for the sweatshirt.” I was still laughing, knowing how frustrated the whole thing would make him, wanting to egg him on.

“Prats,” he muttered under his breath as he took my hand firmly in his own.

Once we were a block away, he stopped in front of an upscale children’s shop. He stood in front of me, put his palm to my chin, and forced my gaze up to his. “Are you really going to fight me on paying for things the whole day?”

“No.”

He sighed satisfactorily. “Good.”

“Because we’re not going to do things that cost money. Or not much anyway.”

He gave me a skeptical raised eyebrow, and I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him.

“You know, you’re just as much trouble as I thought you’d be when I met you in Canada,” he said while he shook his head in mock disapproval.

“I’m as much trouble as you’d hoped I’d be,” I corrected him, and once again I had my fiancé laughing in the middle of the street. “Now come on, fancy boy, I have a park to show you.”

We walked past the brownstones on President Street and headed towards Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park. “See,” I said, pointing to the gas lamps still in use in front of some of the houses, “we have old-fashioned things here in Brooklyn too.”

“I can see that,” he said. “You know, these brownstones are from the Victorian era,” he started, and even though this was my neighborhood, I found myself getting the local architecture tour from Dylan. He waxed on about how he could tell things about the sourcing of the stones, and why people had a parlor level and a ground entrance. I could see his love for architecture written so plainly on him. Stripped away of all of the business and the firm politics, and what was left was his true love for what he did.

We ambled into Grand Army Plaza and stopped in front of my favorite coffee cart, set up every weekday morning for the people running to catch their subway.

“Lydia!” said Charlie, the roaster and owner behind the little cart. “Where has my favorite customer been?”

“Hiya, Charlie,” I said, walking around the side of the cart to give him a hug. “I’ve been in London. I’m just back for a bit. This is my fiancé, Dylan,” I said, introducing the two men. I could see Charlie wince, ever so slightly, as they shook hands. Dylan must have been engaging in the handshake version of a dick-measuring contest. My future husband, the Neanderthal.

“Dylan,” I said in a slightly scolding tone. “Charlie and his wife are old friends and have been making the best coffee in Brooklyn for years.” I couldn’t exactly blame him for his jealous tendencies after the Eric thing, but I knew he caught my tone. His arm loosened around me, very slightly. “Charlie, can we have two of your exquisite lattes, please?”

“You got it, kid,” he said and got to work behind the little single-shot espresso thingy. “I’ve been hoping to see you for a while, you know. I never got to say how sorry we were about your dad.” He looked kind and sincere as he said it, and I nodded. “He was a like a neighborhood institution.”

Dylan and I chatted with Charlie for a few more minutes. When he handed us our coffees, I went to hand him the money, but Dylan grabbed my arm to stop me at the same time that Charlie shook his head. “On the house, kid. Don’t stay away so long, next time, okay?”

“Thanks, Charlie,” I said, depositing my cash into his tip jar.

As we stepped away, Dylan’s grip around my waist tightened again, not out of jealousy, but out of that lunatic-like desire we both apparently had to be touching each other all the time. “Do you know everyone in this town?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Don’t be silly. I just grew up here.”

But I looked up at him, and it was as though I could see him seeing me differently. Like he was realizing I had once been a part of somewhere else.

We walked around the park, and I pointed out my running route, the meadow where Daphne and I used to come on summer afternoons and make up stories about the couples and families we’d see and sometimes try to do the New York Times crossword puzzle, or at least see how far we could get before we started cheating. It reminded me that she was due back that day from Japan, and when I saw her, as I surely would the next day or the one after, it was going to be with Dylan. I looked down at the ring, and had my first giddy oh-my-god-this-is-happening moment of the day.

“There’s a suggested donation,” Dylan said with a frown.

After our leisurely lie-down in Prospect Park, we’d walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. He’d kissed me in the middle and held my hand as we reached Manhattan soil. We meandered through SoHo, and I showed him where the pop-up store would be, and the West Village, where we tried to inconspicuously spy into the magnificent brownstones that lined those precious streets. We watched waves crash against the pilings along the west side, and people watched along the High Line. And eventually we’d made our way onto the subway and up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Suggested being the operative word,” I replied, pulling him past the membership desk.

“But we can afford to pay.” Dylan held his ground, his hands firmly in his pockets.

“Next time, we can pay double. Today is ‘what it would have been like to date Lydia if Dylan weren’t a duke’ day, and on that day we experience New York the way I did before I met you.”

Dylan grimaced and followed me reluctantly past the membership desk.

It was near closing time, and the museum was thinning out. All day we’d been talking. He asked so many questions, it was as though he was retracing my steps, learning my life backwards, exploring every corner of my experiences. But then, in the museum, he was quiet.

I caught him looking at paintings, getting lost in the photos of buildings in the architecture gallery. He was absorbed, but contemplative. So I let him contemplate, and I wandered on my own. I drifted from room to room, pausing when something caught my eye, letting time drift away.

I finally sat down in a tiny back room of the impressionist wing, with only a couple of paintings and one of those long narrow backless benches, waiting for weary visitors like me. I tipped my feet on my heels in front of me, looking at my flats and noting how scuffed up they were. I was alone in the gallery and slid my arms back behind me, locking them in place, tipping my head back, lengthening my body, stretching. This place was eerily empty—most people were probably gone or at one of the more popular exhibits, so I indulged in the private moment. When I opened my eyes and looked ahead, I found myself lost in a painting I hadn’t even noticed at first, a picture of a woman sitting on a window seat. Her features were clear as day, and even though they were painted with broad rough strokes, the concern and care in her expression were unmistakable. Even though there were shades of green and blue used to round out her cheeks, she looked so real, like I was intruding on her private moment.

I found myself wondering what or whom she was looking at, imagining she was in a window at Humboldt Park, that she was looking out into those vast wild spaces from the curated refinement of the grand hall. Maybe that’s what life had been like for Duchesses of Abingdon from the past.

That’s where my mind was when I felt Dylan’s hands on my shoulders from behind. They were firm, steadying, warm, and I sat up straighter for him, relieved to have him back. I was about to rise and turn around to face him, ready to go on to our next destination, when he slid onto the bench behind me, his long legs on either side of mine, my back flush against his front, and he wrapped his arm around my stomach, pulling me against him.

“What are you looking at, damsel?” he whispered in my ear, his chin resting on my shoulder.

“The museum’s about to close,” I said, but he seemed intent on ignoring that fact.

He nudged just a little closer, and my breathing hitched at his touch, his nearness and warmth.

“What do you see?” he asked again when I didn’t answer. My eyes were closed, and I tipped my head back, letting it fall into the crook of his neck as his hand spread across my abdomen, his thumb brushing against the underside of my breast. “Tell me.” His voice was getting firmer, more commanding, and I found myself opening my eyes for him.

“I want to know what she’s looking at,” I said, not believing how soft my voice was.

Dylan’s hands drifted down my body and edged between my thighs. “What do you think she’s looking at?” he whispered, and he gripped my inner thighs and pulled slowly, forcing my legs apart.

“Dylan.” I exhaled the words and resisted, trying to urge my legs back together. I looked up and around the room, worried about others seeing us. The intimacy of the moment spooked me. But I’d been trained to trust him, to believe he’d know when the risk was too great for these kinds of shenanigans.

“You’re breaking character,” I said on a broken exhale. “No Brooklyn boy would have the nerve…” I couldn’t finish the thought. I was too lost to him already.

“Don’t care. Open for me. We’re alone.” He pulled harder, and my legs separated between his. His hands were hidden beneath the light skirt of my dress, and his frame was hunched over mine enough that it would be hard to see, but we were still in a public place, and his soft fingers were still moving dangerously close to my center. My breathing picked up, becoming shallower. I couldn’t escape the sensations, the promises in those skilled fingers. “What do you see?” he asked again.

“I’m her,” I breathed and closed my eyes. Dylan was drawing circles on my inner thigh, and every other second his fingers would brush against the cotton panties I was wearing beneath my dress.

“Did I say you could wear knickers?” he asked, but I could hear him smiling.

“No,” I said, barely able to hear my own word as he slipped a finger beneath the elastic and found me slick for him.

“Tsk tsk.” Dylan slipped his finger inside me, and I gripped his thighs next to my legs, digging my fingernails into his legs. I could hear my shamelessly shallow breaths pick up. “Good girl.” He slowly developed a rhythm, slowly fucking me with one finger, then two. “You are her.”

I moaned quietly, begging, unsure if I wanted him to stop because this was absurd, or keep going so I could come on his hand right there in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“And what are you looking for, sitting at that window, damsel?” He continued his strokes, and I heard myself let a moan go into the cool air-conditioned air. “What do you see? What do you want?”

He hooked his finger inside me, and I gasped as I spoke. “You. I see you. I’m looking for you.”

“That’s right, baby. And I’m looking at you. For you, too. Always.” His strokes went deeper, harder, faster. Oh my god, I was going to come right there, on a bench in a far corner of one of Manhattan’s great institutions.

“I can’t,” I exhaled. “Not here,” I protested.

“You can. Quietly. Nice and quiet for me, baby.” His voice brimmed with confidence in my ability to do this, as though his commanding it would make me capable of coming in his hand without making a sound.

“No,” I whimpered. I couldn’t come in public. I wouldn’t, would I?

“Yes.” He picked up his pace again, and I tried to press my legs together to stop him, to control it, but he wouldn’t let me. It was agony. It was perfection. And then it was there. I clenched around him involuntarily and my mouth flew open, ready to moan, but he clamped his hand over it, allowing my legs to cross over his hand, as though I could stop him at this point. I was utterly gone.

“Shhhh, my sweet girl,” he said between kisses along my shoulder.

Slowly, I came down, back to earth. He released his hold on me, let my legs fall naturally together, let my damp panties fall back into place.

My body was shivering. I wasn’t even sure I could stand in my current state. Dylan must have anticipated my predicament, because as he stood he held out his hand and grabbed my elbow with his other, helping me up. He pulled me into a tight hug, our chests melting into each other. “I hope you know I’m furious with you,” I said, my cheek against his chest. “You can’t just go around making girls come without their permission.”

“A couple weeks away from me, and you’ve become decidedly too independent. Have you forgotten who makes the rules around here?” I could feel him smiling above my head, the smug jerk. I hit him in the chest, and he laughed, making my cheek bounce against his chest. “You can get me back later.”

“I will.”

“I know.”