have buds on them yet? I love buds and those little puff things at the end of pine trees. I always promise myself I’m going to make it into the park before they open up and then I forget and remember in, like, June.”
“The trees are still looking pretty dead from here. But actually…” My god. A freebie. “Actually, I was calling to see if you’d like to get together this weekend. Like for a walk. In the park.”
“Oh! Umm…” It was either deliberation or thinking hard, trying to work out her schedule.
“The buds are gonna be here and gone before you know it. Honest to god, I can see, like, six big leaves just from here.”
She laughed. I loved it—a kind of throaty ha ha.
“I have brunch plans on Saturday, but…after that? Like at three?”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been excited for a date. I got Lexy’s good-luck text as I climbed out of the subway at Eighty-sixth and headed west, motoring around tourists. Edie was standing outside the entrance, pecking at her phone. Prettier than I remembered, another little punch of damn. She smiled and waved and waited awkwardly for me to cross the street as the light lingered on DON’T WALK, and then she pulled me into a hug, all wool to wool and warmth to warmth.
We tromped around the reservoir for an hour, hands in our pockets, smiling at each other as we talked. That aura was there again, that weird magnetic pull. Finally she veered off the circular path and sat on a bench. I sat down next to her and allowed myself an unabashed stare—this time, I vowed, I’d remember those high cheekbones and that heart-shaped mouth.
“I have to tell you something,” she said finally, staring out at the water. A row of ducks was lined up on what must’ve been a beam just under the water. It looked like two dozen birds had arbitrarily formed a straight line.
“Go for it.” I slung my arm over the bench’s back.
“It’s…Okay, it’s weird now because I haven’t told you before. I’m actually—when you and I first met, or ran into each other or whatever, I was just kind of casually starting to see someone, but now we’re…exclusive.” She mumbled the last word, but it still came out sounding heavy. Ex-clooo-sive. No matter how you mean it, it forms pretension in the mouth.
It hit me like a force, like a big wave of energy shot off of her and struck me in the side, but I just nodded and stared out at the reservoir. “Got it,” I said.
“But I really do care about you,” she said urgently, turning to me. “I really hope we can still hang out and talk and everything.”
I nodded slowly and shot her a smile. “Of course.” I withdrew my arm from the back of the bench and fished my phone out of my pocket to check the time. “I should think about heading back, though.”
I really didn’t mean to sound sullen, I didn’t, but neither of us was any good for conversation as we trudged back to the subway. We should have ridden the same line, but I made up some dinner plans so that I could drop her at the stop.
“At least she was honest with you,” Lexy texted back.
“I guess,” I responded.
* * *
The emails with Edie petered out; I can’t remember who finally didn’t write back, which probably means it was me. Spring slipped straight into a hot and muggy summer, and my work started to take on that nihilistic pall. I kept on thinking about Edie, the playful smirk, the warm hug through the coat. I still couldn’t conjure up her image and I kept her in the back of my mind whenever I turned a corner in the city, hoping she’d appear.
Then right at the most merciless blast of summer, when a third of my coworkers had been quietly let go, when my 401(k) had shriveled to a few curls of bills, when it was so hot I just sat and sweated and thought hazy hateful thoughts about nothing and no one in particular, she texted. She wanted to get drinks. And could I meet her at nine.
The week after that is foggy, no clear chronology, just a set of moments, a real-life movie montage. Her lowering her chin and looking up at me through those eyelashes, saying exactly the words I’d been longing for like autumn: “broke up,” “single,” “another round.” Kissing