want to accidentally cause a paradox or something by bringing that back to the ’70s.”
“But what if I need to—” August says automatically. “Oh. Right. Yeah, of course. Obviously not.”
She takes the phone and tucks it into her pocket.
“I also, uh,” Jane says.
She hesitates before tugging her backpack off and shrugging out of her jacket. She hands that over too.
“I want you to have this.”
August stares at her. She’s looking back softly, something pulling at the dimple on the side of her mouth, exactly and nothing at all like she did that morning they met and she held out a scarf.
“I can’t—I can’t take your jacket.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Jane says, “I’m telling you. I want you to have it. And who knows? Maybe I’ll stay, and you can give it right back.”
“Fine,” August says, reaching into her bag. “But you have to take this with you.”
It’s a Polaroid, the one Niko took of them the night of Easter brunch, before August accidentally solved part of the mystery with a kiss. Inside the little square of film, Jane’s screaming with laughter, a wad of cash pinned to her chest and a crown on her head, the constant backdrop of the Q behind her. She has a red lipstick print on the side of her sharp jaw. Under her arm is August, turned away from the chaos, gazing up at Jane’s profile like she’s the only person on the planet. Her lipstick is smudged.
It’s not the only picture she has of her and Jane together, but it is her favorite. If Jane can only have one thing to remember her by, it should be this.
Jane spends a long second looking at it before tucking it into her backpack and shouldering it again.
“Deal,” she says, and August takes the jacket.
She puts it on over her Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes T-shirt, turning under the fluorescents to show it off. It’s surprisingly light on her shoulders. The sleeves are slightly too long.
“Well? How does it look?”
“Ridiculous,” Jane says with a grin. “Awful. Perfect.”
They’ve moved through Brooklyn swiftly, barely anyone at the final few stops.
August glances up at the board. One last stop.
“Hey,” she says. “If you go back.”
Jane nods. “If I do.”
“Will you tell people about me?”
Jane huffs out a laugh. “Are you kidding me? Of course I will.”
August curls her hands up inside the sleeves of Jane’s jacket. “What’ll you tell them?”
When Jane speaks again, her voice has shifted, and August imagines her on a fat ottoman in a smoky apartment in July 1977, a few sweaty girls circled around the floor to listen to her story.
“There was this girl,” she says. “There was this girl. I met her on a train. The first time I saw her, she was covered in coffee and smelled like pancakes, and she was beautiful like a city you always wanted to go to, like how you wait years and years for the right time, and then as soon as you get there, you have to taste everything and touch everything and learn every street by name. I felt like I knew her. She reminded me who I was. She had soft lips and green eyes and a body that wouldn’t quit.” August elbows her, Jane smiles. “Hair like you wouldn’t believe. Stubborn, sharp as a knife. And I never, ever wanted a person to save me until she did.”
Hands shaking, August pulls her phone out. “I didn’t save you. You’re saving yourself.”
Jane nods. “I’ve figured out you can’t do that alone.”
And that, August thinks, as she dials up Myla’s number, has to be true.
“Y’all good to go?” August asks as Myla swears into the line. “We’re almost there.”
“Yeah,” Myla grunts. It sounds like she’s manhandling some machinery. “It was a bitch, but there’s one more lever and it’ll put the line over. Get her in place and I’ll tell you when.”
August turns to Jane as the brakes scream into the station. This is it.
“Ready?”
She courageously wrestles a smile onto her face. “Yeah.”
With one hand on the emergency exit handle and the other wound up in August’s hair, she kisses August long and deep, pulling at it like music, a whole creation of a kiss. Her mouth is soft and warm, and August kisses her back and touches her face to brand its shape into her palm with permanence. Above their heads, the letters announcing the stop flicker on the board.
August can’t help grinning—she’ll miss kisses that break things.