he said, pointing. “But we can go around if you want. We can go back up to Fifty-Third, then cut down—”
“No. Thank you, though,” I said, getting off the bike carefully, avoiding the tailpipe like it was second nature now. I took off my helmet, and Cary cut the engine and stepped off the bike as well. “I can just walk—it’ll probably be faster.”
Cary took the helmet back from me and rested it on the seat. We looked at each other for just a moment, and it was like all the things we weren’t saying were filling up the space between us and making it crackle, like static electricity, the charge you could feel when you got close to it.
“So,” I started. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him—I didn’t want this to end—but I was now also very aware that I needed to get to Tenth Avenue. I hadn’t come this far to arrive at Mr. Campbell’s play late.
“Here,” Cary said. He dug through his messenger bag, and then held out a twenty and a ten to me. “I can’t leave you running around the city with a bill no one will break.”
“That’s really nice of you,” I said, taking a step back. “But you already bought me dinner, and all those snacks.…”
“The snacks might have been with an ulterior motive,” he said. “Maybe I’m just trying to slowly get peanut products off the shelves, where they won’t keep coming after me.” I smiled. “But seriously,” he said, holding out the money to me. “You can pay me back another time. The… next time I see you.” He said this in an offhand way that let me know just how brave he’d been to say it.
After a moment of silent deliberation, I took the money. Because what if people really wouldn’t take this hundred? How was I supposed to buy a train ticket home? “Thank you,” I said, folding the bills and pocketing them. “I will pay you back.”
I looked at him for a moment longer—at his pushed-back hair, his kind face, his collar slightly askew. I smiled, knowing that there wasn’t anything left to do but say goodbye. “Well—it was really nice to meet you, Cary.”
He smiled back at me. “You too, Kat.”
Knowing that if I didn’t leave then, I just might not do it, I gave him a nod and made myself walk away. The light had just turned, so I was able to cross the street with the crowd, and once I’d gotten to the other side, I looked back and saw him, still by his scooter, making sure I made it okay. I lifted my hand in a small wave, and he gave me one back.
I turned around and started walking with purpose down Fifty-First Street, telling myself that it was ridiculous to feel like crying. This was what I’d wanted to do all night—and now I was doing it.
I pulled the hood of my coat up against the wind, which seemed to be picking up. I was trying to concentrate on Mr. Campbell, and the play, and what I should say to him afterward, but my thoughts kept coming back and back, to Cary and his expression when I told him I had to go, the way it had felt with his arms around me, how he’d smiled the tiniest bit before he’d closed his eyes and leaned in to kiss me—
“Kat?” I stopped in my tracks, then spun around, already smiling. Cary would be there like before, out of breath, having run to catch up with me—
But standing there, holding three pizza boxes in his arms, and looking very confused to see me, was Beckett Hughes.
CHAPTER 17
Stevie
Brad!” I screamed as I ran alongside the inexplicable group of rollerbladers. My pulse was pounding in my throat, and though my feet still hurt, they’d just been pushed so far down the priority list at the moment, it was like I was barely aware of them. I turned in a circle, desperately searching for any sign of a tiny, fluffy dog. “Come back here!” I yelled, my voice breaking.
“Yeah?” One of the bladers slowed and did a little hop out of the group onto the grass. “I’m Brad.”
“Not you,” I said as I hurried away. He shrugged and joined the group again. “BRAD!”
“He’s up ahead,” a woman said cheerfully to me as she bladed past.
“Not him,” I said impatiently, picking up my pace. I tried to look across them to the other side of the