“We can see the world, but ...” How can he put his feelings into words?
“We’ve been here over two weeks,” she says. “And when August ends, you’ll be back at school.”
He doesn’t want to think about returning to his premed classes, his lonely one-bedroom apartment, his college town, full of football games and frat guys playing beer pong on their front lawns. He reaches out, but Nelle retracts her hand. The rejection twists his heart.
“I like New York,” he says. “Being here makes me happy.”
Nelle sets her empty cup on the nightstand. “I like it here, too, and we can come back when we’re done.”
James’s face burns. This is what he feared. She wouldn’t love New York, he would love it so much that he would go back on his promise to show her the world. Maybe it’s the same fear that made him stop their kiss, weeks ago. Even though he wanted to kiss her. Even thoughher lips are all he can think about at night, every night, when he finally pulls away from his manuscript.
“Will youeverbe done, though?” he asks, voicing his fear aloud, hoping for reassurance.
Nelle glares at him, which is fair. Silence rings through the apartment until a couple of angry cars honk at each other and normality resumes.
“I’m sorry,” James says. “I’m being selfish, I know. A few more days? That’s all I ask.”
Nelle picks a book off the nightstand and stares at the page. “A few more days.”
“Are you mad?”
She looks up. “I just don’t want you to forget why we took off in the first place.”
He hasn’t. His manuscript has consumed him. He’ll admit that. Since he started it, he has been a lousy friend. Nelle deserves more attention than what he has given her.
The typewriter whispers to him, but James perks up and asks, “How about we explore today?”
Nelle dog-ears her page. “We’ve explored enough here. Write if you’re inspired, James.”
“Tonight, then? Dinner, just me and you.”
“I’m going to ask Jessie if I can go to her studio.”
James lights up. “How long’s it been since you painted?”
“Years.” She shakes her head. “I don’t even know if I remember how—”
The apartment door swings open with a bang, and Jessie enters, rambling about some insanely sexist joke one of her colleagues made. James slides down the hall in his socks. When Jessie doesn’t return from her studio until daylight, she always has a good story to tell.
“I hate that you don’t have a phone anymore,” she says. “I was halfway home, stopping at the takeout place, on my third attempt at calling you, when I remembered youchucked your phone into the ocean. So I hope you don’t have a problem with Charlie’s Kickin’Chicken, chow mein, and egg rolls, because that’s what we’re eating, you primitive idiot.”
“You do realize it’s nine a.m.?” James says.
“And I’m coming off an all-nighter, so for me, this is dinner.” Jessie drops the takeout on the coffee table and storms down the hall.
Nelle creeps into the living room, glancing back at Jessie’s door. “Is she okay?”
“She’s always exploding. When she was in fifth grade, I was in kindergarten, and we had recess at the same time. There was this kid in her grade that started to pick on me, and when Jessie found out, shedestroyedhim.”
Nelle’s brows fly up.
James shrugs. “No one bullied me after that.”
Jessie pokes her head out of her room. “I’m hopping in the shower, but I’m not shaving, so it’ll take five minutes flat! Put on a show for us, and don’t touch the food, or I’ll cut your fingers off.”
She ducks back inside, and James peels open the plastic bag, ready to sneak an egg roll so his growling stomach will shut up.
“Don’t,” Nelle says. “If she cuts my fingers off, I’ll bleed ink, and how will we explain that?”
