“Yeah, of course.” I add an awkward laugh, but then I lower my eyes and press my hands into my thighs, rubbing at the aching that’s mostly dissipated now. When we got here, Reid insisted that I stretch my legs out in front of me along the bench’s slats, and then—a stroke of magic—he’d produced a small blister pack of (not stale) ibuprofen from his jacket pocket. My first of the twenty questions had thus almost beenWill you marry me?but instead I’d settled for asking whether he always has pocket-sized pain relief.
“The occasional tension headache,” he’d said as he settled his tall, lean form right up against the bench’s other side, leaving me most of the space. Something had closed off in his face when he’d answered, an echo of thatT-E-N-S-E, so I’d stayed on the sibling stuff he’d introduced with the mention of his sister.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Reid asks, and I guess it’s only fair, but I really preferred when this game of twenty questions was focused on him.
“Uh, no.” It comes out more sharply than I intend. But not having siblings—it’s a sore spot in my family history, nearly as sore as my dad having a decade-long affair with Jennifer, and my mom knowing about it the whole time.
“I always wondered what it’d be like, though,” I add, trying to soften the edge.
“Crowded,” he says flatly. Then he looks over at me, his mouth curving upward, and I think it’s his own way of softening that edge.
“Do you miss them? Living here, I mean?”
“Yes,” he says immediately. He looks back at the signs. “But it’s a relief, sometimes. To live alone.”
“I’ve never lived alone,” I admit, and in my surprise at having said it, I clutch tighter at the muscles of my thighs, kneading up and down. When I look up, I catch Reid watching the movement, and something in my middle warms pleasantly.
But he seems to catch himself, and he raises his eyes, his blue gaze tangling with mine briefly. That warmth spreads out, seems to exist in the space between us.
He clears his throat. “Never?”
I shake my head. “I left my parents’ house to come here. And I’ve lived with Sibby”—I knead more aggressively—“ever since.”
“Sibby is your . . . ?”
I take a deep breath, struck by how quickly the conversation has turned. It’s strange, how sitting here in the quiet with Reid feels similar to walking out there in the loud beside him. A different kind of game, leading to a different kind of unblocking.
But an unblocking all the same.
“She’s my best friend. We grew up together.”
“That must be nice. To have someone here from home. Someone you know so well.” There’s a melancholy note to his voice, and I wonder how much of Reid’s disdain for New York is about this—not having someone from that big, crowded family he misses here with him.
“It has been. But . . . um, she’s moving out soon, into a place with her boyfriend.” I look out toward the park entrance. “To this neighborhood, actually. So I guess I’ll have that living alone experience, at least for a while.”
For a second, all I can think of is the first apartment Sibby had, the one I came to after I left home. It was in Hell’s Kitchen (also an appropriate name for the feeling in my stomach at the time)—one room, longer than it was wide, with Sibby’s compact sofa pushed against the same wall as her twin-size bed. The first few nights, when she could hear me crying, she would only have to reach out from there to grab my hand. In the mornings I’d fold my blankets and we’d sit side by side, eating instant oats Sibby would make in the tiny microwave that sat on top of the mini-fridge. Usually my phone would ring, my mom or dad calling, and Sibby would say, “Want me to answer today?” but she never pressed me, no matter how many times I’d say no.
“You’re not happy about it.” It’s less a question than a statement.
I stop kneading, smooth my palms to a stop on my thighs, pretend to check the chipped, pale-green polish on my nails. “We’ve had some trouble recently. Not a fight or anything, but we’ve grown apart. Or . . . she’s grown apart from me, I guess. I’m not sure she wants to be my friend anymore.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, to anyone. And surprisingly, it’s such arelief. It’s a bit like when I fessed up that I had my period and wanted to stop walking for a while, or like when we walked into this park to sit and my whole body had sagged in anticipation of the comfort.
“I’m sorry,” Reid says, after a few seconds of quiet. “It must be difficult.”
And that—thatacknowledgment—has the same effect as that blister pack of pills, helping to chase the ache away.
“Thanks.” I feel an inconvenient pendulum swing back to the crying feeling. I may be relieved to have said it, but I don’t want to go full catharsis out here in the open air, particularly since Reid probably doesn’t carry a vacuum hose and a bag of chocolate in that jacket.
“You’ve never asked her?” Reid says. “Whether she wants to be your friend anymore?”
When I look up at him, he’s watching me, as though he’s asked the easiest question. As though that would be the easiest question formeto ask of Sibby. As though when you ask people things—the really, really hard things—you don’t have anything to fear from their answer. You don’t have anything to fear from how you’ll react to it.
“Not in so many words,” I say, and it’s terrible, the way my voice cracks. I blink back down at my legs, mortified.
And then, after a long pause, Reid speaks again. “I don’t suppose I know how it is, with a friend like that. That you’ve had for so long, I mean. I had my siblings, but not really—not friends I grew up with, I guess.”
I don’t know how to explain what happens in those few seconds after he finishes speaking, except to say that it’s as if a piece of my heart breaks off and leaves my body. It’s as if that tiny, vulnerable piece beats its way right across the bench and attaches itself to Reid.
