Something in Reid’s body has changed, too, and I know he’s registered the shock of what he’s said. The mistake he’s made, calling New Yorkhome. After a second he moves away from me, rolling onto his back so we’re side by side on the bed. The small stretch of space between us feels like miles, like the distance we traveled only this morning, or like the distance Reid will travel—wherever he goes—when this summer is over.
But then he reaches for my hand, linking our fingers together.
We stay that way for a long time.
“What my dad said before,” he says finally, and I turn my face to him, gaze at his profile. “That I should have kept trying.”
“Reid,” I say, keeping my voice quiet to match his. “You were so young.”
“I’m not anymore. I think about it, sometimes. Whether I should try again. When all this—when I finish with everything, at my job. I have money saved. I could afford it, to . . . try.”
“Being a teacher?” I say.
He nods.
“I think you’d be a great teacher. You have the best ideas. You—”
“In New York,” he interrupts, and I think my hand might jerk in his, an involuntary squeeze. Never,neverhas Reid said anything even close to this. Never has New York been an option for him beyond this summer. Somehow, the fact that he’s mentioning it now, here—in a home I know he misses—makes it seem so much more significant.
I swallow.
“You hate New York,” I say.
“It’s growing on me.”
It isn’t the most ringing of all endorsements, and he keeps his eyes up on the ceiling, his face set in concentration, as though he’s trying to work out the most difficult problem. As though it’s full of numbers up there, and he’s searching for an impossible solution.
I turn my face up to that blank space, too. I think about walking with Reid in the city. He’s eased up, sure. He still loves the food and I think he’s come to appreciate the signs, too. But I haven’t forgotten the way his jaw clenches in the crowds, his irritation in the city’s loudest, brightest spaces.
“You have to love it,” I say cautiously, not wanting to hope. Not wanting to push, not this time. Not about this. “I think you have to love it to stay.”
I see my words float up to the place where we’re both staring. It wouldn’t be difficult at all, to hide something in them. It’s all there, after all, everything I’m not really saying, everything I’ve been trying not to let myself think.
TheI, thelove, theyou. Thestay.
I feel him turn his head toward me. “I love things about it,” he says.
I take a deep breath and tear my eyes away from the ceiling, from my imaginary letters. I look at him, and I remember what he told me that night in the bar, that he doesn’t always say what he means.
But neither of us says it. Neither of us says what I hope we’re both thinking, what I hope is written on both of our hearts.
“It’s soon,” I say instead.
He nods again. “And I don’t know if I can stay.”
We leave it at that for a while, the suburban quiet all around us, our hands still intertwined. I think I can feel Reid’s mind turning and turning. I think I can feel him tensing up, trying to solve this.
Getting blocked.
“Reid,” I whisper, tugging on his hand. “You want to play a game?”
He looks over at me. He’s got a trace of the sad eyes, but heswoonshesanyway.
“I already beat you twice at gin rummy,” he says.
I scoot down the bed, standing at the foot of it. I pull on his hand and he doesn’t resist. He sits up, and now I’m facing him, looking down at him. I take a step back, pulling my shirt over my head, tossing it on the heap of discarded pajamas. Next, my bra.
Reid’s breath catches as he watches me.
