“My flight to London is on the last Monday of January,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Ten o’clock at night. I’m not asking you to choosebetween me and your father. I don’t want it to have to be that way. But you loved me hard enough to make me feel more than enough just like this, who I am, without changing a thing. And I love you hard enough to ask you to finally choose yourself over any of us.”
Alex parts his lips as he exhales. His jaw tenses like it does whenever he’s working through what he wants to say. He comes up with “I love you.”
“Yeah,” I say, laughing a little. “I love you, too.”
We stand there, not looking at each other on the ninety-eighth floor, both of us crying, swirled up in a love that is more than enough and still isn’t even close.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
My last weekend in the city is dedicated to the Fuck It List. It’s like a bucket list, but for things that cost a lot of money, and you’re just kind of feeling likeFuck it.
Tickets and a champagne voucher at the Edge. The Roosevelt Island Tramway—which we hop on, off, and then immediately back on again, because I’m not trying to spend my last days in New York on Roosevelt Island. Dinner at a David Chang restaurant (to this request, Brijesh offers a disgruntled but acquiescent “Fine”).
By Sunday night, we lie flat on our backs on Sasha’s rooftop for six whole freezing minutes. The sky is backlit with golden orbs, a million city lights bleeding together to lighten it a bluish purple. We ooh and aah like lunatics, pretending we can see even one single star. After, we go inside in a heap of giggles and drink hot toddies until we’re plastered.
“Casey,” Sasha says. Her eyes go cross-eyed as she looks at me. “Sorry I was gone so often during college.”
I smile. “Wasn’t that often. And anyway, I never minded whileI walked around naked and listened to niche podcasts on the Bluetooth speaker.”
“And did the dishes. You were a great roommate. Always put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.” She shoots Miguel a dirty look.
“I’m not your roommate,” he retorts. He’s lying flat on his back on her living room carpet. “I’m desperate to live with you, and you won’t let me.”
“We can reevaluate once you learn to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.”
“Thanks for letting me be your friend, Casey,” Brijesh says. “I’ll never forget working up the courage to talk to you in that laptop-training class.”
I giggle. “Thanks for not giving up on me based on how awkward I was during our first three encounters.”
When everyone else is passed out, sprawled in various states of disarray around the living room, Miriam leans over and whispers, “Want to get a tattoo?”
“Bitch,yes.”
Forty-five minutes later, we stumble out of a random tattoo parlor with matching flowers on our left wrists—delicate, thin-lined forget-me-nots, freshly inked, impulsive, perfect. We wander down the sidewalk with no real hurry in our steps, reminiscing about funny memories from all the years of our lives we’ve shared.
“I gotta say,” Miriam says, “I never thought you’d be doing something like this. I’m here for it, but the summer after high school, your big graduation trip? Remember how terrified you were to go out west for a month with Marty and Jerry because you thought you’d be homesick—”
“Okay, but we were sharing one mobile bedroom. My concerns were extensive, and as it turns out, mostly valid—”
“Still, I just really never thought.”
I laugh. “Well, you did this to me.”
“Did I?” Miriam asks.
“Yeah! You brought me to New York. That was all you.”
We settle onto a bench near the edge of Central Park, and Miriam scrutinizes me between kind, serious eyes. “It was good while it lasted, right?”
I nod and lean my head against hers. “Better than good. It’s been the best two and a half years of my life.”
“Yeah. Mine too.”
Which invites the question:If it’s been so good, why would you change a thing?But I think that would be the biggest shame in the world. Not chasing the very feeling that made you so happy to start with.
“You’re going to be okay. Right, Mir?”
“If I say no, will you stay?”
