“Katie, I...”
This was when she was supposed to sayI love you. This was when she was supposed to wrap her arms around me and sayI’m sorry. But she didn’t. Instead, she stood there and looked at me. It was almost as though she wasn’t sure who I was, what I might become, or how I had survived this.
I threw my arms around her. “You don’t have to love me,” I said. “I forgive you. What happened killed you, and I forgive you. I’m going to be okay.”
She nodded into my shoulder. I held her for only a little while—ten, maybe twenty seconds. And then, when I was ready, I let her go.
88
Tyler
My knees were shaking. My hands were sweating. The traffic on the Long Island Expressway had come to a dead stop—a sea of brake lights beneath a towering New York sky. Engines idled. Horns honked.
Maurice fiddled with the radio. The traffic report blared on.
“Tunnel’s closed,” he said.
“Fuck, okay, wow. What about—what about the Queensboro?”
“Closed,” he said.
“Can we go through Brooklyn? Just go through Brooklyn, please. I have to get to Katie.”
“No can do,” he said. “There’s no way into Manhattan tonight. I’m sorry. It’s all jammed.”
“What?” I stared at my watch. Three minutes after ten. Fuck. “Is everything okay? Did something happen? Did Meredith make this happen? Does she want an even grander gesture? Is she testing me?”
Maurice turned to me then. His mouth, for the first time this summer, quirked just the slightest. “Think it’s just the city, sir. Just your regular Saturday night, that’s all.”
I glanced at him for a second, entirely ready to hound him about his role in this preposterous magic system. And then I remembered Katie was still a river away and yanked the door handle one, two, three times. “Can you—can you just unlock the car? Can you just let me out right here? Now! Please!”
89
Katie
The gala was over. Ingrid and I were on the balcony, taking one last look at the sparkling city while I texted Lola and Juniper to meet us for greasy fries and a full-blown debrief of my last two days at a diner nearby.
Back inside, dishes were being cleared, tablecloths were being shaken out, and easels were being collapsed, folded, and stowed away. My mother hugged a few lingering donors good night as my father sat at a yet-to-be-broken-down table, eyes glazed over.
I was just about to tell my parents goodbye—to get on with my life, to laugh with my friends about things that were not funny, to fall asleep on Juniper’s futon and fill my heart in some new and wonderful way—when the ballroom doors burst open.
“Katie!”
Ingrid gasped.
A glass shattered.
The room blurred.
Tyler McNally was standing there in a perfectly tailored tuxedo, dripping wet, holding a bouquet of bodega flowers. My heart leaped out of my chest.
“Tyler? What are you doing here? Why are you out of breath? Why are you so damp?”
“I’m in love with you!” His eyes were wide, and his face was red.My pulse was so loud I could not feel my feet. “I just ran here from Queens—it’s a whole thing. But Katie, I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since the day you were born. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here tonight. I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here since the very beginning. I should’ve been right by your side whenever you needed me, and all the times you swore you didn’t too. I—”
Heels clicked behind me.
“You need to leave, Tyler. You can’t be here.”
