Page 102 of 72 Hours of You

I squeeze my hands together, trying really hard to keep my voice calm. “You don’t understand. We have to go up there.”

“We’ll be back open tomorrow.”

“No!” I yell. “It has to be today. We have to go up there. Now!”

“Listen, miss. That’s not happening.”

“You don’t get it!” I shout.

The stupid asshole behind the counter stands up. “Do I need to call security?”

“Yeah! Fucking call them!”

“Sydney.” Peter tugs on my arm. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not!” I turn around to him. “Nothing is okay. Nothing is ever going to be okay again.”

09:13:24

He puts his arm around me and leads me back out of the building.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry. I just … fuck. I wanted you to be able to go up there. And I had this whole speech and shit.”

“Let me hear it.”

I bite my lip. “No. Now it’s stupid and pointless.”

We walk over to a bench and sit down. “Tell me. We can close our eyes and pretend we’re up there. Oh, don’t give me that look, I’m serious. Just tell me.”

“Fine,” I say, taking a breath. “There’s this thing. In physics. The farther away you are from earth’s gravity, the more time you get.”

“Relativity.”

“Yeah. And you have to go really far up in outer space for it to make a noticeable difference. But even if you can’t really notice it down here, it still exists. Time changes, the higher up you go. The clocks—” I stop, pushing down the urge to cry. “The clocks don’t go in micro-nano-seconds. So I wouldn’t have been able to see the extra time. It isn’t measurable, you know? But it does exist. And I thought maybe, maybe if we were up there and maybe if we tried hard enough, we could’ve felt them.” I put my hands over my face. “It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud.”

He gently takes my hands off my face. “No it doesn’t. It sounds beautiful. You’re beautiful. You know what?” He pulls out his phone. “Let’s take a picture.”

“I haven’t showered in days.”

“I don’t care.”

He opens the camera and we angle ourselves so the Empire State Building is in the background. He doesn’t tell me to smile this time. We just take the picture. The two of us in this one moment.

And I think, maybe Bubbe was right. Maybe these clocks can be magic. Because they gave me Peter. They gave me this second. Right now. With him.

He brings his phone down and looks at the image. “I want the last pictures on my timeline to be of you.” He uploads the photo to Insta—no filters, no editing. The caption: I’m on top of the world with this girl, even when I’m on the ground.

“Peter, you …” I say. Shit. I’m getting choked up again. But I have to say it. I have to say all the words. “You changed my life.”

A small smile starts at the corner of his mouth. “So … does that mean I’m the manic pixie dream girl?”

We both laugh. “Let’s go back to the Plaza, yeah?” he asks, and the relief I feel is massive.

“Yes,” I say. “Let’s go back.”

The entire way back to the hotel I’m on high alert, looking three or four times before we cross the street, constantly searching for any sign of danger.

But we make it back. We make it to the elevator and into our room.