Page 35 of 72 Hours of You

My heart slows down, but it’s beating hard, each punch into my rib cage an attempt to rip through the thin layer of skin holding it in my body.

I turn my head in slow motion to where Charles is standing.

Except … it’s not him.

It’s just some fucking guy. My hands shake under the table, relief vibrating through my fingertips. I feel like laughing. And crying. And maybe shitting my pants a little.

Because thank god it’s not him, but also what the hell is wrong with me? Hallucinating in a pizza parlor? Maybe I am actually as unhinged as I seem.

“Sydney, you sure you’re good?”

I nod. “I am so totally fine.” Who talks like that? I smile in an attempt to seem like I have my shit slightly together, but I can feel my grin straining as if I’m a Miss America contestant from Ohio who just got asked how she’d solve the climate crisis.

Peter’s eyes flick from me to Zia’s electric-blue fingernails still resting lightly on his bicep. He smiles up at her. “I think we’ll just take the check. Thanks, Zia.”

Zia lets out a tiny sigh and pauses for a beat, like she’s considering saying something like Ditch the sad high school girl with hollow eyes and run away to the tattoo parlor with me. But instead she just says, “Sure thing,” slides the check face down on the table, and heads back to the kitchen.

I watch her grab two waters and bring them to the table with Not Charles. He doesn’t even really look like him. Aside from the obscenely expensive watch. And the blue eyes. And—shit. I have to get him out of my head. Zia sets two straws down on Not Charles’s table and I try to shake it off and turn back to Peter. I try to be a normal person instead of an alien in a human skin suit. “Well, this pizza was—”

“I’m not interested in her.”

Christ, that’s what he thinks my micro–panic attack was about? “Oh my god, Peter, I don’t give a—”

“I’m not saying you do. I’m just saying … Well, I’m just saying I’m not interested.” Peter keeps looking at me, his eyes open and calm. Like, Jesus, look away awkwardly like a normal person.

“Good to know,” I say, doing the dirty work and looking away awkwardly for him.

“Let’s get out of here.” Peter throws some cash on the table and slides out of his seat before I can pull out a card and engage in some weird payment dance, which, thank god, because I could not physically survive any more awkwardness.

I slip out of my side of the booth and follow him through the tables toward the bathroom tunnel. We walk past Not Charles and an uncontrolled jolt of panic shoots through my chest (even though I know it’s not him), and when it does, I get the weirdest urge to reach out and grab Peter’s arm. And just … hold on. It’s the kind of disgusting desperate yearning that belongs in Jules’s head. Not mine.

I knew I shouldn’t have come into the city. Nothing good ever happens here. My brain is getting all scrambled and weak. I just need to emerge on the other side of this brick bathroom tunnel—which felt cool and cozy when we came in and now just feels claustrophobic—and get outside. And then I can figure out how to tell Peter that I can’t be here anymore.

Except, when we make it outside, a fall breeze blows through Peter’s waves and he smiles at me and says, “I’ll go anywhere you want.”

And his smile is so open and relaxed that for a second I think, Okay, maybe I can do this. Maybe I just have to keep going. Maybe for one afternoon I could be someone besides the girl who’s subscribed to the Grim Reaper’s status updates.

“Dylan’s,” I say. “I want to go to Dylan’s.”

“What’s that?” He pulls out his phone. “Is it a bakery or retro arcade or something?”

“It’s a candy place.”

Peter looks up at me, his thumbs frozen over his phone.

“What?”

“You can’t possibly mean Dylan’s Candy Bar? Oh wow. You do.” Peter laughs. “I didn’t take you for a Times Square big-box candy person.”

Look, it is super cringe. I fully recognize that. I’m not some middle-aged suburban soccer mom who thinks the Olive Garden is the height of sophistication. But I saw Dylan’s in a Disney movie when I was a kid. And to a nine-year-old it seemed like the most magical place on earth. I mean, wall-to-wall rainbow colors and gummy bears the size of me? I became obsessed. So obsessed that my mom promised she’d take me into the city for my tenth birthday and let me fill up a pillowcase with as much candy as I wanted. Except we never made it.

I could tell Peter about my mom and Dylan’s. But then I’d get that face of his. That face that looks like he’s gearing up to run into a burning building and save a stray cat. I don’t want that face. I want the face he has right now. The one that’s looking at me like I’m a person and not a tragedy.

So I just shrug and say: “Very well then I contradict myself.”

Peter’s eyes crinkle at the corners, holding mine for just a fraction too long. And god, he really is a book boy because all I did is quote Whitman and he’s all lit up like I just offered to blow him out back by the dumpsters.

“You do, Sydney,” he says. “You contain multitudes.” And he keeps looking at me—in my eyes—and I can feel the back of my neck start to prickle and holy shit am I kind of into this too? Because, no. No. I cannot be getting all revved up by a few (extremely clichéd) lines from the father of free-verse transcendental poetry.