Kiss Me in New York

by Catherine Rider

  She directs me to an enquiries desk, where another too-smiley lady stares at a computer screen for what I swear is five whole minutes, before telling me that the next flight she can get me on does not depart until 9:30 … a.m.

  I will not be home with my family on Christmas morning. Instead, I will be here in New York — the city I love but just want to leave.

  *

  I have another one of those Lost Moments. It’s who-knows-how-many minutes later, and I’m wandering back out into the main terminal. I’ve left my suitcase with the airline, and over my left shoulder I have my tote bag, which holds nothing except the thriller that Hipster Hottie bought for me, as well as a voucher given to me by the airline. It’s for the Ramada Hotel, where I guess I’m going to hole up and spend Christmas Eve … by myself. I’ve never stayed in a hotel by myself before, and all of a sudden I feel very out of my depth. What if the hotel won’t let me in without an adult? What if I end up totally stranded, caught between a hotel that won’t take me in and an airport that won’t let me leave?

  This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

  “You’ll be fine, love. You always are.”

  I’m on my mobile, speaking to Mum. I want her to be totally freaking out, like I am, but Mum’s always lovely and calm. She’s actually known for it. Everyone calls her “Mellownie” — I’ve always thought that was the lamest play on Melanie there could possibly be, but now, at this moment, it feels like one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard in my life.

  I plonk myself down on a bench, putting my face in my free hand. It doesn’t do much to make me feel better, but the airport feels further away for a bit — less like it’s closing in on me.

  Mum starts to say something, but her voice is drowned out by Emma’s, and I imagine my five-year-old sister fighting tooth and nail for the house phone. “Mummy, Mummy, I want to talk to Lot! Pleeeeease!”

  When she was a baby, Emma could never get her mouth around “Charlotte,” so “Lot” was what she settled on. Every other day of my life, I’ve found it annoying — but not today.

  “Not right now, Em,” Mum says. Then, to me: “Can’t you go back to the Lawrences’?”

  “No,” I tell Mum. “They’re spending Christmas with relatives in Vermont. They were driving there from the airport, after dropping me off.”

  “You’ll be fine, love,” she repeats. “You can go to your hotel and at least be warm and safe, right? What more can you ask for?”

  I wipe my eyes and turn my mouth from the mobile so she can’t hear me sniffle. There is a lot more that I could ask for than a warm hotel room — like, a flight out of this city of misery. How about that for “more”? God, why has my life decided to not just knock me down but also spit in my face and then run away laughing?

  Mum tells me that we can all do Christmas on Boxing Day and that the whole family loves me and — for some reason — this chokes me up. We’ve never really been the most affectionate of families, and it’s the fact that Mum feels the need to say something that underlines for me that, yep, this is a shitty situation I’m in today. I tell her I love her, too, painfully aware that my throat is strangling my vowels, and, before we click off, Mum tells me, “I want you to listen to me, okay, Char? You listening?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know this feels horrible, and I understand, but I don’t want you wallowing or sitting around and getting upset. Yes, this is unfortunate, but it’s not the worst day you could be having, all things considered. Right? There’s always someone who’s worse off than you are, love.”

  I tell her I understand — and I do, but I also know it will be a while before I can actually agree with her. We end the call, and I stuff my mobile in my tote bag. I know that most of the weight I can feel on my leg is from the thriller that Hipster Hottie bought for me, but the thing I feel most aware of is the voucher, for a hotel room I’m a little nervous about staying in alone. Mum was very mellow about that, too, insisting that if I can fly to America by myself, I can survive a night in a hotel room.

  She’s right — even English Charlotte should be able to get through that.

  But I know that the room itself will be bland and basic — and probably beige. I’m getting depressed just thinking about it, and I know that the only thing I will do in that room is sit and think about Colin, the horrible thing he said to me and the look on his face when he said it — as if explaining why he was dumping me was a huge inconvenience to him or something. I’m going to think about how big an arsehole he is and feel like a total loser for wishing I had made him feel passion, or whatever it is that makes him super into the girl he’s with. He’s not worth the tears he has made me cry, and yet I’m starting to think that calling him and asking if we could have a time-out on this whole breakup, just for half a day, so I don’t have to sit in a hotel room and think about him, actually seems like it isn’t the craziest and most desperate thing I’ve ever considered doing.

  And this is where I find myself on Christmas Eve, after my failed semester in New York — alone in an airport, with no way of getting home until tomorrow, the only thing to my name a pulpy thriller about some guy called Donny who, for reasons I’m caring less and less about, “HAS IT COMING.” I reach into the bag for the hotel voucher, to double-check the address, and when I move it aside, I see not the cover for Payback, but instead …

  Get Over Your Ex in Ten Easy Steps!

  The bloody self-help book! Hipster Hottie must not have been paying attention at the counter. Seeing it right after I had the fleeting thought that I could call Colin to come to my aid makes my blood boil, and I reach in and grab the book, tossing it aside.

  It’s only as I toss it that I notice I’m not alone on the bench. There’s someone strangely familiar sitting next to me. A boy, about my age, kind of tall, with close-cropped dark hair, wearing a brown field coat over a yellow-and-cream plaid shirt — not a fashion disaster, but they kind of don’t go together. He’s slumped, a dozen red roses in his lap, a red backpack between his feet, and so distracted that he doesn’t notice my accidental Christmas present — paid for by the guy his girlfriend literally just ran away with — bounce off his scuffed hiker boots.

  But I apologize anyway, as I lurch forward to pick it up. I should throw it in the nearest rubbish bin — but, for some reason, I hold it close to my chest.

  His reaction is delayed, like my voice wasn’t traveling at the speed of sound or something. He turns and looks at me with vacant eyes, and all of a sudden I get what Mum was talking about. Someone worse off is sitting right next to me. Okay, so he might be worse off at the moment only because his dumping happened almost literally just now, but still. I’d have felt a book hit my foot.

  I think.

  He turns away from me and stares into space again. I’m doing a brilliant job of helping the worse-off person, aren’t I?

  “I’m Charlotte,” I tell him, picking up his hand and shaking it. “And you’ve had a lucky escape.”

  The poor sod just looks down at our hands, as if this is his first-ever handshake, then up at me, confused. Good one, Charlotte — while he was getting dumped earlier, he would hardly have noticed the nosy British girl nearby (who happened to be standing next to the guy who was about to make off — and out — with his ex, right in front of him).

  I explain myself. “I, um, saw you before … with your girlfriend.”

  He looks down at the roses. “Yeah … Shoulda figured our little show would attract an audience.”

  He’s talking, at least, and I almost laugh when I realize that I honestly have no idea what my plan is here — he’s the worse-off person, but I’m hardly going to heal his heart today, am I? Plus, my own heart might not be gushing blood right now, but that’s probably because it’s got no blood left to bleed after what Colin did to me.

  “What’s your name?”

  He talks to the roses. “A
nthony.”

  “Hello, Anthony. Trust me — you had a lucky escape. She’s … bad news.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “I know enough to know that you don’t want to waste your time on a girl who would actually dump you on Christmas Eve for the first handsome guy who came along.”

  Anthony half turns to face me, his wide eyes indicating his seriousness. “You don’t understand what happened between us, okay? Maya’s not some shallow bimbo who runs off with the first hot guy to come along and turn her head.” He sounds convinced. But, from where I was standing, the second half of that sentence is dead wrong.

  “She just … she just … probably hasn’t been dealing all that well with the long-distance thing. She’s been away for the whole semester, you know? She’s only just started at college, it’s all new to her — of course that’s going to mess with her head.”

  He sounds convinced. But I spent time with the guy she made off with — he seemed like a real Williamsburg Wanker, which means he’s from Williamsburg (or that general area), which means she was about as far away from him as she was from Anthony.

  But I don’t say anything. I don’t have to, because Anthony puts his face in his hands and leans back in his chair. He clenches his fists and lets them fall into the unwanted roses.

  “No, you’re right,” he says, finally. For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to cry, but he takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “She did a shitty thing. And what’s crazy is, if I hadn’t shown up to surprise her, I wouldn’t have known what was going on.”

  I feel an urge to reach across and squeeze his forearm. But I don’t do that — I just tell him, “You should go home. Watch some dumb movies with your family, whatever’s going to keep your mind off it. Whatever normal Christmas you were thinking of having tonight, have it.”

  “I can’t go home,” he tells the roses. “I told my family I was spending Christmas with Maya and her family — I thought, if I surprised her, she’d …” He jumps from that thought to another. “If I go home now …” He shakes his head. “Forget it. I just … don’t want to go home tonight.” He notices me frowning at him. “What?”

  I realize what my face must look like — the face of someone thinking, Poor you. “Nothing,” I tell Anthony. “Just … I know a little of how you feel. I had a breakup — about a fortnight ago. That means, two wee—”

  “I know what a fortnight is,” he tells me.

  “Sorry. Anyway, whatever the problem is with your family, get over it. It’s Christmas, and you get to be with them. It could be worse — you could be looking at Christmas Eve at the Ramada.”

  He makes a sympathetic face, then frowns down at my lap. For a second, I think he’s leering at me, and I’m about to make a disgusted noise — getting dumped does not make that okay — when I realize that he’s just looking at the book I’m still holding. “If I were you, I’d dump that in the trash on the way out of here.”

  “It was on the bestseller chart,” I tell him. “It must be working for some people.”

  “‘Ten Easy Steps’? If it was one step, I might trust it. Ten steps sounds like some kind of scam to me.”

  I look down at the book, turning it over in my hands. There’s a small portrait of the author — Dr. Susannah Lynch — in the bottom-right corner. A middle-aged woman, with a style that’s stranded between hippie and sensible/classy, and a pleasant, open face that seems to insist that she just wants to help every single person who buys this book.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I guess ten steps would take a while …”

  I look up from the book to Anthony. The two of us have been dumped. He doesn’t want to go home, and I couldn’t go home even if I wanted to. And I really don’t want to go to the Ramada: that will only end in me curling up in a ball, crying, looking at my mobile every two minutes to check Colin’s Instagram, because I somehow need to know what he’s doing. What he’s doing without me. His pretentious selfies in front of bus stops and subway stations — Colin’s theme was his “journey” — used to make me cringe, but I’m suddenly much more interested in “where he’s going.”

  I kind of hate that.

  Before I can ask myself if it’s a good idea, I’m asking Anthony how well he knows New York City.

  He just looks back at me like I’ve asked him if he takes showers in cold custard. “I’ve lived here my whole life. What are you thinking?”

  “I’ve got, like, seventeen hours until my flight. I refuse to spend all of them in a poky hotel room, staring at the walls. They’re probably beige! I need to take my mind off my troubles — and going into the city on Christmas Eve will be great for that, don’t you think? You don’t know this, but I came here to live some stories, and I didn’t really do that. But how many people get to write about being stranded three thousand miles from home on Christmas Eve?”

  He’s still looking at me, unblinking. “Probably none, because don’t most of those people get mugged?”

  “That’s probably because they’re by themselves.” I don’t know if this is English Charlotte or New Charlotte — but whoever it is, she has a plan.

  Anthony’s shaking his head. “No, no, no …”

  “You did say you didn’t want to go home,” I point out. He starts to say something, then stops. He’s got no answer.

  Just a question. “You really think that wandering around New York is going to fix everything?”

  Of course I don’t, I want to say. I don’t expect that wandering around Manhattan at night is going to fill in the cracks in my heart; it probably won’t even paper over them. But I’m hurting, and I want it to stop. And I’m lonelier than I thought could be possible, and I don’t want Anthony to go. I guess this is because he is the only person in New York City right now that I know (even if I only kind of, sort of know him). And if I at least come out of this trip with a Story, a unique experience — that I could have only in New York — then, maybe, just maybe, when I’m an old lady, I won’t be kicking myself at how I wasted three months of my life on both a boy and a city that didn’t love me back.

  After all, old ladies probably get seriously injured kicking themselves. Arthritis and stuff.

  “Come on,” I say instead. “Come with me! It’ll be fun. You look like you could use fun. I know I could.”

  But he’s just shaking his head. “Kid, if you think getting over love is that simple, then …”

  He trails off, shaking his head again. Smirking.

  For some reason, this makes me want to hit him with his own unwanted roses. I think it’s because he called me kid. “Then what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me — then what?”

  He shrugs, shakes his head again. Picks up his roses and his backpack and stands up. “Then I guess you don’t understand love.”

  He walks away, leaving me alone on the bench.

  *

  Ten minutes later, I’m standing at the back of a queue for taxis outside the airport. It’s a long queue — the fallout from all the canceled flights. I am getting snowed on. I wonder if I’m some sort of idiot for ignoring the warm hotel room I’ve been given for free so that I can spend all night outdoors in winter.

  But I’m determined that English Charlotte will go home with a great Story. A great memory.

  My mobile, tucked away in my jeans pocket, buzzes against my leg. WhatsApp messages from friends back home, telling me they’ve heard I got stranded. The first two — from my best friends, Heather and Amelia, saying they’re jealous I get to spend Christmas in New York — make me smile. But Jessica, the older of my two little sisters, has sent me a giant cryface emoji, which gives me legit sadface, and I stop checking the messages. I’ll save them for later.

  The sky is a gloomy gray, and snow is falling onto the stranded passengers in the long line. Shoving matches are happening up ahead, and a harassed-looking lad
y in a heavy coat starts patrolling the line, saying that they are going to get as many passengers into cabs as possible. She has a clipboard in one hand and is asking people their destinations, directing them to this cab or that cab. When it’s my turn to answer, I realize I’ve not thought about where I’m actually going, but I’m remembering a neighborhood that the Lawrences took me to, where we had coffee so delicious I forgot that I missed good old English tea.

  “Greenwich Village.”

  She looks at her clipboard, then points me to one of the cabs. She moves on to the next person in line, and I make my way. I open the cab’s rear door, see who’s sitting inside and groan.

  “Oh, come on.”

  ~ Chapter Two ~

  Anthony

  3:40 p.m.

  “You are such a douchebag.”

  “Oh, I’m a douchebag? Well, you’re a passive-aggressive bitch.”

  The couple in the bench seat in front of us have been sniping at each other all the way from the airport to the Midtown Tunnel — but the words “douchebag” and “passive-aggressive bitch” seem to get them horny as hell. Now I have to listen to them try to choke each other with their tongues.

  Me and Charlotte, the fuming Brit, share the rear seat, both of us staring at the roof. I wonder if her neck is hurting as much as mine is. We’re sitting as far away from each other as possible, my unwanted roses between us. I don’t know why I haven’t thrown the damned things out the window already.

  I’m not sorry for calling her out on her naïve attitude, but Charlotte was sweet enough to me in the airport that I guess I sort of feel bad for snapping and walking away from her like I did. I mean, that had nothing to do with her — it had everything to do with Maya.

  Maya …

  I must be a total idiot for not seeing it coming. Of course, couples can grow apart when one half is away at college on the other side of the country. But Maya didn’t dump me for some Californian. She dumped me for what looked like a total DUMBO Douchebag — a guy also from Brooklyn, just a more pretentious Brooklyn. She was cheating on our long-distance relationship by having a long-distance affair.