Kiss Me in New York

by Catherine Rider

  “I … had something to get mad about. If you’d asked me this afternoon, could I ever be happy again, I’d have probably laughed at you. Because I don’t think I’ve ever felt less of myself than I did after … after what happened at the airport. But a few hours with you was all I needed to get better. That’s amazing to me. I don’t have a clue where this is going, I’ll be honest. But I just … I remember watching you ride off on that Citi Bike, after we’d been at John’s, wondering if this night could get any more random than it already had at that point and thinking … ‘I want to find out.’ That’s how I’m feeling now. I know there is something here today. Tomorrow, the future …?

  “I want to find out.”

  So much for “just saying it” — I haven’t just danced around my point, I’ve moonwalked and Gangnam Styled. Probably, the only thing I’ve actually done is put her back to sleep, talking so much.

  “I knew you loved me” — there is no pause between the words, but time seems to slow down just for me, so that I can feel the happy swell in my chest, before my gut gets a head start on the churning as I figure out exactly what’s coming next — “Colin.”

  Then her voice, her breathing, collapses to a snore. She’s asleep — has been asleep for a while, probably — and she’s dreaming about her ex: the guy who broke her heart, who humiliated her at that party.

  I’m right here in front of her, and she’s still pining for him. Even in her alternate dimension, her parallel reality, Colin is still Colin, and she still loves him.

  Once again, I feel like I’ve swallowed glass, only — this time — I also feel like I’m about to throw it back up.

  I’m such an idiot for not seeing that she wouldn’t be over it. She was considering abandoning her dreams, because she couldn’t bear to be in the same country as the guy who decided he no longer wanted her. I’m also an idiot for thinking, just now, that there had been no sign that she actually liked me and still choosing to ignore that. I’m nothing more to Charlotte than a jackass from Brooklyn who decided he’d run alongside her, wherever she was going, because, like an idiot, he wanted to “find out.”

  I sit and stew all the way to the West Fourth Street station, mentally calling myself some R-rated names, when the announcements wake up Charlotte. She rubs her face, tucks her hair behind her ears. “Where are we?”

  “West Fourth Street,” I say, keeping my voice level, casual. The voice of someone who isn’t really all that bothered. “You know what? If you’re falling asleep, maybe we oughta skip the last step.”

  “What? No. I want to keep —”

  “You’re tired.” I shift to my right, as far away from her as I can get. Look forward but feel her eyes boring into my cheek. “You got that hotel room voucher from the airline, right? You might still be able to use it, get some sleep before your flight.”

  “But there’s only one step left to go.” She looks totally confused and totally determined, all at the same time. “We have to finish.”

  “You’re tired,” I say again. I do not want to get pulled into a discussion about this. “And if the hotel won’t take the voucher after midnight, let me spot you. I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe. It might not be a big, fancy room — I’m not some rich asshole from Westchester, so my generosity can only go so far.” Why did I say that? “But I can make sure you have somewhere to crash.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” We’re making eye contact through our reflections in the window opposite as the lights of the subway tunnel flash past. Her expression is so hurt, so confused, I can barely handle it. The drunk yuppie is mumbling about why one should never let a “proxy” make a call on “depreciation.” Whatever that means.

  “Nothing’s the matter with me,” I say. “I just … think we should stop.”

  We keep staring at each other through the window, the train slowing down to the next station.

  Bing bong. “This is a Bronx-bound D train. The next stop is Thirty-Fourth Street–Herald Square.”

  The train lurches to a stop with a hiss that sounds despairing, the momentum of the train forcing Charlotte to lean into me. “Fine. We were getting off here anyway.”

  She’s on her feet, going for the doors, which are sliding open. It’s after one in the morning, so there’s no one to slow her down. I watch her leave — a stranded British girl, stuck on a subway train on Christmas Day, who’s just been told to get lost by her only friend in New York. I should just let her go.

  But I’m rising up off my seat, because — in spite of everything — I actually don’t want to be away from her.

  “Char—”

  I stop dead at the sound of a whine behind me, turning on my heels. Mistake! I was so wrapped up in my sort of fight with Charlotte that I almost forgot the pup.

  “Oh, come here, girl,” I tell her, picking up the tote bag. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you.”

  Bing bong!

  “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

  “Wha—”

  Even as I’m turning back around, I know that I’m not going to make it. The doors are already sliding shut.

  Crap!

  I see Charlotte on the platform. She’s walking away from the train, gesturing with one hand. Talking to me, without realizing that I’m not behind her. Probably cursing me out for cutting our stepping short.

  The doors slam together, trapping me inside, her on the platform. The sound makes her realize I’m not there, finally, and she turns around. We just stare at each other as the D train lurches away from the platform, heading toward Forty-Second Street.

  I run to the door and press my free hand on the window, wanting to tell her — what?

  Wait for me?

  I think I might actually love you?

  But there’s no time. Before I can get my act together, I’m plunged back into the dark of the subway tunnel.

  I pull a whining Mistake closer to me and slump back on the bench as the yuppie suddenly startles awake, looking alarmed.

  I can’t believe this. Charlotte wandered into my life earlier today. Now, I’m being dragged out of hers!

  ~ Chapter Eleven ~

  Charlotte

  1:10 a.m.

  “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

  “Seriously,” I’m saying to Anthony as I step onto the platform, “you’re happy to stop now? When we’ve just got one step left to take? I’m not even OCD, but that makes me —”

  Something about the sound of the doors sliding shut, clattering together, makes me turn around. When I do, I see that Anthony’s still on the train, holding the tote bag with Mistake. He’s heard the announcement but has not moved for the door.

  I feel my shoulders slump. We look at each other for the two or three seconds that the train stays in the station. Anthony takes a step to the door but doesn’t say or mouth anything.

  Then the train lurches off toward Forty-Second Street.

  He’s trapped on the train. Accidentally? Or — on purpose?

  There’s one way to get the answer. I reach into my bag to take out my mobile but have just unlocked the home screen when I remember that I never got Anthony’s number. I’ve hardly needed it tonight, because we’ve spent, probably, a grand total of eleven minutes apart from each other since I threw the bloody Ten Easy Steps book at him — the incident that got me into this mess in the first place.

  Okay, this is not a total disaster. He’ll just get off at Forty-Second Street, hop on the Brooklyn-bound train and come back. If he wants to come back.

  Obviously, that’s what he’s going to do, right? I refuse to think about the other option right now. I can’t believe that the last I’ll see of Anthony is his stunned face, as the train pulled out of the Thirty-Fourth Street station. So I go upstairs and cross over to the Brooklyn-bound platform, where I sit down at a bench, hoping I’m in the rig
ht place. (He would take one of the orange trains back, right? There’s no reason he’d switch to the yellow — or something else entirely? God, I wish I’d spent more time in the city!)

  I wait five minutes. An F train pulls in, stops and discharges three passengers — none of them Anthony. The doors close, and it grinds back into the tunnel.

  In the silence that follows, I swallow hard. It’s niggling at me, no matter how much I don’t want to think about it.

  Was this an accident?

  Okay — think it through, Charlotte …

  But it’s hard for me to think it through right now, because it all seemed so strange.

  Why did he want to stop doing the steps?

  He called Colin a rich asshole from Westchester. And he was right, on at least one of those counts. But why did he say it? He was talking about “Westchester assholes,” saying he wasn’t one …

  He wasn’t one, but he could get me a hotel room. Why? Was he trying to ditch me? After everything we’ve been through today, together? No, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

  Does it?

  Ten minutes pass, and two more Brooklyn-bound trains rumble into the station. Both times, not many people get off, and none of them are carrying a bulldog in a canvas tote bag.

  He’s not coming back.

  He’s ditched me here … What the hell?!

  I look up and down the platform — desolate, a little end-of-the-world-y — and wonder: if Anthony isn’t coming back, what’s my next move? I’m stranded in the middle of Manhattan, in the middle of the night, and I don’t even have the phone number of the guy I would have called my best friend here. I could call Colin, maybe, if he could tear himself away from Katie …

  Wait a minute? Why is Colin feeling more familiar all of a sudden? Like I was just talking to him … in my dream.

  Ohgodohgod, I was thinking about Colin as I was drifting off. It’s coming back to me now, the memory resuming as if a commercial break has just come to an end.

  I was remembering being at Katie’s party, out on that balcony, looking up at Colin — the same way I had been doing less than five hours ago, except this time, he was holding my hands, as if unable to stop himself from reaching for me. Clutching at me because he needed me to be near him, couldn’t handle me being far away — and “far away” was classed as anything farther than three feet. He was telling me that he had been an idiot for getting with Katie, and that he actually did say it back when we were at Rockefeller Center. I hadn’t imagined it. He loved me.

  And I had said … Oh, God, what did I say?

  What did I say?

  I knew you loved me, Colin.

  But in the remegined memory, I wasn’t happy. Instead, I was smugly pleased that I had been right all along, that he was ’fessing up to being a knobhead. That he was regretting being so horrible to me, someone who really didn’t deserve that. I was getting ready to tell him off.

  But then I’d drifted off, and when I woke up, Anthony was being weird with me. As if wanting to prove that all boys are the same — moody, irritable, annoying.

  I let out a deep sigh. I should get out of the station, right now. I can’t wait around here by myself. I hold my tote bag tight to my side and sprint out, emerging onto Herald Square. I’ve only been here like twice since I arrived, but it still seems crazy how deserted it is. Lane after lane of roads so empty, so silent, that when a car does roll past me, the sound of the engine makes me jump. The streetlights shred the night, making everything absurdly visible, but I’m grateful for them — it’s less scary this way.

  For a second, I think about going back to Bensonhurst, waking his family up at two in the morning, explaining that we got separated. I’d get his number, call him and ask if he’s okay — after I’ve called him a git for ditching me! But let’s be serious: any guy that would just leave a girl by herself, after one in the morning, in the middle of Manhattan — on Christmas Day — that guy’s not picking up the phone. And as furious as I am with him, I don’t want to make things weird with his family. I let him see all the sides of me, and he ran.

  What an arsehole!

  But what happened? Why did he suddenly get so arsey with me? Why did he suddenly decide that he didn’t want to do the final step, that he was actually more than happy to throw some money at his Charlotte problem and put me away in a hotel until my flight tomorrow? I mean, I was dozing, half asleep at the time — how could I have upset a boy while I was not totally conscious?

  I run my hands through my hair, then shake my head and try to wake myself up. But my exhaustion is like a giant, slimy hand pushing at the back of my head. I just want to sleep. I just want to go home. I just want to find Anthony and ask him, what the hell was that about? The early hours of Christmas morning, and you ditch me — and steal our dog?

  I walk in one direction, then the other, not really sure where I’m going to go. Then I turn to look back in the direction of Thirty-Fourth Street–Herald Square station, hoping to see Anthony and Mistake jogging toward me. But the street is deserted, the shuttered windows of Macy’s looking so severe that the night is starting to feel a little dystopian.

  He’s not coming back. He’s gone.

  *

  I spend a few minutes idly walking along Thirty-Fourth Street, trying not to think about how Midtown is looking a bit apocalyptic, what with it being so empty of people and traffic at this time of night. Every single taxi seems to crawl by, and I imagine the drivers inside looking left and right desperately, hoping to see some survivors.

  So, what now? The last step said to “do something to help yourself gain perspective,” but the only perspective I have right now is of an empty, dark city. An empty, dark city where — apparently — I don’t have any friends at all. Not the girls from Sacred Heart — the kind of girls who’ll run off with my boyfriend the minute we break up — and not Anthony, my companion on what I’m starting to think was a journey to nowhere.

  You know what? Screw him, I’m not going to just stand around in the cold and wait for him to grace me with his presence.

  I’m going to do the thing I was planning to do when I got off the train.

  Go to the Empire State Building.

  Trumpets blare from within my tote bag. My mobile — a text-message alert! Maybe Anthony has somehow figured out my number? It wouldn’t be that hard to do.

  But it’s just a text from the airline, informing me that due to all the delays and cancellations, they’ve laid on extra emergency flights to London. The next one takes off at five in the morning, and my name is on the list. I could actually be home for Christmas dinner. I won’t have to avoid Doctor Who spoilers for a day! This is a Christmas miracle!

  But if I do this — if I set off for the airport right now — Anthony won’t ever find me, if he even doubles back (and why would he do that if ditching me was his actual intention?). I’ll never see him again — my Day Friend in New York, who I was starting to hope might become something more. I might be going home to my family, who I love, but I know the only thing I’ll really be feeling is the absence of … the absence of what? Of Anthony? No, that can’t be right, I barely know him.

  I guess I’ll be thinking about what might have been.

  I turn around to stare at the station entrance, standing stock-still and giving my Day Friend as much time as possible to emerge onto the street, carrying our dog in his arms and an apology on his face. But no one’s coming out of the station.

  I check my watch, see that it’s almost quarter to two.

  If I’m never coming back, there’s no way I’m leaving without taking Step Ten. And if the hours I looked up on my mobile are to be believed, the observation deck closes at two — every night.

  I turn and walk away from the station, in the direction of Fifth Avenue.

  ~ Chapter Twelve ~

  Anthony

  1:12 a.m.
r />   Goddamnit, how could I be such an idiot?

  Charlotte’s going to think I ditched her on purpose, especially after I made such a big deal about paying for her room and not bothering with the final step. She probably didn’t even realize what she’d said — to her, it had to have seemed like I turned into an asshole in an instant.

  I know that Charlotte babbling about Colin while she’s half asleep does not mean that she actually wants to get back with him.

  I sit down on the train bench with Mistake, holding her close to me while I try to figure out my next move. The next stop is Forty-Second Street, and I can get off and double back. Charlotte might take some time to get herself together. She could still be there by the time I make it back to Herald Square …

  In the tunnel, a Brooklyn-bound train passes mine, going in the other direction. It’s fine, it’s fine, I tell myself. I might have to wait at Forty-Second Street for a few minutes, but she’ll totally wait for me to double back. She’ll be there.

  But somehow, I’m getting the feeling that she won’t be — that she’ll see my sudden disappearance as me ditching her. Ditching her and stealing our dog. I try to calm down, try to convince myself that I’m overreacting, but I can’t help it — this is a total disaster. This amazing night is going to shit right at the end. And, unlike my last relationship, it is all my fault, because I’m the one who’s done the screwing up. Here was a nice, smart, kind and down-to-earth girl — who seemed to like me, who seemed to get me, who chose to spend her last night in the city with me. And right when we were bringing that night — which, all things considered, has been kind of perfect — to a close, I go and ruin it by saying something that is Total Bollocks.

  I don’t even know if I’m using that right, but I’m actually starting to talk like her in my head! Come on, train, get to Forty-Second Street. Please! For once, I’d like something to go right. Because, if it doesn’t, and I don’t get back to Thirty-Fourth Street–Herald Square soon, I’ll have lost Charlotte forever. I’ll have no shot at finding her, because — idiot that I am — I didn’t even get her last name. I can’t look her up on Instagram or anything. My “missed connections” post on Craigslist would probably say something like, “Your name is Charlotte, and you’re British. You’re funny when you swear, and you were scared of sledding until you actually tried it. We had the best night ever, and I’m the doofus who let you get off the train.”