I sigh, turn back to the street. A lone pair of headlights slices through the New York night, a block up Thirty-Fourth. This is yours, I tell myself. You got this.
I step one foot off the curb, raise my hand to hail the cab. I look directly at it, like I’m in a staring contest with the headlights and …
It actually slows, stops and veers over to me. As Anthony and I get in, I try not to do a little happy dance. Anthony nudges my arm.
“You are one of us now,” he says.
It feels true. It feels brilliant.
*
Five minutes later, we’re in the cab, heading toward JFK, and I’m feeling exhilarated and exhausted (exhilausted!). We’re holding hands, lazily repositioning our fingers in a rhythm that is slow and haphazard, and yet we never miss a beat, never get tangled.
It’s probably not at all necessary — not after everything we’ve done and said tonight — but I still feel the need to reach out with my free hand, pinch his chin and turn his face to me.
“I’m coming back for you.”
He makes a scared face. “You make it sound like you’re hunting me.”
Most times tonight, we’ve laughed and joked with each other, and it’s been great. But now, I’m not in the mood to laugh. Time to be serious. “You know what I mean.”
He looks back at me, his face serious, his eyes not blinking. “I know. I told you, I’ll be waiting — and so will the city.”
“Are you sure you can do this?” I ask, shifting to look up at him. “Are you sure you can wait?”
“Are you?”
My answer comes instantly, no hesitation. “I don’t know where this is going but … I want to find out.”
He smiles, leans across and kisses me again. I feel a tear weave its way between our lips. I don’t know if it’s his or if it’s mine. I don’t care.
Anthony breaks the kiss, leans back and looks at me. Deadly serious again. “If we are going to do this,” he says, “then there’s something very important that we have to do first. There’s something I’ve just gotta know …”
I feel my chest tighten as I wonder, what is it he’s going to ask?
“What’s your last name?”
Has that seriously not come up until now?
I laugh, and tell him my name. “It’s Cheshire.”
He smiles, nods, like it makes sense. “One more question … This one’s a bit, uh … forward, I guess.”
I try not to look as flustered as I feel, imagining what on earth he could possibly be gearing up to ask.
“Can I get your number?”
*
The next thing I know, I’ve got a new boarding pass in one hand and am holding Anthony’s with the other. Mistake, on her lead, walks between us but slowly — the poor pup is knackered.
We’re walking toward Security, and I’m feeling as much excitement about being home as I am hesitation and dread at leaving Anthony. It’s not that I fear that he’ll find someone else if I’m not here, that he’ll cheat on me the way his ex did. It’s more that now that my departure is looming, the prospect suddenly inescapable, I just don’t want to be apart from him.
And now, we’ve reached the start of the mazy line that leads to Security. Ahead are other bleary-eyed, frazzled Europeans, staggering toward flights that they were not expecting to take.
“So …” When I look at him, I can tell Anthony doesn’t really have anything more to say right now.
I reach down into my tote bag and take out Get Over Your Ex in Ten Easy Steps — the book that got us both into amusing, ridiculous, legal and, eventually, wonderful trouble tonight. “Guess we don’t need this anymore, huh?”
He smiles, takes it from me, turns it over in his hands. Shakes his head. “I can’t believe it actually worked.”
“Perhaps we should leave it for someone else to find? You never know, someone on one of the later flights might be in need of the same help that we were.”
He smiles again, looking around. His eyes alight on a row of seats — four of them — just before the start of Security. He walks over to them and bends to place the book on the third seat. When he stands up, his face is solemn, but there is a gentle smile on his lips. He puts his hand against his chest, then looks at me, his eyebrows raised, like, What are you waiting for?
I mimic his pose. He turns back to the book. “May you heal more hearts this Christmas — just … try to make sure the next couple doesn’t get picked up by cops!”
I let out a sharp laugh, and then we both nod solemnly and wave our goodbyes to the book. He walks back to the line and takes my hand again. He squeezes. “You got my number, right?”
I grin at him. “And your email and your Instagram. There’s no escaping me, Monteleone!”
“I’m not running anywhere.”
He kisses me again, and I’m thinking those seven hours or so between us meeting and us first kissing was time that we wasted.
We break the kiss when Mistake’s lead gets tangled around my legs. The pup is walking in and out of them and has me pretty well tied up. Anthony’s laughing as he kneels down to get to work on setting me free — as if he hasn’t done enough of that already today.
“I think she’s going to miss you almost as much as I will,” he says.
I keep my response light — if I go for meaningful or sincere, I think I might cry. “Yeah, you’d better miss me.”
“I will. You’re amazing.”
I’m looking down at him, but what I’m seeing is myself, through Anthony’s eyes. The girl he met tonight is a girl who was down but eventually got up and took on a city — with him right alongside her. A girl who didn’t know where she was going or where she wanted to go, who felt she might not belong anywhere and had the strength to answer those questions for herself. That’s the version of me I’m taking home to London. And she’s the version of me I’ll be bringing back here in about eight months.
Anthony knew she was there, all along.
9. SEE YOURSELF HOW SOMEONE ELSE SEES YOU.
I reach down and lightly stroke the top of his head, letting my hand slide down the back of his neck. “Thank you.”
When he looks up at me, he initially seems confused. But only for a second. He nods and smiles, his eyes saying everything: I’ll miss you. I can’t wait to see you again. After he finishes untangling Mistake, he picks her up.
“Come on, little lady, say bye to Mommy.”
I take her from him and cuddle her close, asking Anthony: “Do you think you’ll keep her?”
“Of course,” he says. “She’s our dog.”
I hand our dog back to him, giving her one last pat on the head as I promise her that I’ll see her soon. To Anthony:
“I’ll follow you as soon as I get home.” Okay — (a) that sounds creepy, and (b) it’s a bit of a paradox. “You know, like, on Instagram.” Ugh! Why is it now, at the end of a perfect night, that I’m saying lame stuff again? I think it’d be best if I don’t say anything more, so I simply tell Anthony, “Bye,” and turn to the security line and try to outrun my lame farewell. But I can’t escape my embarrassment — I have to carry my flaming cheeks with me wherever I go.
I’m just within sight of the X-ray machine, beginning to kneel down so I can unlace my boots, when I hear a man’s voice saying, “Sir, you can’t —”
I don’t hear anything else, because my hand’s been taken in someone else’s — I don’t need to look to know whose — and I’m being kissed.
Being kissed so perfectly that, when I pull away, I’m a little dizzy, my legs feeling like they’re made of paper. I’m giddy all over again, trying to get used to how everything’s feeling so perfect all of a sudden …
Until the sour-faced TSA agent who’s appeared behind Anthony clears his throat and asks “sir” if he has a boarding pass. Because if he doesn’t have a boa
rding pass, he’s “got no business being in this part of the airport.”
I give Anthony’s hand one last squeeze as I look up at him. For about three seconds, I try to think of what on earth I can say that will make this moment as meaningful as it can possibly be, until I realize: There’s nothing more for us to say today. We’ve said it all.
I lift his hand to my lips, giving the back of it a gentle kiss. To him, I give a smile. Then I turn around and resume my journey home, thinking, Just eight months, and I’ll be back …
… and Anthony will be waiting.
~ Epilogue ~
Charlotte
January 2nd
“Charlotte! Package for you!”
In my bedroom back home, I snap my book closed and toss it toward the foot of my bed. Eighty pages into Payback — I finally bought a copy after I landed at Heathrow — and I still haven’t found out why Donny “HAS IT COMING.”
I head out of my room and down the stairs. Mum is in the front passage, holding a parcel. Beside her is Emma, staring at it as if she’s expecting to develop X-ray vision any second now. My littlest sister has always been super nosy.
“What is it, Lot, what is it?” she asks, coming to stand beside me when I take the parcel from Mum. The first thing I see is the five-digit New York postcode, and then the family name “Monteleone.”
“It’s for me,” I say, sticking my tongue out at her and turning around to head back upstairs, taking them two at a time, then running into my bedroom, closing the door so quickly, it slams into the frame, making the whole house shake. “Sorry!” I shout to Mum.
I set the parcel down on my bed and open it up. Inside is a chaos of beautiful turquoise tissue wrapping paper, which tickles my hands as I move it aside. Beneath is a plain scarf in a shade of blue I recognize as Columbia blue. Pinned to one edge is a photograph of Anthony in the kitchen of his family’s home. He’s sitting at the table, with Mistake on his lap — our dog staring right down the lens, stretching forward as if she’s about to try and eat it. It’s only been a week or so, but I can’t believe how much I miss them both.
On the other side of the photo is a note, in handwriting I know that I will one day recognize as unmistakably his.
I know it’s not Christmas anymore, but I need no reason to buy you a gift. Whatever gift I give you would be nothing compared to what you’ve given me (and I don’t just mean Mistake!).
See you this summer.
M & A xx
I grin at the piece of paper like a nutter, enjoying the feeling of having a chest full to bursting — and not the painful kind of bursting. It’s all stretching out before me now. A school and a city where I will belong, as New Charlotte. New Charlotte is going to make New York her home, at least for a while. I don’t know where this Story goes or how it ends …
But I want to find out.
Acknowledgments
Few books are solely the work of those whose name(s) is (are) on the cover, and this one is no exception. Huge thanks to Samantha Noonan, Charles Nettleton, Chris Snowdon and Clare Hutton for all their great suggestions as this manuscript took shape; and to Kate Egan at KCP Loft for having insights that improved the book even further. Thanks, also, to Alexandra Devlin, Harim Yim, Rachel Richardson, Allison Hellegers and Alex Webb at Rights People for championing the book around the world! And now, like with the book itself, we will divide the remainder of this love-fest into two!
James Noble is an editor who also writes under a variety of pseudonyms. He was born and raised in London. He went to primary and secondary school in London. He went to college in London. He got his first — and only, and current — publishing job in London. He has intermediate Cockney rhyming slang, loves pie and mash (though he recoils at the mere mention of jellied eels), and never forgets to “mind the gap.” But he still loses far too much of far too many days daydreaming about what it’d be like to live in New York.
Love and gratitude to my mum and dad, Debbie and Jimmy, my brothers, John and Joe (and Emma!), and to all the wild branches (Bailey and Brennan) of my family tree; to the dear friends and creative bravehearts from whom I constantly learn — most especially Lila, for always setting the example, and Stephanie, for inviting me to work on this with her!
Stephanie Elliott is a book editor who moved to New York immediately after college. She has never been mugged, ridden a Citi Bike or been harassed by a rogue Elmo in Times Square (though one did get a little salty with her, once). She feels strongly that bialys are better than bagels, yellow cabs are better than Ubers and pizza must NEVER be eaten with a fork. She loves visiting London, where people are SO polite! She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and five-year-old daughter.
Love and thanks to my parents, my supportive friends, the Elliotts, the Lanes and the always-fascinating city of New York, for providing endless inspiration. Particularly big hugs to Dan and Maggie, my two loves who are always up for exploring the city with me. And a special thanks to James, for his love of this story and his amazing contributions!
Coming soon …
Available in 2018
Praise for Just a Normal Tuesday
“There is grief and there is grace, and this book is full of both. A look at love, loss, and learning to live with questions that have no answers. Kim Turrisi is an exquisite new voice.”
— Martha Brockenbrough,
author of THE GAME OF LOVE AND DEATH
“You’re the drummer,” she said to herself. “It’s your job to keep them on beat. To hold it all together.”
But how the bloody hell was she supposed to do that?
COMPULSIVELY READABLE, THE LOST CAUSES
SWEEPS READERS INTO THE PLACE WHERE
SCIENCE FICTION AND MYSTERY MEET,
ENDING ON A DROP-DEAD CLIFFHANGER
THAT WILL LEAVE THEM LONGING FOR MORE.
Don’t Miss the Debut Novel
from Wattpad Sensation
DoNotMicrowave
“Brant’s debut is an absolute treat.”
— Booklist, starred review
“Readers who love quirky, character-driven romances, such as John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines and heartstring-yanking melodrama in the vein of Lauren Oliver’s YA books will enjoy this novel …”
— School Library Journal
Kiss Me in New York Page 18