“Why not?”
She smiles, but it’s soft. “Because I don’t need to win anything. Everything about this night was already perfect.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, even though I think she’s right; even though we spent the night running wildly around the city doing things like finding a street mural to take a picture in front of and eating stale pretzels from a street vendor at one in the morning, it was kind of perfect.
“Totally sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to take a sunrise picture.” Jo pulls her phone out and hands it to me. “You take it; your arms are freakishly long.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “My arms are proportionate to all my other parts.”
She throws her head back and laughs while I just stand there. “Are you twelve?” I grumble.
“You should know by now that the answer to that question is yes, sometimes, but especially when you make an accidental dick joke, I am twelve.”
I roll my eyes and stand up, turning so my back is to the water and the Statue of Liberty is in the distance. “Get over here, Jo Jo.”
She stands in front of me and leans her head back against my chest. I wrap an arm around her shoulders and hold my other arm out, snapping the picture. When I hand her back the phone, she studies the picture with a half-smile on her face and then slips her phone back into her bag and sits down again.
“Send that to me, okay?” I ask, sitting back down next to her.
“I’ll send them all to you. Especially the one I snuck of you in the diner while you watched me fake an orgasm.”
I glower and poke her in the side, and she giggles. Then she hands me a Fireball and leans her head on my shoulder as we sit together and watch New York wake up to greet a new day.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m really, truly happy.
CHAPTERTEN
JO
June
Jordan
Why were a ten-gallon fish tank, a bag of rocks, and a box of fake plants delivered to my apartment this morning?
Me
For Dippy’s new habitat.
Jordan
Any reason why he couldn’t just keep living on my dresser like he has for the past almost two months?
Me
The dresser really isn’t a place for a pet to live.
Jordan
Well, considering he’s not a pet, I’m sure it’s probably fine.
Me
Listen, real talk. I was willing to go with the dresser living space for a while because I wasn’t confident that you would take care of him in the manner to which he has become accustomed, and I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance I’d have to take custody of him.
Jordan
The manner in which he became accustomed to being…living in the bottom of your massive tote bag?
