Jo glances up at me and grins, swinging our joined hands happily as we walk. “Got that right. Were you always a night owl?”
I shrug, taking the last bite of my ice cream cone. “Not until residency. Surgical residency is brutal. The hours are insane, and the schedule constantly switches between nights and days, to the point where time pretty much ceases to have any meaning. If I wasn’t working, I was sleeping, and it didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was. I could fall asleep anywhere and everywhere, pretty much on command.”
Jo sticks her tongue out to catch a drip rolling down the cone, and I have to stifle a groan at the visual.
“Was it like that after residency?”
“Sometimes. The schedule was still brutal, but the hours were more predictable. But by the time residency was over, I had met Allie. Sometimes our schedules were opposite, and the only time we had together was the middle of the night, so we made it work.”
“Or early in the morning to visit a dinosaur.” Jo smiles at me, and I know she’s remembering the morning she found me on the bench outside the museum.
“Or that.”
Jo finishes her ice cream and tosses the napkin she was using in a trash can as we make our way past Columbus Circle and back to the West Side.
“Can I ask you a question?”
I know this is her way of telling me she’s about to ask me something big, but the way she digs past my surface scares me a little less than it used to.
“Anything.”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
With those words in my head, I tug Jo off the crowded sidewalk, spinning her so her back is against one of the pillars outside the New York Institute of Technology. Leaning one arm on the pillar over her head, I grasp her chin with my other hand and tip her head up, bringing my lips down on hers. She inhales sharply before she melts into the kiss, opening right up for me. I sweep my tongue into her mouth, and she answers by nipping my lip, and I groan at the sharp bite of pain. Jo lays her hand on my chest, like she’s trying to feel the beat of my heart, and something about that makes my heart pound even as my blood heats.
I break the kiss but keep my mouth close to hers, stroking my hand down her cheek. “There is nothing you could ask me that I wouldn’t want to answer. You are the first person in two years who makes me want to tell my secrets. Open up parts of me I thought would stay locked forever. Only you, Jo Jo.”
“Shit,” she mutters, her face an adorable shade of red. “That was so hot.”
“What was?”
“That lean thing you did, tipping my chin up, the way you just went for it. That’s, like, five-alarm fire hot, J.”
I wink at her, feeling more like myself than I have in forever. “I know.”
She snorts out a laugh and shoves me back a step. I toss an arm around her shoulders as we keep walking north. “So, you had something to ask me?”
“Is it weird to kiss me when you thought Allie was the last person you would ever kiss?”
Jo’s question has my heart tugging in grief. But instead of a sharp, agonizing pain, this is more of an ache. The kind that settles in your bones and becomes familiar. The kind you make peace with, knowing it will always be there. Accepting that it’s a part of you now.
Somehow, I know my answer to this question is the most important thing I will ever say. I choose my words carefully.
“I thought it might be weird to kiss someone else,” I admit. “To open myself up to someone else again. For a long time, I thought that part of my life was over.” I stop walking and turn to face her so I can look at her when I say this next thing. “Until you. You make me feel things I never thought I would feel again. I would be lying if I said it didn’t scare me because I know what it’s like to lose my most important person, and the thought of going through that again is unbearable. But the thought of not trying, of losing the possibility of whatever we might be, is unbearable too. So, no, Jo Jo, it’s not weird to kiss you when I thought Allie would be the last person I would ever kiss. You feel exactly right, and I didn’t think anyone would ever feel right again.”
Jo studies me, her pretty green eyes swirling with feeling as she lays her hand on my chest again, right over my heart. “Allie would be so proud of you, J.”
“You think?” I manage, through the bubble of emotion rising into my throat.
Jo nods, decisively. “I know. You’re living, Jordan. Even when it’s hard and even when it’s scary. I hope you know you can talk to me. You can tell me all the hard and scary, if you want to. I’ll keep it all safe for you.”
Entirely undone, I pull Jo in and wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her hair and memorizing the way she fits perfectly against me. The feel of her warm, smooth skin under my hand where her tank top dips low in the back and the way she smells like cupcakes and summer and everything good. The way her thumb strokes my lower back, and her sigh as she steps closer, wrapping her arms tighter around me.
We may be standing on a busy Upper West Side street, but there is no one else in the world. Just us and the way we feel holding on to each other and how I know that neither of us wants to be the first to let go.
It’s the music that breaks us apart. The notes of a saxophone rising above the din of the city night. The music both haunts and soothes, and something about it calls to me, like I want to plant myself here and listen to it forever.
“Do you hear that?” Jo breathes. She glances around until she spots it. The man standing at the top of the Lincoln Center steps, the fountain lit up behind him as he plays his instrument. “We have to go watch!”
