His lips hover a couple of inches from mine.
Sneaky, sneaky, Sawyer. I close the gap until there’s barely room for a breath between us. “Right,” I whisper. Then I straighten and go to work on my knots. “Hope you like thisfriendshipbracelet.”
“I’m sure I’ll love it.” He moves back to his original spot to work on his. The air vibrates between us, and I’m not sure who I’ve punished, exactly.
“Tell me what it’s like to be super famous,” he says.
I snort. “I’m famous enough to sell cookbooks, which is exactly the right kind of famous. I can move around New York without people recognizing me too often, and that’s how I like it.”
“Do you like it there?”
“Love it. It’s hard not to.”
“Tell me about it.”
So I do, telling him about my favorites, from bookstores to lesser known parks, and hidden gems of cafés to the ethnic markets in Little Ethiopia and Chinatown where I go for inspiration.
“You ever think about leaving?” he asks after a while.
“I’m happy there. My career is there. I couldn’t make it work anywhere else, and I don’t want to.” I lay my cards on the table, so he doesn’t get the wrong idea from our game.
“I like it too,” he says. “More than I thought I would. I guess Chicago prepped me for it.”
“Have you been there much?”
“Every month.” I glance over at him in surprise. “I’m developing a project in Secaucus. I stay in the city though. I’ll have to try the places you mentioned.”
Well, that’s a large bomb to drop and then keep tying knots as if nothing happened. “You’re in New Yorkevery month?”
“I am.”
I pause in my bracelet making, trying to process that.
“Come here. I want to show you something.” He stands and walks to the corner of the table, the one farthest from me, and waits for me to join him. When I do, he points down to some faded Sharpie letters in the corner. “Can you read that?”
TW + SR.
No hearts. No “4-ever.” Just plain black Sharpie, and even though I don’t know Sawyer’s handwriting, I suspect I’m looking at it.
“I couldn’t believe it when I found it during renovations.”
“That’s why you kept this table?”
He pulls a Sharpie from his back pocket. “I’ve been waiting to update this. Now feels right.” He bends down and adds something beneath the initials. “There.”
I lean forward to see it better. Now it reads,TW + SR For Real.
He goes to his spot on the bench and pulls tape from the table with a softsnckkk. He comes back with his finished bracelet and picks up my wrist to fasten the teal and yellow bracelet around it. “Friends, right?”
I look down at the neat rows he’d learned to tie to impress me. “Yes. Friends.”
His finger feathers over the bracelet, grazing my skin, but I feel iteverywhere. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Thought you might be getting…sidetracked.”
The rat. His soft touches are torturous. “Not at all. I’m fully here for this. What’s next?”
He releases my wrist. “Wait right here. I’ll be back.” He disappears into the house and reappears with a grocery bag filled with two-liter Diet Cokes. He fishes around in the bag and produces two rolls of Mentos.
“You’re kidding,” I say.
