Lost in Love (13 page)

WHEN D TOOK ME TO
Central Park movie night, it was like a big, friendly outdoor party. People were respectful of our space. I had the best time leaning back against D, watching the movie and getting swept away by what was probably the best summer night of my life.

Bryant Park movie night is different.

They haven't even let people in yet, and I can already tell things are about to get real. D can't come until later, so he told me to save us a spot. But he also warned me that Bryant Park movie night was cutthroat. Sadie advised me to get in line before five. She explained how everyone lines up on the gravelly path around the rectangular grassy area where you sit to watch the movie. At 5:00 on the dot, a whistle blows. That's when you are allowed on the grass. I
heard it gets insane when the whistle blows. People run to stake out spots so fast Sadie nearly got knocked over one year. All the good spots are pretty much taken by 5:15. Five seemed way too early to show up for a movie that doesn't start until after eight. But I got here early anyway just to be on the safe side. I'm glad I did.

We have a few minutes to go until the whistle blows. Like Sadie said, we're all lined up on the path surrounding the lawn. I can't believe how many people are here already. We're lined up two deep on the path. Some people behind the front row are even trying to push their way up to the front. A low rope extends around the perimeter of the grass. I wonder what would happen if someone stepped over the rope. Not even if they went all the way onto the grass. Just put one foot over. Would an emergency siren go off? Would that person be restricted from movie night? I wouldn't be surprised if there was a no-watch list.

A college girl carrying a heap of blankets drops her big Ikea bag. She slowly lowers herself to retrieve the bag, the blankets blocking her vision as they mash up against her face, and feels around for the bag's handle. I want to go over and help her. But I'm worried that if I step away from the rope, I will be trampled when the whistle blows. Then I'll never get a spot and D and I will have to stand in the back or something. I'm about to go over to help her anyway when a guy standing next to her picks up her bag. He
does the right thing. I need to get better about jumping into action when someone needs help. There's no excuse for my behavior.

New Yorkers waiting for the Bryant Park movie night whistle are wound up so tightly you can almost hear them twanging. Being a part of real New York life is thrilling. I am blending in with New Yorkers as if I'm officially one of them. Feeling included in a way I never have before makes me so happy that sometimes I bust out smiling just walking down the street, or on a crowded subway where you're not supposed to bust out smiling for no apparent reason. But this experience might be a bit too scary for me. I might not be ready for cutthroat movie night.

The whistle blows. The crowd engulfs the lawn in a human tsunami. This surge of people running onto the lawn is so powerful that someone could seriously get trampled. Like, to death.

I snap into action. People are throwing sheets and blankets down on the first available spots. I run farther onto the center of the lawn and frantically fling out the old sheet I brought with me. It unfurls enough to spread over a small patch of grass. By the time I bend down to try spreading it out more, people have taken up all of the spaces around my sheet. My sheet is already completely bordered by hardcore New Yorkers with sharpened blanket maneuvering skills. I can't spread my sheet out now. I look around for a larger free spot, but there are none. You can't even see the grass
anymore. In the space of one minute, the entire lawn was covered.

What just happened?

I collapse on my sheet. A huge group to my left managed to put a bunch of blankets down so they can all sit together. How did they pull that off? They must have done this before. Bryant Park movie night might be an annual thing for them. Or even a weekly thing.

People are taking off their shoes to use as anchors along the edges of their blankets. The shoes are also boundary markers. One guy arranges his flip-flops in a line along the edge of his blanket. The girl on the blanket next to his places her bag right up against his flip-flop divider. Everywhere I look, people are exhibiting major territorial behavior. A tiny blond girl behind me whips off her sandals. Then she proceeds to shove a sandal against my butt.

“You're on my blanket,” she informs me.

“Oh.” The edge of her blanket is overlapping my sheet. By about three millimeters. “I think your blanket is on top of my sheet.”

The tiny blond girl chomps her gum. “That's how far it spreads out.”

“You're lucky. I didn't even get to spread my sheet out all the way.”

“But you have enough room.”

“My boyfriend's coming later. There's barely enough room for the two of us.”

“That sucks.” For a second I think she's going to offer to pull her enormous blanket back a little to make enough room for D. Instead she says, “You're still on my blanket.” Her beady eyes are defiant.

Seriously with this?

I scooch up two millimeters. Then I take my book out and start reading so she'll stop hounding me. I am the only one reading. Everyone else is laughing with friends and spreading out picnics and reclining on their fully unfurled blankets. I either need to come to movie night every week until I master the mad dash or never come again. Can't decide yet.

The buildings surrounding the park are beautiful. They remind me of when I was younger, watching movies that took place in New York. I would watch movies like
The Family Man
and
In Good Company
, longing for the time when I could live here. Even when I read books that took place in New York, I knew this was my true home. Sitting here alone surrounded by clusters of friends talking and laughing and eating their picnic dinners, I try to feel like I belong. That feeling I had before about blending in with real New Yorkers is gone. Now I feel out of place by myself, adrift in a sea of groups.

The sky melts periwinkle into azure. I sit up, craning my neck above the crowd to see if D is looking for me. He was supposed to meet me here at six. But it's almost seven and I still don't see him. He can't call me on my
nonexistent cell phone. I would borrow someone's phone to call him, but I don't want to seem even more pathetic than I undeniably am. All I can do is wait and hope we see each other in this insane crowd.

I wait. And wait. And wait.

Reading is impossible. I'm afraid that I'll miss D while I'm staring down at my page. I keep reading a sentence, scanning the crowd for D, then glancing down to read the same sentence all over again. Some girls on a sheet next to me are giving me weird looks. They're sharing food containers from a big Zabar's bag, passing around roasted chicken and macaroni salad and sautéed red potatoes. You are not supposed to read here. You are not supposed to come alone. You are supposed to be eating your gourmet picnic dinner with your friends and laughing hysterically like you're having the time of your life. If I were those girls, I'd be giving me weird looks, too.

I scan the crowd again. Not only am I trying to find D, I want to make it obvious that I'm not here alone. Or that I won't be alone for much longer. I have a boyfriend. He's meeting me here. He wants to be with me. I exaggerate the motion of looking around, turning my head more than I need to so anyone looking at me knows that I'm waiting for someone.

My thumb is snapping against my middle finger again. I really need to get this nervous tic under control. How long have I been snapping? Have I been sitting here snapping
like a spaz the whole time? I put my other hand over my snapping fingers to calm myself. Just like D put his hand over mine when he caught me snapping at Press Lounge.

The Zabar's food containers smell amazing. My stomach growls. I grabbed a bagel on the way over here, thinking that would be enough for dinner. But these elaborate picnic spreads are making me hungry.

The azure sky blends into the darkest shade of blue. The guy who set up the flip-flops barrier is telling a loud story involving a blue French horn on the wall of a restaurant. The Zabar's girls are eating cheesecake drizzled with caramel and chocolate, gushing over how good it is. The tiny blond girl behind me is popping her gum as her boyfriend rubs her back. I am alone and miserable. Should I get up and look for D? Not if I want to get back to my spot. Once I leave my sheet, it will either get covered with overspill from the surrounding groups or I won't be able to find my way back. Either way I have to stay put.

The movie starts. I point my eyes at the screen. I try not to cry.

My boyfriend stood me up. I've never been stood up before. Probably because I've never had a boyfriend before. Although you'd think a boyfriend would be less likely to stand you up than a casual date. There's a chance we missed each other. But the sick twisting in my stomach tells the truth. He was never here.

Of course this is happening on Friday the 13th. Classic.

D will blame this on me not having a cell phone. That tends to be what people do when they are running late or decide not to show up because a better offer came along. But I don't think a cell phone would change anything. D would call and tell me he's not coming. Or I would call him to find out he's not here. Yeah, already picked up on that.

The tiny blond girl behind me is leaning back against her boyfriend, a wide pool of free blanket space around them. She's leaning the way I leaned back against D at Central Park movie night. I wonder if that night was remotely as intense for him as it was for me. Does he even care about me the way I care about him? Making time for him is my priority. But he's been working late at his internship, putting in extra hours to get a stellar recommendation letter for grad school. Between that and hanging out with Shayla, it feels like he's slipping away.

Maybe I just have to get used to him working late. Everyone seems to work late in New York. Sadie told me that even people like teachers who leave work earlier take home tons of work. She's seen lots of teachers in cafés grading fat stacks of papers. New York runs on the energy of millions of people with the strongest career drives and the highest aspirations. D will be like that when he starts working on Wall Street. He's already like that now.

What if we stay together? What if we're still a couple after he's done with grad school and he's starting out as an
investment banker? D told me those new guys put in the longest hours. They can work 110-hour weeks with no days off. That only gives you eight free hours a day. Would D choose to be with me during those few free hours? Even if he did, he would still have to sleep. Is our relationship enough of a priority for him? Will he get sucked into the Wall Street world so hard that his obsession with success will push him to work longer hours than he needs to?

When we first started going out, I was okay with not seeing D every day. I wasn't even sure if I liked him enough to want a relationship with him. But everything's different now. I'm different now.

Now I'm in love.

Sitting alone in the crowd, I wonder if moving here was the right decision. Yes, New York City has been my dream forever. And yes, I love it here. But it might be too hard to try to survive in an outrageously expensive city when I'm barely scraping by.

I tilt my head back and look up. I can't see the stars. Somehow along the way, the stars got lost. Before I came here, I knew where I was going. I had a clear vision of how I would achieve my goals. There was an inner light guiding me, pushing me forward on the days when I was afraid. But now, under a purple sky without stars, I feel like I've lost my way, lost my sense of direction, lost the light that was guiding me.

Maybe some dreams are not meant to come true.

I HAVE TO GIVE DARCY
credit for cooking Logan dinner. If Darcy were a
National Geographic
subject, the kitchen would not be considered part of her natural habitat. I felt bad that her dinner was kind of a bust. She just took on too much. But it freaking rules that she never gave up. Even after smacking the smoke detector to smithereens. I'll have to talk to the landlord about replacing it. Or am I supposed to call UNY student housing? I don't want them to know we smashed the smoke detector. If they think we're rowdy, they might not let us stay here freshman year.

After calming Darcy down enough to get ready for Logan, I left to give them private time. I thought about calling Brooke and some other friends to get together, but I decided to go for one of my night walks. Night walks always give me an epic feeling of anticipation. I get so
excited thinking about the possibility of everything. Friday the 13th has always been a lucky day for me. I took ownership of Friday the 13th back in middle school. That's when I decided that just because everyone says a certain day is unlucky doesn't mean it has to be unlucky for me. And it's been a lucky day ever since.

I walk down Perry Street. Tourists are taking pictures in front of Carrie Bradshaw's stoop. Even after all this time,
Sex and the City
fans still migrate here for photos. The brownstone owners must be so over strangers loitering outside their place. They put up a chain at the bottom of the stairs to discourage people from sitting here with their Magnolia cupcakes. I weave my way from Perry to West 11th to Bank, glancing into lit apartment windows. Not in a deranged stalker way. More like in an entranced admiring way. The homes on these streets are gorgeous. They have fireplaces and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and grand staircases. It's not my fault these apartments are so alluring. Or that their blinds are wide open. The people who live there are practically inviting me to look inside.

I start heading back to the apartment after giving Darcy and Logan enough time to have dinner. They'll probably be out hitting the clubs by the time I get home. Walking past Bus Stop Café, I glance at everyone having dinner outside. A cute boy around my age locks eyes with me and smiles. He's sitting at two tables pushed together with three other guys. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a
girlfriend. I walk on by without smiling back. I'm on Sadie Time. I'm on a boy break and loving the idea of it more every day. The single girl thing is super empowering if you let it be. It's Friday night, I have a new self-empowerment book called
Your Dream Life
waiting for me on my bed, a whole season of
Prison Break
to binge-watch, and a pint of Blue Bunny Bordeaux Cherry Chocolate ice cream in the freezer. Plus a bag of fresh cherries I can't wait to dig into. I'm all set.

No one's at the apartment when I get home. Just as I'm settling into the big puffy armchair with my bowl of cherries and the remote, Rosanna comes home.

“Right on time,” I say. “Have you seen the final season of
Prison Break
?”

“Shouldn't I watch season one first?”

“Are you seriously telling me you've never seen
Prison Break
?”

“Is it good?”

My mouth falls open. I pop my eyes at her. The cherries almost go flying out of their bowl. “Is it good?
Good
isn't even—I think the word you're looking for is
spectacular
. Or
phenomenal
. Or
magnificent
.”

“So . . . it's adequate?” Rosanna teases.

“Dude. You must watch this with me right now. You need to watch this show so bad that I will start with the pilot. The final season can wait.”

Rosanna slumps on the couch like a deflated balloon.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

She shakes her head. Then she presses her lips together. Her face scrunches up and she starts crying.

“Oh no!” I go over and sit next to her on the couch, putting my arm around her. “What happened?”

“I got”—Rosanna's voice hitches—“stood up.”

“By Donovan?” That doesn't make any sense.

She nods. She's crying too hard to talk. I get her a glass of water and rub her back until she calms down enough to speak without words catching in her throat.

“He never showed up at Bryant Park,” she says. “I got there before five, like you said. I sat there like a moron until the movie started. I wanted to leave, but I was too embarrassed. And there was no way to get out without stepping on a hundred body parts. Could that place be any more crowded?”

“Sorry you had to sit alone. That sucks. Why didn't you . . .” I was going to ask Rosanna why she didn't call me. I keep forgetting she doesn't have a cell phone. “I would have come to meet you if I'd known.”

“Why wasn't he there?” she asks. I wish I knew the answer.

I look over at the voice mail screen of the house phone. Rosanna told us she was ordering phone service along with internet before we moved in. Darcy and I were cool with splitting the total bill three ways. I wonder how
many other UNY students in our building have a landline. We might be the only ones.

We have new messages.

“He probably called hours ago,” I say. I reach over to play the messages.

Rosanna stops me. “Don't. Nothing he could possibly say would make a difference. He wasn't there. That's all that matters.”

“Are you sure he wasn't there? Finding people in that crowd is ridiculous.”

“He wasn't. I was looking for him the whole time. The people around me thought I was a freak for going to movie night alone. Who does that?” Her eyes fill up again.

“Not you. You were waiting for your boyfriend.”

“Who chose not to be there.”

This isn't the first time Rosanna has sat on this couch all miserable over Donovan. Lately it seems like he makes her more sad than happy. But I don't want to judge. How can I after what I went through with Austin? All I can do is be here for Rosanna. Whatever she needs.

When I put myself in her shoes, I can't believe how strong she is. She moved here with nothing. Rosanna's story reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: “Leap and the net will appear.” She took a giant leap to turn her biggest dream into reality. The net appeared to catch her. I just hope it's strong enough to keep her from falling.

Rosanna sniffs the air. “Is something burning?”

“You mean when Darcy cooked an elaborate dinner for Logan? Which was the first time she ever tried cooking a real dinner? Um, yeah, there was burning involved.”

“What happened?”

I fill Rosanna in on the details, playing up the funny parts to make her laugh. She's smiling by the time I finish.

“Did she really smash the smoke detector that hard?” Rosanna asks.

“Yes! Don't be surprised if you find pieces of it all the way in your room.”

“I wish I could have seen that. How did she even know where the broom was?”

“She asked me to get it for her.”

Rosanna glances back toward our rooms. “Are they here?”

“No.”

“Because it doesn't look like they finished their dinner.”

I look at the table. She's right. The plates of food look like they haven't been touched. How did I not notice that when I came home? “That's weird,” I say. “It doesn't look like they ate anything.”

“Do you think . . .”

“What?”

“Never mind. I don't want to say it out loud.”

“Say it. We're probably both thinking the same thing.”

“Would Logan, like, reject Darcy's dinner? After she
worked so hard on it?”

“It's possible. He doesn't strike me as the most sensitive guy.”

“I know, right? I mean, I'm happy Darcy is happy with him, but . . .”

“We're not founding members of the Logan Fan Club.”

“Exactly.”

Darcy poured her heart into that dinner. It's sad to see the untouched plates sitting there ignored on the table. “Do you think she can trust him?” I ask. “After what he did?”

“Refusing to eat her dinner?”

“No. Breaking up with her before she moved here.”

Rosanna shakes her head. “She must have been in so much pain when we met her. I wish I would have known.”

“I wonder why he broke up with her.”

“Darcy said he couldn't deal with being in love. He told her he got scared.”

“Boys don't get scared of being with a girl. Girls tell themselves the boy got scared to rationalize his behavior after he broke up with them. If a boy wants to be with a girl, he's going to make it happen. A highly reliable source told me that.”

Rosanna is skeptical. “Who?”

“My friend John. Dude tells it like it is. He said guys use excuses like that all the time to justify being cowards. Like
when a guy says he's going to call and then he doesn't? He just wants to make an easy escape without admitting that he's never going to call. Guys don't want heavy confrontations with girls they're not into. They don't want to deal with the repercussions of admitting the truth.” I realize too late that this is probably not what Rosanna wants to hear right now. I should be telling her something more positive about boy behavior. Something that will reassure her that everything will be okay with Donovan. But thinking about Logan and Darcy's abandoned dinner is not inspiring any shiny happy ideas.

“So why do you think Logan really broke up with Darcy?” Rosanna asks.

“I don't know. But he came all the way here to win her back. He gets points for realizing he was wrong.” I'm trying not to let Austin influence my opinion of Logan.

Rosanna leans back against the couch cushions. She pulls one of the cute Graphique de France throw pillows Darcy bought into her lap. “There's something about Logan I don't like. I know that's a horrible thing to say, but there's something off about him.”

“So it's not just me! I totally feel you. Yeah, there's something about him that's not exactly creepy. More like . . .”

“Not right.”

What bothers me about Logan is hard to define. The times I've seen him and Darcy together made me unsettled.
Not because of anything Logan did. He knows how Darcy likes to be treated and he brings it. Rosanna and I were swooning when Darcy told us how he re-created their first three dates in one night. But Darcy isn't completely Darcy when she's with Logan. Darcy doesn't have that sparkle in her eyes that she had when she was with Jude. Even though Rosanna and I have never met Jude, he obviously brought out the best in Darcy. Darcy's energy was shining when she was with Jude. Being around her was like basking in bright sunlight on a clear day. Now her energy is more partly cloudy. Still good. Just not the best it could be.

“Remember the way Darcy lit up when she talked about Jude?” I say. “They seemed perfect for each other.”

“I know.”

“The way she described him, it was like she met a soul mate. She's never talked about Logan that way.”

“Jude was better for her than Logan.”

“Jude was magical. He was literally a magician. He totally—” And then it hits me. An epiphany so big I spring up from the couch. I don't even know how to contain the enormousness of this moment. “We have met Jude.”

“When?”

“In the park! He was the magician we saw the first night here!”

Rosanna contemplates this. “How do you know?”

“I just do.” Darcy never showed us pictures of Jude. She
didn't overshare Jude specifics. But how many magicians perform in Washington Square Park? The way she talked about him, the way she described how he made her feel or his chill surfer-boy Cali vibe or his infectious upbeat attitude . . . the magician we saw had to have been him. I remember telling Rosanna how much I loved him when we were watching his act. I remember how you could feel his radiant positive energy. How could I not have realized this before?

“I had a feeling it was him the first time Darcy was telling me about him,” I say as things keep clicking. “We were having lunch at Chat 'n Chew and I almost said something, but the conversation went in a million directions from there. I totally forgot about that until now.” I gape at Rosanna. “Jude.”

“We love him,” she breathes.

“Yeah we do!” We stopped to watch his show our first night at the apartment. Rosanna had seemed nervous all day. Edgy. Displaced. Imbalanced. I wanted to take her out for a while to have dinner and show her around, hoping a mini tour of her new neighborhood would make her feel more settled. We saw Jude performing with a huge crowd around him laughing and applauding and loving every second. He was so sweet to this little boy watching up front. Jude was freaking adorable.

I'm loving how Friday the 13th keeps getting luckier. I can't keep it in. I bust out a dorky happy dance right
here next to the coffee table. Rosanna whoops and throws the pillow in the air. She catches it smoothly before it can bounce off onto the floor.

“We love Jude for Darcy!” I yell. “And we're going to get them back together!”

Rosanna's smile vanishes. “Wait. What?”

“The only reason they're not together is that Logan showed up. If he had stayed broken up the way he was supposed to, Jude and Darcy would be together.”

“I thought Darcy didn't want a real relationship with Jude.”

“That's only what she said. But the sparkle eyes said something else.”

“But what about Logan?”

“Fine. Pros and cons.” I flop onto the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. “Logan pros. Go.”

“He and Darcy have a ton of history together. You can't underestimate the power of a shared history.”

“Noted. What else?”

“He was her first love. And he did come all the way here to get her back.”

“I did enjoy that real-life movie twist.”