Tyler’s eyebrows slowly arch. “I’m guessing it didn’t go that great.”
Cocking my head to one side and glancing over his shoulder, I run my eyes over Snake and Emily. They’re in the kitchen, arguing with plates in their hands while waving cutlery around. In this apartment, making lunch is always a group task, and it never runs smoothly. I look back to Tyler and sigh, saying, “I swear, you better be worth all of this. You better be worth losing Dean and you better be worth arguing with Rachael for.”
Almost in slow motion, the corners of Tyler’s lips pull up into the smallest of smirks. He takes a step toward me, his eyes smoldering. “I don’t know about that,” he says quietly, “but I really hope so.” His smirk widens into a grin, mirroring my own smile, both our faces aglow. Carefully, he cups my jaw with one hand and leans down to kiss me.
“Hey!” Snake yells from the kitchen. It’s so abrupt that Tyler and I immediately pause, flinching away from each other before our lips can even brush. We both flash our eyes over to Snake, only to find that he and Emily are staring back at us from behind the kitchen counter. They’re both smiling, their expressions playful. With a plate in his hand, Snake points it toward us. “No immoral kissing in the living room!”
And for once, all four of us laugh.
29
Four days later, I’m struggling to accept that my time in New York has come to an end. For an entire year I counted down the days until I could come to the city, and now the experience I was so excited about is all over. My six weeks are up. Tyler’s year here is done. It’s time to head back to Santa Monica and the beach and the promenade and the pier. It’s time for us to go home.
As I’m rolling my suitcase into the living room, I’m beginning to feel nostalgic. It’s true what people say about New York City—it really, really is incredible. I’ll miss being woken up by the sound of the traffic outside. I’ll miss the constant flow of people on the sidewalks. I’ll miss riding the godawful subway. Central Park. The endless buzz of noise. Baseball. The hard accents. I think I’ll miss every single thing about this city, and it’s clear now why it’s so iconic.
“Are you ready?” I hear Tyler ask as he walks up behind me.
I glance over my shoulder to him and wistfully sigh, my smile sad. “I guess so.”
He looks younger today, mostly due to the fact that this morning he decided to shave completely. Now there’s no stubble whatsoever and his jaw is smooth and bare. It’s knocked a few years off him, so he looks nineteen for once. Walking across the room, he dumps his black duffel bag on the couch and then turns back to face me, eyeing up my suitcase. It’s completely overpacked. It could be that I’ve bought a lot of stuff while I’ve been in the city or it could be that everything has just been thrown in carelessly, but either way, it looks so huge that I’m starting to worry that my luggage will be over the weight limit. It took me five minutes to zip it up, and even now I can see it threatening to burst open.
“You know, you could have just shipped half your stuff when I did,” Tyler says, finally letting out a laugh. When he walks over, he tilts my suitcase onto the floor and crouches down, opening it. I fold my arms across my chest and watch him as he grabs a pile of my things, then moves back across the room to place them into his own luggage. “Try it now,” he says.
Rolling my eyes, I attempt to zip up my suitcase once more, and this time it closes much more willingly. I straighten up and smile, and then quickly dart into his bedroom one last time to grab my shoes and my backpack. They’re both lying on the floor, but before I scoop them up I run my eyes over the room. It’s completely bare. No posters on the walls. Nothing in the closet. The room usually smells like Tyler, of cologne and firewood, but not today. Today the room is empty. Tyler’s car and the majority of his belongings were shipped across the country three days ago.
The past few days, we’ve hardly been in the apartment. We’ve been too busy trying to fill our final days with as many memories as possible, like revisiting the main tourist attractions once more before we leave and searching for coffee shops that we haven’t yet stopped at and playing baseball again at Central Park and spending an entire day traveling between each of the four other boroughs. Last night, Tyler even took me to Pietrasanta again to conclude our summer the exact same way we started it, and it couldn’t have been any more perfect.
Slipping on my Converse and carrying my backpack through into the living room, I frown. Tyler’s smile fades, his expression questioning. “I don’t want to go home,” I admit.