Tonight the Streets Are Ours

But I couldn’t think about what I’d do if she wasn’t there. I still don’t know what I would have done.

It’s impossible to get a taxi on New Year’s Eve, so I took the subway from Julio’s, and then I ran the remaining blocks to the bookstore. It was cold, of course, my breath coming out in crystalline gasps, but I couldn’t slow down, because I couldn’t miss her, I couldn’t afford to miss her.

When I got to the bookstore, it was a bit past 11pm, and no one was around. The store was closed, the iron grate pulled down over its windows. No Bianca.

I checked my phone. I checked my phone over and over. No Bianca. And when the clock struck midnight, my phone chimed with a hundred “Happy New Year!” text messages, and none of them were from Bianca. That glittery ball in Times Square must have fallen, but I was in no position to see it.

All I wanted was another chance. I didn’t need her to feel about me the way I feel about her. I only wanted her to try.

Just as I was about to admit defeat and go home alone into a new year, she appeared under a streetlight in front of me.

“That message,” she said. Her laugh formed a cloud of air in front of her mouth. “How did you do that?”

I shrugged. Tried to play it cool. “A magician never reveals his tricks.”

“What even made you think I’d be watching?” she asked.

“You said you would be. That day, in the park…” Though it was so hard to reconcile that summer afternoon with us here, now, in the freezing cold dead of night.

“You remember that?” She sounded surprised.

“I…? Of course I do.” I remember everything you’ve ever said to me, I wanted to tell her.

“Well, I wasn’t watching,” she said. I blinked at her. “But lucky for you, my friend was. She freaked out when she saw my name. She was like, “It’s you, it’s you!” And I thought she was being ridiculous. But it was me, huh?”

“It was.” Now that she was here, I didn’t even really know what to say. “What took you so long?”

“It’s really hard to get a taxi on New Year’s,” she said.

She stepped forward, and I pulled her toward me, I wrapped my arms around her, and we’ve been together ever since.

Arden broke away from the screen. They were together again. And they had been for three months now.

Of course she could have known this if she’d just read ahead in his blog. There’d been no rule that she had to read it in chronological order, even though that was how Peter experienced it. She could have learned his life in any order she’d wanted, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t skipped ahead, except that she hadn’t wanted to miss anything.

Now Arden felt something really intensely, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She was happy for Peter that he and Bianca got back together, of course. That was the way it should be. It was like Beauty and the Beast making amends, Prince Charming giving Sleeping Beauty her kiss of life. Balance was once again restored, and what was halved was now whole.

But it also felt like Peter had been taken away from her. Like if he weren’t now Bianca’s, he could have somehow been Arden’s.

But that didn’t make any sense. With or without a girlfriend, he was never going to belong to Arden. After all, she didn’t even know him. And he didn’t know her. They didn’t know each other at all.

And that was the thing that she was feeling so intensely. She just didn’t know the word for it.

Anyway. She wasn’t alone. Peter had Bianca again now, and Arden—Arden was fine. She had Chris.

She leaned over and kissed her boyfriend. He wasn’t expecting it, and his mouth was a little slow to move against hers. When she tried to deepen the kiss, Chris pulled away. “Come on, babe,” he said. “We’re in public.” He waved toward their classmates on stage, none of whom was paying them the slightest bit of attention in between their coordinated “beep beep beeps” and “weee-ooos.”