“What thing?”
“The thing where you give me the tiniest kernel of Wyn, then turn things back to me.”
He rubs the back of his head, frowning.
I ask, “Why don’t you like talking about yourself?”
He says, “Remember when you told me you thought you were slow-release hot?”
“I finally stopped falling asleep to that humiliating memory one month ago,” I tell him, “and now I have to start all over.”
He pulls me closer, hooks his arm around my shoulder as we make our way down the frosty, light-strewn sidewalk. After several seconds, he says, “I think I’m slow-release boring.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
I wrap my arms around his waist, beneath his coat. “Tell me,” I say. “Please.”
He hesitates. “It’s just,” he says, “I’m the kind of guy people are always more interested in before they get to know me.”
“Says who,” I ask.
“Take your pick, Harriet.”
My brow knits. He laughs, but it’s shallow.
“I’ve had like ten years to come to terms with this,” he says. “People are interested right up front, but it never lasts. I told you I don’t date friends, and that’s why. Because once I get together with someone, really let them in, the novelty wears off fast. It’s been that way since high school, when girls would come from out of town for the summer, and it’s still that way. I’m not all that interesting.”
“Stop,” I say. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“It’s not,” he says. “Even with Alison. I thought it would work with her, I really did. I figured I’d been going for the wrong people, so I went for someone more like me, who didn’t have all these huge aspirations, so she wouldn’t get bored so fast. Then she broke up with me for her yoga teacher. Said they connected on a deeper level than I was capable of. I’m . . . I don’t know. Simple?”
He sounds self-conscious. My chest aches, like I feel the little sore spot in him, the thorn deep in between layers of muscle. I’d do anything to get it out.
I grab the lapels of his coat and look up into his face. “First of all,” I say, “simple isn’t bad. Second of all, simple isn’t stupid, and you’re not stupid, and I don’t know why you’re always trying to convince yourself you are, but it really is bullshit, Wyn. And lastly, you’re the opposite of slow-release boring. I like you so much more than when we first met. Partly because you actually answer my questions now, instead of turning everything around to flirt.”
His brow lifts. “And what’s the other part?”
“Everything,” I say.
He laughs. “Everything?”
“Yes, Wyn,” I say. “I like your body and your face and your hair and your skin, and I like how you’re always warmer than me, and how you never sit still except when you’re really trying to concentrate on what someone’s saying, and I like how you always fix things without being asked. You’re the only one of us who will actually take out the trash before it’s spilling over. And every time you’re doing anything—going to the store or doing laundry or making yourself breakfast—you’ll always ask if anyone else needs anything, and I like how I know when you’re about to text me from the other side of the room because you make this really specific face.”
He laughs against my cheek. I wish I could swallow the sound, that it would put down roots in my stomach and grow through me like a seed.
He says, “The I want to go down on you face?”
I hug him closer as we pause at a DO NOT WALK sign. “I didn’t have a name for it until now.”
The light changes, but instead of crossing, he draws me around the corner into an alleyway and kisses me against a brick wall until I lose track of time, of space. We become the only two people in the world.
Until a group of fratty drunk guys hollers at us from the street, and even then we don’t stop kissing, our smiles colliding, our hands twisted in each other’s clothes.
When we draw apart, he rests his brow against mine, breathing hard in the cold. “I think I love you, Harriet,” he says.
Love, I think. That’s new. And I’ll never be happy without it again.
Without any forethought, any worry, I tell him the truth. “I know I love you, Wyn.”
He touches my chin, his hand shaking a little, and slides his nose down along mine. “I love you so much, Harriet.”
At home, we gather our friends at the dining room table Wyn rebuilt from scraps for us, all our favorite people looking various degrees of terrified to hear what we have to say. Wyn and I terrified for them to hear it.
“We’re together,” Wyn says, and when no one reacts, he adds, “Together. Harriet and I.”
Sabrina runs to the fridge like she’s planning to vomit in it, only when she throws the door shut, she’s holding a bottle of prosecco, then grabbing mismatched coupes from the shelf over the stove. And Parth is on his feet, pulling Wyn into a hug, then squeezing me tight next, lifting me off the ground. He shakes me back and forth before setting me back down. “About time our boy finally told you how he felt.”
Sabrina pops the cork and starts filling glasses. “You know that now that you’re finally together, you can’t ever break up, right?”
“Don’t put that kind of pressure on them,” Cleo says.
“The pressure’s on whether we admit it or not,” Sabrina says. “If they break up, this”—she waves the bottle between us—“implodes.”
“Lots of people stay friends if they break up,” Cleo says, then quickly to me, “not that you’re going to break up!”
“I’m with Sabrina on this one,” Parth says.
She holds the bottle up as she tries to cup a hand around her ear. “What’s that? Is that just global warming I’m feeling, or has hell frozen over and Parth is actually agreeing with me on something?”
“I’m agreeing with you,” Parth says, “because this time, you’re right. It was bound to happen eventually.”
She rolls her eyes, goes back to filling glasses.
“Harry, I’m serious,” Parth says, setting his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t you dare break my delicate angel’s heart.”
Sabrina snorts. “Oh, come on. Wyn better not break her heart.”
Cleo says, “There’s no need for all this pressure.”
“He would never in a million years hurt her,” Parth says to Sabrina, passing Wyn and me each a glass of champagne. Just like that, they’re back to their old squabbling selves.
“And she’s been secretly obsessed with him for years,” Sabrina argues.
“Speaking of unspoken sexual tension,” Wyn grumbles, waving his glass in their direction. “You two want us to leave you alone for this argument, or can we be done now?”
“Ew!” Sabrina says.
Parth pulls a face. “Thank you, Sabrina.”