Here's to Us(What If It's Us #2)(2)

I don’t know. That’s a problem for One-Hour-in-the-Future Ben.

But I have to get Mario’s beautiful face out of my head, because I’m about to miss my train stop. I jump out of my seat and cross to the platform right as the doors are closing. I’ve got to make sure I’m not late. I’m putting those days behind me. In our creative writing class, Mrs. García would call this “character growth.”

I leave the station and walk down to the Central Park West entrance on Seventy-Second. It doesn’t take me long to spot Dylan and Samantha. They’re on a park bench, playing that game where you have to stare into each other’s eyes and slap the other person’s hands before they can retract them.

Samantha slaps Dylan’s hands. “Gotcha! Four–one. You suck.”

“Hey,” I say as I walk around the bench. “Can I get in on this?”

Dylan smiles. “There’s always room for you in our bed.”

“I didn’t say anything about your bed. I—”

Dylan shushes me as he stands and pulls me into a hug, patting the top of my head. “Missed you, buddy.”

“Missed you, too. Exhausted by you already.”

Dylan’s hair has grown to the point where he’s finally been able to master that man bun he’s been working on, which looks really great on him—and if you ask him, he’s the only person pulling it off. He’s rocking a new Kool Koffee shirt and blue jeans. “There’s a cute little café in the park. Get ready to drink all the espresso shots, my little coffee bean. Coffee Ben? Ben Bean?”

“I vote none of the above,” Samantha says. Her blue-green eyes wow me as much today as when I first met her behind that counter at Kool Koffee. Her dark hair is braided into a Pinterest-ready crown that I should include in my book. She’s wearing a navy shirt tucked into white shorts, and she’s got a silver key hanging from her neck. “Hi, Ben,” she says as she pulls me into a hug.

I’m relieved Dylan hasn’t converted her into someone who aggressively nicknames me.

“Welcome back, guys.”

Samantha’s eyes widen at my shirt. “Oh my Greek goddesses, I love it!”

Dylan grins when he notices. “Those wicked wizards are going to wizard so hard one day.”

There’ve been a lot of changes since Dylan read the book last summer, pre-college, but his support never really died down. Every now and again I’ll get a text from him asking what’s up with Duke Dill, the character I based on him. Dylan has been cheering me on to get a literary agent already, but I’ve become a bit of a perfectionist lately.

I don’t want to let anyone down.

This love is the kind of pressure that gets to me.

“I want a shirt, too,” Samantha says, feeling my sleeve. “Did you make that?”

“Mario did,” I say.

“Super Mario!” Dylan says. “I hope he’s not tired of people calling him that because you know I have to do it.”

“He actually loves it.”

It’s the kind of thing I would find annoying after some time, but not Mario. The closest I’ve seen him to getting upset was when our classmate Spikey gave Mario some harsh critiques on his script, but Mario ultimately shrugged it off because Spikey was just out for blood after Mrs. García called his Civil War short story “historically impossible” and everyone laughed.

“So when is Super Mario popping out of a sewer pipe?” Dylan asks.

“Soonish. He’s coming from the dentist. You’re stuck with me until then.”

“Fantastic,” Samantha says as she loops her arm with mine and we begin our stroll through Central Park. “So things are going well with him?”

“I think so?” I feel a little stupid talking about Mario with Samantha and Dylan. There’s no confusion about their relationship. Whereas Mario and I are more like a question mark paired with an exclamation point—there’s uncertainty and excitement.

“We need to figure out your couple name,” Dylan says. “I think ‘Bario’ has a nice ring to it, though ‘Men’ is chef’s-kiss perfection. Because you’re both dudes and—”

“How was dinner?” I interrupt, turning to Samantha.

“Good save,” she says. “It was fun. Thanks for asking. I think we bounced back from Christmas.”

Samantha’s parents really love Dylan, but when the O’Malleys found out during the winter break that their daughter was sharing a room with him in Chicago, shit hit the fan.

“Dylan was on his best . . . well, better than usual behavior,” Samantha says. “I’m sorry again we had to cancel on the escape room.”

“Don’t worry about it. We have all summer.”

Dylan wraps his arms around my shoulders. “Big Ben, we know the escape room is your big ploy to get locked in a room with me for an hour. You don’t need excuses, okay?”

“Dude, your girlfriend is right here.”

“Oh, please, get him off me for an hour,” she says.

Dylan winks. “See, the missus is cool with it.”

I stop at a pretzel cart because all I’ve eaten this morning was a bite of a toasted bagel with jelly that Ma made for me on my way out of the apartment. In true Ben Alejo fashion, I dropped it on the subway tracks while taking that selfie for Mario, and a rat ran off with it; if I gave a single damn about TikTok, I probably could’ve gone viral.