Here's to Us(What If It's Us #2)(3)

“Do you guys want one?” I ask.

“I filled up on fruit,” Samantha says. “Dylan had leftover duck for breakfast.”

“Shhh,” Dylan says. “There are ducks in the park.”

“Do you think the ducks are going to attack?”



“A good old-fashioned quack attack, yes.”

Samantha shakes her head. “Why do I . . . why do I anything with you?”

“Because the D Machine is too irresistible.”

“Gross, man,” I say.

“Oh, that just stands for the Dylan Machine. I call my friend downstairs the—”

Samantha claps her hand over his mouth. A true hero of our times.

“D—uh, Dylan, do you want coffee?”

Dylan looks around. “From where?”



I gesture at the pretzel cart.

“Very cute, Ben. You know I’m not drinking that bastard coffee.” Dylan turns to the vendor. “I mean no offense to you, good sir, and great offense to the clowns who loaded your fine cart with that mess.”

The vendor stares at Dylan as if he’s speaking another language.

“You’re hyper enough anyway,” I say.

“We pregamed with a Dream & Bean double espresso.”

“Duck and coffee for breakfast. Figures.”

“Stop acting like this is day one of knowing me.”

It’s definitely not day one. We’ve been best friends since elementary school, though ever since Dylan left for college, the distance has had an impact on us.

“You better not have a caffeine crash before lunch with Patrick,” Samantha says.

“Patrick,” Dylan says and spits on the ground. “Get better best friends, babe. Do you see Ben going on and on and on and on and on and on about how he’s swimming with dolphins and hugging monkeys?”

“I’m not doing those things,” I say.

“Neither is Patrick,” Samantha says with a side-eye. “Patrick took a gap year to travel with his cousin.”

A gap year sounds great. Gap years sound even better.

“Join us for lunch, Ben. You’ll see how extra this guy is.”

“Are you really calling someone extra, D?”

“That should give you a sense of how extra-extra this guy is!”

“I can’t. I have work in a couple hours.”

“Tell your boss that royalty is in town.”

“You know I can’t.”

My boss is my father. Pa got promoted to manager at Duane Reade during the holiday season. He hired me in April to work the cash registers and help out with stocking the shelves. Beginning work right before finals only made classes harder, but I didn’t get a ton of sympathy from my parents, who worked full-time during college.

“You’ll meet Patrick some other time,” Samantha says. “He’s home for the next two months. Maybe we can all do an escape room together.”

“You’re not locking me in a room with Patrick for an hour,” Dylan says.

“Even more incentive for you to solve the puzzles sooner.” Samantha playfully elbows me. “We can totally invite Mario, too.”

“Maybe.” My phone buzzes. “Speaking of Super Mario.” I read his text, saying that he’s walking over now. “He’s on the way. Should we camp out here so we’re easier to find?”

Dylan stares into the distance and points at the Belvedere Castle terrace. That spot always feels like it was plucked out of a fantasy novel and dropped into Central Park. “Tell your boy we’ll be there.”

“He’s not my boy.”

“Yet.”

It’s funny, the last time Dylan and I were at Belvedere was shortly after I met Arthur at the post office. We hadn’t gotten each other’s names before a flash mob separated us, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him, so Samantha did some Nancy Drew-ing using some details from my conversation with Arthur to figure out the best way to find him. She discovered a meetup for Yale students happening at the Belvedere Castle, and since Arthur had mentioned wanting to go to school there, I gave it a shot. Dylan decided we needed pretentious code names to attend the event, and he chose Digby Whitaker for himself, which I only still remember because I gave that name to a scholar in TWWW.

I came here looking for one boy two years ago, and now I’m asking another to find me here.

Without even looking, Dylan’s hand finds Samantha’s and they go upstairs together.

Holding hands is a simple act, I get it, but it’s really nice to see a couple two years in who still like each other—love each other. I’ve never personally experienced that. It gives me hope that someone will feel the same way about me.

We climb up the terrace and stop in our tracks. Normally it’s pretty chill up here, just people posing with the park in the background. But today there’s a wedding happening. It’s intimate, only a dozen casually dressed people and a band playing a soft instrumental version of “Marry You” by Bruno Mars. I’m about to drag Dylan and Samantha away so we don’t photobomb the event when the bride begins marching out.



I’m frozen in my tracks.

I think I know the bride . . .

Back when I met Arthur at the post office, that flash mob was actually a proposal for the teller who was helping me send my first ex, Hudson, a box of his things. It was too pricey, and this woman wasn’t sympathetic to me. But she’s glowing now with a black silk wrap around the shoulders of her simple white dress, smiling with a big lip ring.