In a New York Minute(79)

I was just yanking the T-shirt over my head when I heard the wood floors creak. “Hey.” It was Franny. Still wet, but this time from the shower. She was wrapped in a cream-colored towel, her hair in ringlets around her face.

“Hey,” I said. “Thank you for the clothes.”

“I thought you’d look good in my high school boyfriend’s Dave Matthews Band shirt and my biggest pair of flannel pants.” She winked, shuffling by me to her dresser. “I hope it’s okay that I put your stuff in the dryer. I read the tags—it’s all machine-washable.”

“Of course,” I said, watching from the bed as she slipped on a pair of gray sweats and a striped long-sleeved shirt.

The whistle of a teakettle piped up from the kitchen. “Be right back.”

I swung my legs over the bed, sliding into the pants. They were a little short but did the trick. I stretched, my body aching in the best way possible. I was still too out of it to really process what had gone down this afternoon. I mean, yes, sex. And more sex. But also words uttered. Body parts touched. Moans and sighs and promises of things.

I followed her trail out into the kitchen, where she stood over two steaming mugs. The groceries we’d picked up earlier were spread out on the counter: bok choy and cucumbers, and tomatoes so juicy they looked like water balloons about to explode, a container of fresh pasta, and some hand-rolled pretzels.

“Thanks.” I grabbed a mug and leaned against the counter, watching her organize and sort.

“So…,” I started.

She glanced at me, a small smile on her face.

“Would you want to hang out tonight?” I asked it at the exact same time as she said, “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

She laughed. “Yes, let’s hang out. As long as it involves eating some of this food.”

“I’m game.” I blew on the tea, inhaling its sharp peppermint scent. “What were you thinking of making?”

“Well, I have fresh pasta, tomatoes, basil, goat cheese, and some arugula, and that baguette I made you lug home.”

“It’s not soaked through?” I asked.

“I think we can make it work,” she said, pressing tentatively on its crust.

“That sounds incredible. You tell me where to start, and I’ll sous-chef for you.”

Franny set me up with a cutting board and a sharp knife, and I set to work chopping tomatoes into small cubes and tossing them in a large bowl. Next to me, Franny washed the arugula and basil, the latter of which she handed off to me to be minced into small pieces and added to the tomato.

With the two of us working together, it wasn’t long before we were setting dishes out on the table, a heaping bowl of fresh pasta with a no-cook tomato sauce between us. Franny had whipped up an arugula salad with lemon and olive oil, and she’d torn the bread into bite-size pieces and toasted it to get a bit of crunch. She poured some wine into a carafe and grabbed two tiny old jam jars from a cabinet. Outside, it was still pouring. Franny shut off the AC and pushed open the windows, letting in crisp air and the sweet smell of rain on concrete. “It’s actually kind of cool out there,” she said. “The air feels good.”

The sounds of the city wafted in as we sat down to eat. Our dinner was simple and bright, full of big, filling flavors. But it was also quiet, with easy banter about our usual weekend activities. Franny liked to catch up on reading and walk around Prospect Park; I tended to run and clean, and watch too much baseball. It was stuff that we did on our own, stuff that suddenly seemed a lot more appealing when imagining doing it with someone else. She told me about the baby shower she’d been dragged into planning with her mom, the endless messages she’d been getting from her for weeks. I gave her the rundown on my Seattle trip and the early talks of maybe opening a San Diego office too.

Later, as I did the dishes, Franny tucked herself back into that corner of the couch, her laptop open and teetering precariously on the edge of the sofa arm as she crafted a reply to Anna’s latest email. I liked seeing her like this, her guard down, relaxed. It felt natural, like we did this every weekend. What if we did this every weekend? I asked myself. What if sometimes I came out to Brooklyn, or she brought her stuff into the city and we walked along the High Line or sat by the fountain at Lincoln Center and watched the people heading into the opera. I hadn’t let myself wonder what it might look like to share the slow moments of my life with someone else again. But they felt immediately brighter imagining Franny there with me.

When I finished, it was inky black outside; the night had somehow snuck up on us, surprised us with darkness. Not that I had been paying attention to anything other than Franny today. I shuffled over to the couch, sitting much closer to her than I had last night. She snapped her laptop shut and placed it on the floor, running a hand down my thigh. “Before you even suggest that it’s time for you to go, I want you to know that I’d love for you to stay. Here. And not just because I want to force you to watch more eighties movies with me.”

“You mean we’re not watching Sixteen Candles?” I placed a chaste kiss on the edge of her neck, where it sloped up to meet her chin.

“I mean, that movie is wildly problematic by today’s standards, so hell, no. And I don’t feel like watching Grease, as shameful as it is that you haven’t seen it.”

“What should we do, then?”