In a New York Minute(93)

And there, under the streetlight, she stood, facing away from me, bouncing on her toes. I took a few steps closer, and I could hear her talking. For a second, I thought she might be on her phone, but then I realized she seemed to be talking to herself.

“Franny?” I said tentatively, still unsure of what she was doing.

She whipped around, her mouth wide-open. “Oh my god,” she said when she saw me, and her face looked slightly horrified. “Did you just hear what I was saying?”

“No,” I said, and seeing her again this close made it hard for my brain to form actual words. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She exhaled, and then said in a wobbly voice, “I’m just going to go for it.”

Her hands were clenched at her sides in fists, and she looked me directly in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with a tilt of her chin. “I’m so sorry. What you did for me when my mom had her heart attack—taking me to the hospital to be with her when you had so much going on—it was so nice of you, and instead of saying thank you, I lashed out at you and said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

I cleared my throat, ran a hand across the back of my neck. I searched my head for words but found nothing.

“Look,” she said, moving her hands to hold them together in front of her chest. “I was really scared, about…honestly, about everything. My mom, and finding my sister, and losing my birth dad, and starting my own business, and my feelings for you. I really let all that crap get in the way of so much stuff, and I’m trying very hard not to do that again. Also, it was so shitty of me not to respond to your messages. I have no excuse, other than I was just scared and a shithead.”

“You’re not a shithead,” I said, trying to follow along with the words firing out of her mouth at rapid speed.

“Occasionally, I can be a shithead,” she said, and I let out a small chuckle at this, because it was so purely Franny, and, god, how I missed her.

“So,” she said, blowing out a sigh, “I’m just going to say it. I love you. I’m in love with you.”

The words sprang out into the air, wrapped themselves around me, made it so I couldn’t move.

“You drive me crazy in all the best ways possible, and spending the last couple of months without you has been the most miserable stretch of my life. I miss talking to you, and how sometimes you say the funniest things.”

Her voice was loud, and emphatic, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman walking her dog who had stopped to listen to our conversation. Who had stopped to watch Franny as she told me she loved me.

“I miss talking to you too,” was all I could get out. There was so much I wanted to say that it was all tangled in a knot inside my brain. I searched for a thread to pull, to yank out the words that could truly articulate how I felt. But there was panic mixed in, too; Franny always knew exactly what to say. What if my response fell flat?

“You’re funny, do you know that?” she asked, waving her hands at me, her hair bouncing slightly as she talked. “And you’re a great listener, and you’re kind. I love how your cheeks do that.” She gestured toward my face, and I reached up to touch my cheeks, as if there were something on them. “When you’re nervous or thinking. Or both. Also, you’re stupidly hot. I know it’s shallow, but I can’t help it. You’re just hot—it’s a fact. And you’re a good kisser.”

She stopped talking and caught her breath. “So yeah,” she said, her voice quieting a little. “I think that’s all of it.”

Every muscle in my body felt tight, pulled like elastic about to break. I had to tell her. Had to find the courage to put my feelings out into the world, just like she had. But instead, I felt stuck, like I’d been planted there, in the cement.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “And you don’t have to accept my apology. I just want you to know that I’m sorry, and that I love you, and that I wish I had never cut you out of my life like I did. But I’m so glad I got to know you, Hayes. Even if it did require my clothes literally falling off my body in public. I would do it all over again just to meet you.”

I took a step closer to where she stood, thinking I could hug her. But instead, I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I don’t know what to say,” I stammered, finally finding some words, though they were all the wrong ones.

“That’s okay.” Her voice cracked, but she was smiling. Her face was shining like I’d never seen it do before, like a brand-new penny. “I should go.”

“Wait, what?” I blinked, trying to process all that was happening in real time.

But before I could say anything else, she bolted, jogging down the block and turning the corner into the darkness of the city. And with her went the opportunity to tell her the one thing I wanted say more than anything: I love you too.





Chapter Twenty-Nine

Franny



It’s funny how just when you think you know what your brain’s going to do, it goes and does the opposite. I thought I was going to spend the night tossing and turning, replaying my interaction with Hayes over and over again. Instead, the second I got home, I crashed. I kicked off my dress and climbed into bed without brushing my teeth. I’d left the party immediately after we spoke, so high and wired from the adrenaline rush of telling him the truth and apologizing that my body just took off for the subway. But then the second it was done and I was back home, something in me hit the mental OFF switch and I passed out before it was even ten o’clock.