The Geography of You and Me(66)

That first time, during the blackout, they’d met as strangers. Then in San Francisco, they’d met as friends, eager to find out whether the strange magnetic pull they felt toward each other was real or an illusion.

But this time, Owen wasn’t sure what to think.

When there was nothing but space between you, everything felt like a leap.

As the bus began to ease into the Lincoln Tunnel, the phrase came to him all at once, pulled from a memory like an echo: It is what it is.

He smiled as he remembered Lucy’s objection to the words, but he realized now that she was wrong. It was true that things could always change. But it was also true that some things remained as they were, and this was one of them: nine months ago, he’d met a girl in an elevator, and she’d been on his mind ever since.

All around him, the other passengers were blinking into the deep black of the tunnel, but not Owen. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he could see it just as clearly in the dark.





44


They stood in the quiet of the apartment, the last of the day’s light coming through the windows at a slant, and neither spoke. Finally, Lucy dropped her bag, and the sound of it seemed to echo for a long time.

“It looks the same,” she said, not sure whether she meant that as a good thing or a bad thing. The place had a hushed quality to it, left on its own all this time with only the occasional cleaning lady for company. She kept half-expecting to hear her brothers laughing in the next room, or the sound of her father’s voice as the front door creaked open. “It doesn’t feel the same, though.”

“It’s just been so long,” her mother said, trailing a hand along the back of the couch as she walked over to the window. “Too long.”

Lucy glanced at her, where she was silhouetted against the orange sky, the sun burning itself down in the reflections behind her. “It’s been forever,” she said, and Mom looked over her shoulder.

“Not quite,” she said with a smile. “Maybe just half a forever.”

Once they’d walked through the apartment from end to end—poking their heads in the bathrooms and laughing at the things they’d left behind, surveying bedrooms and rummaging through the cabinets like tourists in their own home, picking it over for memories and souvenirs, marveling at the sheer oddity of being back after so long—Lucy announced that she was going out.

“You’re welcome to come…” she said, but she trailed off in a way that made Mom laugh.

“Go,” she said. “I know you’re just going to wander endlessly, and my feet will only get tired.” She paused, glancing out the window, where the sky had gone from pink to gray. “Just be careful, okay? It’s been a while since we’ve been in the big bad city.”

Lucy smiled. “It’s not so bad.”

“Where do you go anyway?” she asked. “When you walk?”

“Nowhere,” she said with a shrug, then changed her mind. “Everywhere,” she corrected, and they left it at that.

In the hallway, she punched the button for the elevator, already trying to decide where to go first—Riverside Park or Central Park, uptown or downtown—but when the doors opened with that familiar ding and she stepped inside, she found herself stalled there. Her hand was inches from the button that would take her to the lobby, but instead—without even thinking about it—she sent the car moving up, the ground lifting beneath her feet, and she raised her chin and watched the dial go from the twenty-fourth floor to the twenty-fifth and on and on until the doors opened onto the little hallway that formed an entrance to the roof.

She had no idea why she had come. Tomorrow, she would see Owen. In less than twenty-four hours, they would be together. It wasn’t long to wait. But still, when she’d thought of him over the past months, this had been the backdrop, unfamiliar and slightly magical, and now she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to see it again.

He’d told her once that the door was left open sometimes, and she’d been amazed at this, astonished that she could have lived her whole life in a building and never known such a place existed.

Now she held her breath as she twisted the metal knob of the door, and when it turned, she used her shoulder to open it the rest of the way, then grabbed a nearby brick to use as a doorstop, propping it open a few inches so it wouldn’t lock behind her.

When she turned around, she felt her lungs expand, happy for no other reason than to be alone up here beneath a sky like a chalkboard, the night still new and unwritten. The city was spread before her, all twinkling lights and staggering scale, and it occurred to her that until she met Owen, she’d been living her life on a map, when really the world is a globe: three-dimensional and full of possibility.

With the breeze on her face and the distant fog of noise below, it took her a moment to register the click of the door falling shut somewhere behind her. She spun around, her thoughts wild as her thumping heart—expecting to find herself stranded up here, cursing herself for not wedging the brick better—but then she saw the figure by the door, and all this melted away.

“You’re early,” he said, but it didn’t feel that way to Lucy.

To her, it felt like it had been forever.





45


It was hard to tell exactly how it had happened or who had moved first, but suddenly there they were: standing only inches apart in the middle of the inky black roof, the air between them electric. Owen opened his mouth to say something, to explain his presence here, to make some sort of a joke, but then he changed his mind, because he was tired of talking, at least for the moment, done passing words between them. All he wanted to do right now was kiss her.