What If It's Us(2)

I mean it. Holy mother of shit. Cutest boy ever. Maybe it’s the hair or the freckles or the pinkness of his cheeks. And I say this as someone who’s never noticed another person’s cheeks in my life. But his cheeks are worth noticing. Everything about him is worth noticing. Perfectly rumpled light brown hair. Fitted jeans, scuffed shoes, gray shirt—with the words Dream & Bean Coffee barely visible above the box he’s holding. He’s taller than me—which, okay, most guys are.

He’s still looking at me.

But twenty points to Gryffindor, because I manage to smile up at him. “Do you think they parked their tandem bicycle at the mustache-wax parlor?”

His startled laugh is so cute, it makes me light-headed. “Definitely the mustache-wax parlor slash art gallery slash microbrewery,” he says.

For a minute, we grin at each other without speaking.

“Um, are you going in?” he asks finally.

I glance up at the door. “Yeah.”

And I do it. I follow him into the post office. It’s not even a decision. Or if it is, my body’s already decided. There’s something about him. It’s this tug in my chest. It’s this feeling like I have to know him, like it’s inevitable.

Okay, I’m about to admit something, and you’re probably going to cringe. You’re probably already cringing, but whatever. Hear me out.

I believe in love at first sight. Fate, the universe, all of it. But not how you’re thinking. I don’t mean it in the our souls were split and you’re my other half forever and ever sort of way. I just think you’re meant to meet some people. I think the universe nudges them into your path.

Even on random Monday afternoons in July. Even at the post office.

But let’s be real—this is no normal post office. It’s big enough to be a ballroom, with gleaming floors and rows of numbered PO boxes and actual sculptures, like a museum. Box Boy walks over to a short counter near the entrance, props the package beside him, and starts filling out a mailing label.

So I swipe a Priority Mail envelope from a nearby rack and drift toward his counter. Super casual. This doesn’t have to be weird. I just need to find the perfect words to keep this conversation going. To be honest, I’m normally really good at talking to strangers. I don’t know if it’s a Georgia thing or only an Arthur thing, but if there’s an elderly man in a grocery store, I’m there price-checking prune juices for him. If there’s a pregnant lady on an airplane, she’s named her unborn kid after me by the time the plane lands. It’s the one thing I have going for me.

Or I did, until today. I don’t even think I can form sounds. It’s like my throat’s caving in on itself. But I have to channel my inner New Yorker—cool and nonchalant. I shoot him a tentative grin. Deep breath. “That’s a big package.”

And . . . shit.

The words tumble out. “I don’t mean package. Just. Your box. Is big.” I hold my hands apart to demonstrate. Because apparently that’s the way to prove it’s not an innuendo. By spreading my hands out dick-measuringly.

Box Boy furrows his brow.

“Sorry. I don’t . . . I swear I don’t usually comment on the size of other guys’ boxes.”

He meets my eyes and smiles, just a little. “Nice tie,” he says.

I look down at it, blushing. Of course I couldn’t have worn a normal tie today. Nope. I’m wearing one from the Dad collection. Navy blue, printed with hundreds of tiny hot dogs.

“At least it’s not a romper?” I say.

“Good point.” He smiles again—so of course I notice his lips. Which are shaped exactly like Emma Watson’s lips. Emma Watson’s lips. Right there on his face.

“So you’re not from here,” Box Boy says.

I look up at him, startled. “How did you know?”

“Well, you keep talking to me.” Then he blushes. “That came out wrong. I just mean it’s usually only tourists who strike up conversations.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t mind, though,” he says.

“I’m not a tourist.”

“You’re not?”

“Okay, I’m not technically from here, but I live here now. Just for the summer. I’m from Milton, Georgia.”

“Milton, Georgia.” He smiles.

I feel inexplicably frantic. Like, my limbs are weird and loose, and my head’s full of cotton. I’m probably electric bright red now. I don’t even want to know. I just need to keep talking. “I know, right? Milton. It sounds like a Jewish great-uncle.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I actually do have a Jewish great-uncle Milton. That’s whose apartment we’re staying in.”

“Who’s we?”

“You mean who do I live with in my great-uncle Milton’s apartment?”

He nods, and I just look at him. Like, who does he think I live with? My boyfriend? My twenty-eight-year-old smoldering-hot boyfriend who has big gaping holes in his earlobes and maybe a tongue piercing and a tattoo of my name on his pec? On both pecs?

“With my parents,” I say quickly. “My mom’s a lawyer, and her firm has an office here, so she came up at the end of April for this case she’s working on, and I totally would have come up then, but my mom was like, Nice try, Arthur, you have a month of school left. But it ended up being for the best, because I guess I thought New York was going to be one thing, and it’s really another thing, and now I’m kind of stuck here, and I miss my friends, and I miss my car, and I miss Waffle House.”