Chapter 121 (1/2)

“The walk to work, of course,” he says as if it’s the most obvious answer.

Loving the gesture, I nod and, grinning like an idiot, follow him out the front door.

Walking through the streets of New York with Hardin is slightly on the strange side. He fits in here, his style and the way he’s dressed, but at the same time he seems to fill the street with his voice, his animated expressions lighting up the dreary day.

“The one, well, one of the problems that I have with this city is this . . .” He waves his hand through the air. I wait a second for him to elaborate. “The sun is hidden,” he says at last.

His boots smack loudly on the pavement as we walk, and I find that I love the sound. I missed it. It’s one of the smaller things about him that I hadn’t realized I loved until after I left him. I would find myself alone, walking down the loud streets of the city, and miss the noisy way Hardin always stomped around in his boots.

“You live in rainy Washington—you can’t bash New York’s lack of sun,” I counter.

He laughs and changes the subject, asking me random questions about the world of waitressing. The rest of the walk to work is nice; Hardin asks question after question about what I’ve been doing for the last five months, and I tell him about my mother, David, and his daughter. I tell him about Noah’s spot on the soccer team at his college in California, and how my mother and David took me back to the same town that I went to with Hardin’s family.

I tell him about my first two nights in the city, and how the noise kept me up all night, and how on the third night I climbed out of bed and took a walk around the block, and that’s when I met Joe for the first time. I tell him that the sweet homeless man reminds me of my father in a way, and I like to think that bringing him food is helping him in a way that I couldn’t my own blood.

This confession has Hardin reaching to pull my hand into his, and I don’t try to pull away.

I tell him about how worried I was about moving here, and also that I’m glad he’s here visiting us. He doesn’t mention the way he refused to have sex with me and then teased me until I finally fell asleep in his arms. He doesn’t mention his marriage offer, and I’m okay with that. I’m still trying to make sense of this, as I’ve been trying to make sense of the way I feel about him since he crashed into my life a year ago.

When Robert meets me at the corner, the way he does when we work shifts together, Hardin moves closer, holds my hand a little tighter. Neither of them say much; they just eye each other up, and I roll my eyes at the way men behave in the presence of a woman.