“Nope. Not without the key. And you have to live on the park to get one and we don’t. Wah-waaaahh.” He took his peacoat and pulled it around both of us since it was pretty chilly in the atrium. “One day.”
“Maybe,” I said, then looked back up at the night sky. “Maybe you should make a wish.”
“I thought you could only wish on falling stars.”
“I know, but think about it. That’s sort of bad luck if a star falls out of the sky. Like maybe your dreams are burning through the atmosphere!” I covered my mouth in fake terror. “Quick, wish on the ones still in the sky!”
Jesse just shook his head, then looked up. “I wish …”
“No, you can’t say it out loud or it might not come true.”
“There’s a lot of rules here!”
“Just two.”
Jesse sighed and then closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said after a minute. “Wish wished. You wanna get out of here?”
“Yes,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to kiss him. “And I know just where we should go.”
“What? Not to ruin the surprise, but we’re supposed to have dinner at a restaurant that serves a kind of food that rhymes with mooshi.”
“Awww, that’s sweet. You should cancel the reservation.”
“But …”
“C’mon,” I said, taking his arm. “It’s my turn to impress you.”
Chapter 25
“I think,” I told Jesse as we walked up Irving Place, “that bread is my favorite food group. It should be the whole food pyramid.”
“Do they still have the food pyramid?” he asked, drinking water and carrying our bag from Whole Foods on Union Square. I helped to lighten the load by carrying the baguette and eating it as we walked. “Is that still a thing?”
“I think it’s, like, the food rhombus now.”
He started to laugh. “It’s food geometry. Pick a shape, any shape!”
“They could make it a food dodecahedron and as long as it was filled with bread, I’d support it. Oh look, here we are.”
We crossed the street and stood in front of the Gramercy Park gates. “Um, Maggie?” Jesse said. “I’ve stood at this gate before.”
“Oh, you have? Really? Gee, if only you had said something.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Dork, I know you’ve stood here. You told me half an hour ago.”
“So why is this better than sushi?”
“I liked when you said it rhymed with mooshi. That was cute.” I was so excited that I was wiggling around.
“Maggie.”
“Okay, okay, turn around.”
But he just stood there, eyeing me. “Whyyyyy?”
“Becaaaaause.” I took his arm and started to turn him around. “Just trust me, okay? Have some faith. Don’t eat my bread, though, for real.”
Jesse looked a little nervous, as if it were possible for him to look any cuter, and his turn-around was reluctant. Still, he turned, and when he couldn’t see, I fished my old reliable paper clip out of my pocket and popped the lock with almost zero effort, just like Angelo had taught me all those years ago.
“Okay,” I said, opening the gate. “You can look now.”
Jesse’s mouth fell open when he saw what I had done. I had never actually seen anyone be rendered speechless before. “Is this okay?” I asked. “I’m not, like, making you feel bad about your mom, am I?”
“No!” he gasped. “You have a key?”
“It’s probably better if you don’t ask too many questions,” I told him. “Just know that I have my ways.”
He was looking at me like he had never seen me before. “We can just go in?”
“After you.”
“Maggie.”
“C’mon,” I said, “before we get arrested for breaking and entering.”
He walked through the gate like he was afraid it might reach out and grab him, and I followed and carefully shut it behind us. “We probably have to be a little sneaky,” I murmured, “since technically no one’s allowed in here at night, key or not.”
“Sneak away,” he replied, and we went and sat on the bench where Angelo and I had sat on my first day in the city, back when I thought Jesse was a Manhattan rich-kid jerk and that this job would be easy.
Nothing had worked out the way I thought it would.
I showed Jesse my favorite pagoda birdhouse (“Is that a pineapple on top?” he asked. “Because if it is, that is cool”), and we watched the city move around us, blinking lights and sounding horns and people who looked like shadows as they hurried past us. No one knew we were there, hidden by wrought iron and trees older than anyone in the five boroughs.
“Impressed?” I asked after we spent a few minutes just curled up next to each other. The bench could have been a little more comfortable, but I wasn’t complaining.
“I am,” he said. “Impressed and happy. Very, very happy.”
I smiled at him and pretended to fluff my hair. “We make a good team,” I told him. “You and me, running around town, finding cool things to do. We should market this.”
“Nah, let’s keep it our little secret.” Jesse rested his head on top of mine and passed me some strawberries. “Here, eat up. You earned it.”
“You did way more than me,” I admitted. “All I did was bring you here. No big whoop.”