RaeLynn points to me, laughing ever so sweetly. “This guy? He’s been in love with you since . . . What would you say, Leo? Since the wedding, for sure. But I’m betting, based on the way he looked at you in those photos, that it was well before then.” The powder keg explodes. RaeLynn smiles gleefully, and she might as well rub her hands together and cackle. “Like I said, it’s so wonderful when true love prevails after all this time.”
Lulu’s shocked expression is time-lapse photography, like she’s flipping through the images of us in her mind. “Leo, is this true?”
“Oh, you didn’t know?” RaeLynn’s jaw drops dramatically. Briefly, I wonder how long she practiced that move last night while munching on popcorn and trawling through the bowels of Facebook.
But more importantly, I wonder if Lulu regrets some, most, or all of last night.
No matter what her answer is, my answer to her question remains the same.
“Yes.”
32LULU
What hits you in the chest but has no mass? What radiates in your bones but has no weight?
Shock.
My posture stiffens, and words tumble along my tongue. How? When? What?
But they’re stuck behind the trapdoor of my mouth where I catch them all.
Suddenly, every moment with Leo over the last ten years flashes in my mind. The times we played Monopoly late into the night. The riddle book he gave me. The coffee before the intervention. The night Tripp had to work when I scored Lady Gaga tickets, and Leo said he’d come with me instead. The evening the three of us climbed the fence and pretended to be richie-rich folks in the city’s exclusive Gramercy Park.
Did he scale the fence for me? Did he give me the riddle book because he was in love with me, or because we were friends? Does he even like Lady Gaga?
Vivian makes a show of looking at her watch, smiling like all is right in the world, then says she has to take off for an appointment and it was great seeing us. She leaves. Ginny, Noah, and the rest of the scavenger hunt crew are still here nearby. They must have checked us back in for the challenge. But I can’t focus on any of that.
“Let’s talk about this privately,” Leo says, and I nod catatonically then follow him to a bench on Central Park West, across from the famous building where John Lennon was shot.
I’m iconic and a legend lost his life outside me.
What is the Dakota?
But even riddles can’t distract me from this strange new intel.
I face Leo. “Ten years?”
His eyes tell the truth, all vulnerability. “Since the day I met you.”
Ground, meet jaw.
“Really?”
“I don’t know if it was love then, but it was something. In class when we talked, I was captivated. You were captivating.”
It feels like I’ve had amnesia and am waking up and learning who’s my friend, who’s my family, and who’s not. “I was?”
“Completely. But then Tripp talked to you over lunch, and it was clear.”
“What was clear?”
“You two had hit it off.”
I don’t recall falling for Tripp immediately. I didn’t even think of him romantically until he asked me out. But as I try to cycle back to that fateful day, I suppose I can see that it came across that way. “And that was all it took?”
“That was all it took, Lulu. I fell for you that day, but I don’t think it was love until a few months later. Not until the night you came over and brought chocolate and a bag of popcorn and we played Monopoly, and you were the most aggressive Monopoly player I’d ever encountered.”
That night blinks in bright colors. “You liked that I took no prisoners in a board game?”
“You were ruthless, and you caught popcorn like a seal, and you made some chocolate squares with coconut, and you said, ‘Try it.’ And it was amazing, and I told you so.”
“Were you just blowing smoke up my skirt?” The question is sarcastic, but there’s confusion under it. Does this new wrinkle in our story change everything that came before it?
“No! I fucking meant it. I’m not a liar. But maybe you see me that way.”
“No, I don’t. I swear I don’t.” My voice sounds desperate, but I’m desperately trying to reenter the data of our friendship and process it anew.
“That was the night I knew I was in love with you, and I didn’t know how to stop it.”
My heart expands, and yet it turns the other way at the same time. It’s wonderful and weird simultaneously to learn that his feelings started a decade ago, not a few weeks.
“Does this freak you out?”
I nod. “A little.”
He takes my hand and squeezes. “I could give you a million reasons, Lulu, but they all add up to this—love isn’t rational. I don’t even know that it’s reasonable or makes any sense at all. You were vibrant and funny and daring. The more time we spent together, the deeper I fell. Your heart, your humor, your you-ness.”
I want to fling my arms around him, smother him in kisses, and say, Let’s go home and revel in this.
