“In the winter I get a grande triple caramel macchiato. In the summer I do the iced tea infusion thingy. The dragon fruit one.”
“So you drink caramel macchiatos nine months out of the year?”
“Hey, don’t poke fun at Minnesota,” he said good-naturedly. “It’s not that bad.”
I paused in my toenail painting. “I saw on the news that it was negative thirty for a week a few months ago. How is that not that bad?”
“You just do the door-to-door sprint. It’s thirty seconds of cold, tops. Like getting something from a walk-in freezer. Half the time I don’t even put on a jacket. And you get the right clothes for when you do need to be outside longer. The summers are great, fall’s beautiful. Travel vlogger Vanessa Price lives here and she could live anywhere.”
“Hmm, I do like her. So I told you my day,” I said. “What did you do today?”
“Well, I woke up and made my coffee—Nespresso machine. Used my frother to make a cappuccino. Two percent milk. Opened the blinds and stood there with my mug in my hand, staring at the billboard, questioning all my life choices. I took Brad out, came back, took a shower. Watched Chelsea for an hour, then went to meet Benny and best friend Brad for lunch.”
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“It’s a little restaurant Brad found.”
“What did you order?”
“A peanut butter burger,” he said.
I made a face. “Was it good?”
“It was, actually. It had caramelized onions on it and this grape jelly chutney thing.”
“So did anything happen at lunch with your friends?”
“Not today. But when I had lunch with them yesterday we talked about the Reddit thread. I told them about you, obviously,” he said. “That’s when Brad gave me his prophecy about you and I being able to break the curse.”
“Ah, so that’s why you texted me,” I said with my chin to my knees, blowing the paint dry on my toes.
“No. I really needed to know about the Q-tip thing.”
“I see,” I said, smiling. “Then you went home?”
“I stopped for gas and then I went home. I texted you my Princess Anna picture. Here we are.”
“And where are we exactly?” I asked. “What do you see on your walk?”
“Hold on, I’ll show you.”
I had a tiny moment of panic thinking he was about to video call me, but instead a picture came through.
“This is where I’m walking right now. I took this the other day at sunset.”
It was a picture of a city skyline taken from the middle of a wide concrete walking bridge with a rust-colored railing.
“This is the Stone Arch Bridge.” Another picture came through. “That’s the Mississippi.”
The river was tree-lined. It was really pretty, urban but naturey at the same time.
I exited and googled the bridge and hit Images. “I’m looking at the bridge online. There are a lot of engagement photos.”
“I see about one proposal a week,” he said. “It’s a very popular spot to pop the question.”
“Public proposals are hostage situations,” I said, going back to his picture and zooming in. I could see the back of a billboard and I wondered if that was his apartment building just beyond it.
“You wouldn’t want to be proposed to in public?” he asked.
“Noooo.”
“Yeah, I never really got that whole concept. It feels like something that should be intimate, right? Doing it in front of a bunch of strangers just feels so performative.”
“That is exactly what I was telling Maddy a few weeks ago. Some guy proposed in front of a whole stadium at this game we went to—and the girl said no.”
He sucked air through his teeth. “Talk about not knowing your audience.”
I heard barking. “Brad?” I asked.
“No, a husky barking at Brad. Do you like dogs?”
“Who doesn’t like dogs?”
He was smiling in the pause. “So back to Minnesota being the greatest state in the nation—”
I sighed. “Okay. You’re making a small case for visiting Minnesota, I will give you that. But it’s probably never going to happen. It’s not in our top twenty-five list of states to visit.”
“How do you get a state bumped up the list?”
