CHAPTER FOUR ARTHUR

Sunday, May 17

Arthur Seuss: fallen hero. Conquered warrior. Lost the last shred of his dignity at the hands of a fitted fucking sheet.

I sprawl back on Uncle Milton’s bare mattress, breathing like I’ve just run a marathon. This is like the time I tried to squeeze into my bar mitzvah blazer last year because Ben couldn’t believe I’d worn pinstripes. Did I get a cute selfie out of it? Sure. But I basically had to birth myself out of it afterward. And at least then I could sort of get the second sleeve on without the first one popping off, which is more than I can say for this shitshow of a bed.

I need Jessie. Of course she left for a “quick takeout run” an hour ago, which is enough time to confirm what I’ve always suspected: I’m laughably unequipped to live alone. But I guess the universe knew that all along, because Jessie’s summer housing fell through the exact same day I accepted Jacob’s offer. Fast-forward a week, and here we are: Manhattan roommates. Glamorous legal adults doing glamorous legal things in the city that never sleeps.

Okay, so far it’s mostly been a lot of putting socks away and looking for wall outlets and breathing heavily on my bare mattress for completely nonsexual reasons.

But it’s almost glamorous. It will be glamorous. I just need to do one quick panic selfie for Jessie where I’m bundled into the sheet like it’s a full-body shower cap. Death by linens SOS

She writes back instantly. It’s probably turned the wrong way, check and see if it has one of those top or bottom labels.

My bedsheet has its own grindr profile now??

But sure enough, sliding my fingers along the inside seam yields a full set of satin tags: Top or Bottom and Side. Guess which genius had it flipped around for half an hour.

Ten minutes later, my room looks like it sprang out of one of Mom’s Real Simple magazines—more than worthy of the triumphant Mission Accomplished photo I’m about to snap for Jessie. But as soon as I pick up my phone, it starts buzzing with a FaceTime request.

Mikey. I press accept, smiling at his awkwardly close-up face on my screen. You’d think a boy who inherited his brother’s old smartphone at age eight would know how to operate a selfie camera by now. But even Bubbe is better at video chatting than Mikey. It’s pretty fucking adorable, actually.

“Check it out. Good bed, right?” I flip the camera to show off my handiwork. “Only thing missing is you, naked—”

Mikey clears his throat loudly and scoots backward, cheeks flaming. A second later, his niece, Mia, pokes her head into the frame.

“Neigh, kid!” I flip back to selfie mode, grinning frantically into the camera. “Look! Hi, Mr. Horsie!” I tilt my phone upward, catching the giant horse painting centered above Uncle Milton’s headboard. “Hiiiiii, Mia!” I add in this fucked up quasi-British horse voice.

Mikey looks amused. Also, vaguely alarmed.

“Hi, Author,” says Mia. Mikey murmurs something into her ear, and she looks back up at me. “Arrrrrrrthurrrrrr,” she adds, enunciating her r’s like a pirate and earning a fist bump from Uncle Mikey.

He’s so good with her. When I met Mia in person on New Year’s, she was too shy to speak to me. But Mikey never pressured her—he just held her and let her bury her face in his shirt while we talked. It made me melt. I couldn’t stop staring at him all night, couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him, even in front of his family.

It’s strange knowing I could be with them in Boston right now, living out this domestic-fantasy summer with my unbearably sweet boyfriend. If I think too hard about it, it aches a little. Maybe more than a little.

I swallow it back. “Mia! How old are you now?”

She mutters something shyly, too soft for me to hear.

“Sixteen?” I ask.

She giggles. “No!”

“Seventeen?”

“No!” Mia looks incredulously at Mikey before turning back to me. Mikey holds up four fingers behind her back.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “Hmm. Are you… four?”

“And a half!”

Mikey makes an oops face and shrugs.

“Of course!” I smack my forehead. “Wow. I miss you. How are you guys?”

Mikey pauses. “We’re… okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Mimi, want to go find your dad?”

“No,” she says promptly. No bullshit, just a rock-solid nope. Because Mia McCowan Chen is an icon.

“Go find Daddy,” says Mikey. Mia scowls and disappears from the frame.

“What’s up? Did something happen at dinner?” I try to remember if anything was off about Mikey’s texts last night. It’s hard to tell with him—no matter how good I get at reading his face, he’s still so mysterious in writing. I meant to FaceTime him last night from Bubbe’s house, but Bubbe always makes such a big scene about dinner, and then Jessie got in from Providence and we stayed up half the night talking in my mom’s childhood bedroom.

“Dinner was fine.” Mikey rubs the bridge of his nose. “We found out this morning—my brother eloped.”

“Robert did what?” My jaw drops.

“And he told my parents via text message.”

“He did not.”

“He did!”

“Nope. That’s too much, even for Robbie.”

Mikey cracks the tiniest smile. He gets the biggest kick out of my iron-jaw memory for random personal details. I can tell you Ethan’s top five most cursed insects, Ben’s ex-boyfriend’s zodiac sign, you name it. I may not be able to get through a page of a book without having to reread every third paragraph, but at least I remember my second-grade teacher’s husband’s name. It’s my vaguely creepy superpower. But I’m starting to think it’s not such a bad skill to have. Mostly because my boyfriend’s big, loud, tight-knit family is his whole entire world, and I could basically write a book about every single one of them.

“My parents are freaking out,” Mikey says. “Laura’s been over there since ten, and apparently Mom hasn’t stopped crying. It’s a mess.”

“I thought your parents liked Amanda!”

“They do—”

“He didn’t run off with some other girl, right? Or guy?” I gasp. “Did Robert marry a guy? That is—oh my God, that is the most epic way to come out. Why didn’t I think of it?”

“He’s straight,” Mikey says. “I mean, as far as I know. And everyone loves Amanda. They’re just upset about the elopement.”

“Is Amanda pregnant?”

Mikey shakes his head. “No, it’s just the whole wedding thing is really important to my parents, you know? They went all out for Laura and Josh—invited basically everyone they’d ever made eye contact with.” He pauses. “Which is probably why Robbie and Amanda bowed out.”

“Probably. Wow.” I shrug. “At least it’s kind of romantic. An elopement!”

“Well, Laura thinks they actually did it because of health insurance. Amanda just turned twenty-six—”

“Right. And she’s working freelance now. That makes total sense.”

“Literally how do you remember this stuff?” Mikey smiles for real. “You know you don’t have to keep tabs on my brother’s girlfriend’s job details, right?”

“Brother’s wife. She’s your sister-in-law now.”

Mikey looks momentarily taken aback. “Yeah.”

“So, not even a tiny wedding, huh?” I lean onto my pillows, holding the phone aloft. “No first kiss, no cake? Nothing?”

“They can still kiss and eat cake.”

“True. But. I don’t know. Aren’t you a little sad you don’t get to watch Robbie’s face when Amanda walks in? That’s what I’d do—”

“I know,” Mikey says. “You sent me that BuzzFeed list four times.”

“And I’m going to keep sending you grooms blown away by their beautiful brides until you actually start appreciating them.”

“Is that a threat?” He wrinkles his nose and smiles, one of my all-time favorite Mikey expressions. But a moment later, his face falls. “I can’t believe there’s already family drama. I’ve been home less than twenty-four hours.”

“Well, if you ever need an escape from the drama, I’m here.”

Mikey just looks at me.

“Okay, fair enough. But if you want different drama…”

The front door of the apartment thuds shut.

I glance up. “Jessie’s back!”

A moment later, she’s in my doorway, holding a giant double-chocolate cookie in one hand and a white paper bakery bag in the other. “Arthur, you will not believe who I just saw at Levain Bakery.” She scoots in beside me, eyes landing on the screen of my phone. “Oh! Hi, Mikey.”

“How’s it going?” He shoots her a stilted half wave.

“Good, good.”

I smile back and forth between them. God, I love awkward people. I think I collect them.

Jessie hands me the bag, and I inhale happily. “This smells. So good.”

She pats my shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

“So who’d you run into?”

“Right.” She nods quickly. “Namrata.”

“At Levain? No way! I thought she was living downtown these days.”

“Who’s Namrata?” asks Mikey.

“She was one of the summer associates at the law firm when I worked there. But she’s a real associate now. Wow, Jess, what are the odds of you running into her the day before you start work?” I shake my head, smiling. “Way to go, Universe!”

“Anyway, I’m gonna go eat this.” Jessie jumps up. “Cookie lunch?”

“Cookie lunch.” I turn back to Mikey. “I should probably go, too.”

“Warm cookie. I get it,” he says.

I smile. “Keep me posted on your parents and Robert?”

“Deal.” Mikey pauses. “I miss you.”

“Miss you too, Mikey Mouse.”

I hang up and head out to the living room, where Jessie’s settled in at the dining table with her cookie and two glasses of milk.

“I fucking love you, Jessie Franklin,” I say.

She smiles up at me. “You didn’t tell me I’d need a spoon for this cookie.”

“A spoon? Toughen up.” I plop into the chair beside her and bite into my cookie like a hamburger. It’s so warm and gooey and rich. So New York. And here I’ve been living off Usdan Marketplace dining hall cookies for a year. “You have no idea how much I needed this.”

“Had a feeling.”

“I can’t believe you saw Namrata. How’s she doing?”

“No clue.” Jessie shrugs. “I didn’t see her.”

“Wait—”

“I saw Ben,” she says plainly.

The whole world grinds to a halt.

“Ben… like Ben? Alejo?”

Jessie takes a bite of cookie and nods.

“But you said—”

“Yup.”

“So why didn’t you…?” But Jessie looks pointedly at my phone, and my cheeks flood with heat. “Oh.”

Jessie pauses. “So how’s Mikey?”

“Great! I mean, he’s fine.” My head feels foggy. “Why was Ben at Levain Bakery?”

“Getting cookies?” Jessie says. “So weird, right? He was with Dylan. It honestly took me a second to place them. Did you know Dylan has a man bun?”

“Did Ben look different?” I squint, trying to remember the last time I saw a selfie of him. He usually posts pictures of buildings and graffiti and boring stuff, like pigeons. I guess he still hasn’t figured out that his face is the best view in New York.

Nope, nope, nope. Delete that thought.

“Nah, he looked the same. I think I just wasn’t expecting to see them. Dylan says he misses your raw sexual energy.”

“I miss him, too!”

I don’t think I’ve talked to Dylan in a year, maybe more. But I knew about the man bun because I still follow him online—he and Samantha are definitely my favorite Instagram couple. Last week, Dylan posted about a fort they made in Samantha’s dorm room—basically just a blanket spread across two stacked piles of cardboard packing boxes. But they’d pushed Samantha’s bed underneath so they could spend their last night of school under a canopy, and if that isn’t peak romance, I don’t know what is. Of course, I spent the whole week thinking about how I’d replicate it with Mikey on our last night—I even bought glow-in-the-dark stars from the toy store on Main Street so we could pretend we were sleeping outdoors.

But in the end, I never even mentioned it to Mikey, even though I’m sure he would have humored me and gone along with it. I guess I just kept picturing him looking at me with a wait-why-are-we-doing-this face. Or asking if it was really worth the extra cleanup we’d have to do in the morning. Talk about the ultimate self-answering question. If your boyfriend asks whether your romantic gesture is worth doing, it’s not worth doing.

I don’t know, maybe Mikey would have been super into the whole fort idea. He’s not the type for spontaneous romantic inspiration, but he’s pretty persuadable, especially when there’s no PDA involved. And he likes to make me happy. He does make me happy. And so what if dating Mikey isn’t exactly one big surprise party. Love doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to be showy or maudlin or larger than life. Love can be a pile of folded laundry and a full tank of gas, or your steady, sweet boyfriend spending an extra night at school to help you pack up your dorm room. Anyway, not every single relationship is going to be—

“Ben Alejo,” says Jessie, and I almost knock over my milk. “On day one. How random is that?”

“Totally. Totally random,” I say, nodding. Okay, wow. Now my head’s spinning. Windmill brain, dreidel brain, giant fucking tornado brain. Because yesterday, Ben liked my post about moving to New York. And suddenly he’s hanging out at Levain Bakery, in my neighborhood, on my moving day? Talk about a neon sign from the universe. Unless—

“Did Ben say anything?”

Jessie tilts her head. “Anything?”

“About me.” My cheeks go warm. “I don’t know. I was just wondering—I don’t even know if he knows I’m here.”

“Oh, definitely. He called it your New York do-over.”

My lungs stop working. I open my mouth and then shut it.

Jessie raises her eyebrows. “You okay?”

“What? Yeah, of course. I’m just…” I pause. “Do you think I should text him?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Because of Mikey?”

“Yes! Art, come on—”

“Oh my God.” I laugh. “I’m not talking about a booty call. I’m talking about a friendly, platonic ‘hey, what’s up, we haven’t talked in a sec—’ ”

“Not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Arthur, two seconds ago we had to lie about me running into Ben—”

“We?” I look at her incredulously. “That was you!”

“Yeah, because how many times have you told me Mikey gets weird when you talk about your New York summer?”

“You think I don’t talk about that summer with Mikey?”

“You literally just had to explain to him who Namrata is.”

“Okay, not sure why my boyfriend needs to know every coworker from two years ago.”

“I’m just saying, Mikey’s clearly already sensitive about Ben. Why would you want to add that to the mix right now?”

I shake my head. “You’re overthinking this. I’m not trying to hook up with him! I just want to say hi, okay? I’m in his city! He was one of my best friends—”

“He’s your ex,” Jessie says.

“And my friend! Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts.” I shove another bite of cookie into my mouth, chewing it roughly. “Just because”—I swallow—“you don’t talk to Ethan—”

“This has nothing to do with me and Ethan.” She stands abruptly, pressing both hands to her stomach. “Wow, this cookie is dense.”

I nod vaguely, but my brain’s already miles away. Jessie running into Ben has to be some kind of sign from the universe, right? That’s not a thing that happens in New York. Not without celestial intervention. Am I supposed to just ignore that?

Mikey would understand. I’m not saying he’d be thrilled at first, but he trusts me. As he should. Because as far as personal lines in the sand go, cheating on my boyfriend is up there with voting Republican and murder. Plus Mikey did say I should see Ben if I want to see him. Which isn’t to say I, you know, want to see Ben. I just mean it doesn’t have to be a big deal. Honestly, not texting Ben would be weirder because then I’m actively avoiding him, thus proving I still have feelings for him. And I don’t. Have feelings for Ben.

So why shouldn’t I text him?

What if I just… did?