My hair though? I was definitely considering wearing a paper bag. So far that morning, I’d braided my long chestnut-brown hair to the side and then thrown it up into a sleek ponytail, and now, I’d done some sort of half-up, half-down thing with a twist.

I hated it all.

“Well, there’s your answer,” he offered as his hand reached out to grab a towel off the hanging bar.

I sighed in frustration. “Were you this nervous when you started your new job a few weeks ago?” I questioned. I pursed my lips together as I made the final decision to leave my hair down and let it hang naturally around my face. At least then, I wouldn’t be worried about it getting messed up on the subway.

Subway.

Just thinking about it made my stomach flip. No matter what I did to my hair, it wouldn’t hide the fact that I was clearly the brand-new, extremely naive fish in a scary large pond.

New York was everything I’d expected it to be, yet it was so much more. When I was younger, sitting in my cozy Midwestern bedroom, watching reruns of Friends on one of the few channels our family got, I’d always known I’d eventually come here.

I’d just never expected to live here at the ripe age of twenty-two.

Now, everything just seemed big, intimidating, and completely overwhelming. Where were Ross and Phoebe when I needed them?

“A little, I guess,” Tyler said, answering my question, as he cuddled up close behind me.

I could smell the woodsy aroma of his soap as his hands slid around my waist.

“But I knew what I was walking into,” he explained. “Interning there during my last semester definitely helped.”

“I know,” I answered in a pout. “But it still has to be different, right? A four-month internship can’t be the same as a full-time position.”

“No.” He grinned back at me through the mirror. “But I wasn’t going into someplace completely blind. Now, if you asked me how I felt the first day of my internship at the accounting firm, well, that was a different story. I nearly ran back to my dorm and crawled under my covers like a scared little girl.”

I cleared my throat, eyeing him.

“I mean, a dog, like a scared little puppy. Because girls­—females are strong and totally capable of everything, including fancy new jobs.”

He saw me crack a smile as I was enchanted by the never-ending bucket of charm that he always seemed to have on hand. It was one of the reasons I had fallen for him in high school. While so many of the boys had been goofy or just downright mean, Tyler was always sweet and caring.