“You absolutely said it!” Noah laughs, his smile big and open as he leans against a framed map of the MTA. “I remember it clearly—you were storming past the gates of the zoo. I was chasing after you. You spun on me. You had your hands on your hips, your cheeks were flushed”—he’s acting all of this out, badly—“you glared, and then—oh no!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you live on Forty-Ninth Street?” Noah points at the open subway doors, at the sign, which reads Lexington and Sixty-Third.

No way. Not possible. I missed my stop? I, Lanie Bloom, who has never, not once in my seven years of living in New York, not even before I knew the difference between Amsterdam and Park Avenue, ever missed my stop?

The next time these doors open, we’ll be on Roosevelt Island. After that we’ll be all the way in Queens. I look at Noah. A silent verdict passes between us. We bolt off the train just before the doors slam shut, and land in the station at Sixty-Third and Lex, where we double over, laughing.

“I cannot believe I did that!” I say, trying to catch my breath. “It’s your fault for distracting me with your terrible impression.”

“I think it’s a sign,” Noah says. “I think you were meant to take a sunset stroll with me through Central Park tonight.”

I meet his eyes, not laughing anymore. His smile quickens my pulse.

“But you said you didn’t want to get a drink with Bernadette. I thought . . . Don’t you have plans?”

“I didn’t want to get a drink with Bernadette,” he says, still looking at me. “But I’d love to take a walk with you.”

We stare at each other for a supercharged few seconds, and that’s when I feel it. It’s not just attraction I have for Noah. There’s something between us. He feels it, too.

I should not go for a walk with him right now. I should go home and . . . is cold showering really a thing that people do?

But what if this walk becomes the moment that inspiration strikes? What if I pass on the chance to be there, because I was worried I was starting to think about Noah in subway-fantasy-material ways?

“Can I show you my favorite place in New York?” I say, pretending la-di-da, that no part of me wants to jump his bones.

“Is it the Austrian Cultural Forum?” he asks, then ducks before I can smack him.