I swat his hand away and laugh. “No! I swear I’ve been there! We went to Top of the Rock and took a carriage ride through the park. We saw Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. My grandma and I spent a whole day shopping at Macy’s and Bloomingdales. On our last day, we took the ferry out to Ellis Island and did the listening tour. None of that happened in any of the Home Alones.”

“Hmm,” he hums mockingly. “I’ll have to ask Fielding to be sure. Those are his favorite movies—he’ll tell me the truth,” he teases before he continues.

“I can’t promise there’ll be cheese… but I booked us two nights at the Williamsburg Hotel, in the Skyline Suite. It’ll take me less than an hour to get the paperwork done, so we’ll have plenty of time to explore the city and do anything you want to do.”

“It sounds perfect,” I gush before a less-exciting thought enters my mind. “Will Fielding be okay on his own again next weekend?”

Dempsey sighs before responding. “He says he will. He’s been decent all week, actually. And he’s doing Dry July, which he’s done before. He always sees it through when he does a dry month or a detox. I think he likes to prove to himself he’s in control, regardless of whether there’s any truth behind that. He was the one who encouraged us to go… so I’m trying not to overthink it…”

He trails off, and I don’t push, instead focusing on the feeling of his hands in my hair. Over the last few weeks, I’ve started to worry about Fielding more. Maybe it’s because I’m around them both so often or because Dempsey’s caretaker tendencies are contagious, but either way, it’s like my empathy has tripled. I feel for Dempsey, and I feel for Fielding. I care about them both in different but equally deep ways.

Spending so much time with them has unlocked a hard truth that’s impossible to ignore. Fielding is no longer the jovial, cocky fuckboy I once knew. He has this darkness about him now: an underlying sadness that’s always there, paired with a defensive dry humor he wears like armor. Some days, there are peeks of the happy-go-lucky man I used to know. But then other days, Dempsey says he doesn’t move off the couch.

Seeing how Fielding affects Dempsey is hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. But when we’re together, Dem seems to cling to his concern less tightly. I just do my best to give him space when he needs it and to be there for him when he needs a distraction.

“Two days in the city,” I sigh, already thinking about what types of outfits I’ll need for a weekend in New York.