“Oooh. That one. Right there,” she tries to whisper, but I’m pretty sure the tequila has nulled all sense of her actual volume. “It says ‘Let’s toast to me’ in gothic-style writing. Next to an image of a toaster. No contest.” She points halfway down the car, where I can see the ink in question on a hairy calf.

I’ve introduced her to my favorite summertime New York game: Can you find the worst tattoo in this place? She’s taken to it like a fish to water.

“Damn it. You’re right. That may be hard to beat,” I concede. “But want to know the real best place to play this game?”

“Do tell.”

“A water park. Preferably on Long Island or New Jersey. I once saw an entire chest devoted to a jacked-up Britney Spears circa red catsuit. I only knew it was her because it had her name in bubble letters below it.”

“No,” Zoey gasped, cracking up.

“And it would’ve absolutely won the game if I didn’t see, five minutes later, ‘No Regrets, No Apologies’ scrawled across someone’s upper back. In Comic Sans. With ‘apologies’ spelled wrong.”

Zoey gives a huge, hearty bleat, the kind of laugh that causes at least six people to look over. The matching grin on my face comes of its own accord.

“Back home, Venice Beach would probably be a good place to play. Or Magic Mountain.”

“You still think of California as home?” I ask.

“Yeah. Well, no. I don’t know.” She sighs. “There was a person there who felt like home but then she’s also the one who kicked me out, so . . .”

A person who felt like home—a girlfriend? I look over at her and realize that I really don’t know that much about her. And maybe I’d like to.

“Isn’t this our stop?”

“Shit!” I say, grabbing her hand and getting us out of the doors right before they almost slam shut on us.

We’re no longer holding hands once we’re underneath the streetlamps and neon bodega signs that light the way back to our apartment building. But we are walking close enough to each other that our skin brushes more than a couple of times.

When we get to our building, Zoey uses her key to open the front door and heads straight for the stairs.

“No elevator?” I ask.

“What’s the point? It only works twenty-seven percent of the time,” she says. “It’s a waste of energy.”

“The energy . . . pushing a button?” I arch my eyebrow.

“And the anxiety of will it or won’t it actually come. Besides, why spend $125 a month on a gym membership when everyone in New York basically has their own Stairmaster right at their disposal?” She looks down at me, coming up behind her on the stairwell.