I’m not exactly sure why I’m motivated to go to Riverside Park today instead, except that maybe when I start out by playing “The River Is Long, the River Is Strong”—the theme song from Undersea—on my phone, it inevitably leads me to listening to the entire soundtrack on repeat. And that soundtrack doesn’t deserve a paltry mile-and-a-half run. It deserves a miles-long view of the mighty Hudson River, past marble tombs dedicated to legendary war generals, and beneath majestic branches of cherry blossom trees that have almost, though not quite, lost their last blooms. And I only spend a very, very small portion of it daydreaming about Mary Clarkson in that mermaid suit. And a smaller portion wondering if the Biscotti Bandit really does know her. That girl is a mystery wrapped in an enigma encased inside wonky arm warmers.

By the time I get back to Dylan and Charles’s, I’m out of breath and a sweaty mess. My watch tells me I ran seven miles. I used to do a daily five around Prospect Park, but that hasn’t happened in months since my former running partner got a monthlong “stomach virus” before dumping me. (In retrospect, I am really, really thick.)

I buzz up when I get to the apartment. Dylan and Charles have both been too busy to make me a key yet, and I’ve been too mopey to take it upon myself. Besides, I’m pretty sure the situation would have too much of an air of permanence about it for Charles (and maybe even Dylan), if they actually went to the trouble of making me my own key.

“Oh, God,” Charles says when he opens the door for me. “Are you crying?”

“It’s sweat,” I respond.

He peers more closely at me, trying to affirm that the droplets are, in fact, coming from my forehead. “Hmph. I guess,” he finally says. “Mind the runner. It’s antique Kermanshah.” He points to the dark carpet that runs down their hallway, which he carefully pads around in his corduroy slippers.

“I’m pretty sure we bought that at Target. Or maybe Overstock dot com,” Dylan comes over and whispers conspiratorially as I’m taking off my sneakers.

I smile at him as a bead of sweat drips down my nose and falls onto their dark parquet floor. Dylan grabs a tissue from the hall table and immediately wipes it up.

Dylan was my roommate in college, and he was a fantastic one. He was friendly, he was neat, and he never made a big deal of whether or not you were the same. He’s still all those things, only now he’s with Charles, which I think is only possible because he’s not overly attached to “nice” as an attribute in a boyfriend.