“Hayes,” continued Jenna. “You reached out to our producer last night, asking for some help, and lucky for you, we’d had a cancellation and could squeeze you on this morning. So tell us what you need from our audience.”

He cleared his throat, and I noticed that his hands were clenched in his lap. He looked nervous, like a little kid in a spelling bee, and my heart ached for him.

“Well, that woman you mentioned, Franny, who I met on the train…,” he started. “We actually hit it off. And last night, she told me she loved me.”

“How exciting!” Jenna clenched her hands into fists and cheered. Cheered.

“Well, honestly, as she knows, I often get a little tongue-tied. And so I didn’t get the chance to tell her how I felt.”

“Which is?” Pete said, egging him on with a wave of his hand.

“Well, I’m in love with her,” he said.

I clasped my hands to my face. Behind me, the teenager at the counter said, “Wait, is he talking about you?”

Hayes kept going. “And I should have told her the second I figured it out, but you know how it is when your brain takes a while to catch up with your heart.”

Jenna swooned over this. Even Pete’s face went soft with a goofy smile.

“So, anyway, when she told me last night, I froze,” he continued. “And so that’s why I reached out to your producer, Eliza. We were brought together on your show once before, so I’m hoping maybe you can make that happen again. I guess I just figured, what better way to tell Franny that I love her than to tell the whole world.”

Jenna clutched a note card to her chest. “People do wild things for love,” she said.

Hayes nodded. “I guess they do.”

The camera cut back to Pete and Jenna, and like that, he was gone.

“Oh my goodness!” the old woman near me said, dabbing her lips with a napkin. “You have to go find this young man.”

The dad in the corner was pointing at me and then to the TV, explaining to his son what had just happened. Behind the counter, two more workers had joined the first and were staring at me.

I felt surprisingly calm. Too calm. I was in shock. Love-shock. I needed to get to Hayes.

“I don’t…I don’t know where he is,” I stammered. “Also, I spent all my money on breakfast. I don’t have enough for a MetroCard.”

“Well, if he’s on New York News, he’s at Rockefeller Center,” the dad said, still bouncing his kid on his lap. “Go there.”

The old man leaned forward in his chair, pulling a wallet out of his back pocket. “Here,” he said, passing a yellow MetroCard to me. “I always keep one on me that has at least ten rides, just in case.”