The downtown train interrupted us, roaring past until it screeched to a stop. We got on together, stepping through the doors and sitting. The car was almost entirely empty.

“I think about you every time I get on the subway. About the day we met. And everything after.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and I leaned into him, so solid and warm.

“Let’s try it again,” I said, smiling at the idea blooming in my head.

“What do you mean?” He gave me a skeptical look, one I’d grown to know and love. It was the look he made when his brain was working, analyzing, searching for logic. It was so Hayes it made my heart ache with love for him, and all the ways he was exactly, perfectly, himself.

“Meeting each other.” I ran my hand down his thigh, giving it a squeeze. “Let’s get it right this time.”

Hayes laughed as he ran a hand through his hair. “Okay.”

“Franny Doyle,” I said. I stretched out my hand, and Hayes shook it. “I just got laid off, and I’m freaking out, and I think you are very handsome, even though I won’t be able to admit it for a long time.”

“Hayes Montgomery the Third. Though I leave out ‘the Third,’ because it’s pretentious and embarrassing. I find you charming and gorgeous, which I also find infuriating, because I like being in control of my emotions, and everything else for that matter.”

“Pleased to meet you.” We kept our hands locked together even though we’d stopped shaking. “We should hang out sometime. What are you doing next week?”

Hayes paused, the smile on his face shrinking slightly. “Actually”—he held my gaze with his—“I was thinking about going to Italy.”

“Wait, what?”

“Remember the silent auction, at the natural history museum? The Italian vacation you kept eyeing?”

“You bid on it?” I asked.

He nodded.

“And I won,” he said, and then turned to look at me. “I mean, technically, we won.”

I gave him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“I had planned on giving it to you,” he explained, rubbing his thumb along my palm, his hand still in mine. “But when we…when we stopped speaking to each other, it felt absurd to dump something like that on you. But…” He looked at me, his gaze hesitant. “But we could go anytime you wanted.”

I just stared at him, mouth ajar in a bewildered smile.

“You have to know by now,” he said, running his other hand over my thigh, “that at my core I’m pathetically romantic and mushy, right?”

“I really, really like that about you,” I said, and placed a small kiss on his jaw.

“Anyway, the tickets are yours, and you can do whatever you want with them, of course. But you did tell me when we met that you owed me one. Maybe I can finally collect on that.”