“In New York,” he interrupts, and I think my hand might jerk in his, an involuntary squeeze. Never, never has Reid said anything even close to this. Never has New York been an option for him beyond this summer. Somehow, the fact that he’s mentioning it now, here—in a home I know he misses—makes it seem so much more significant.

I swallow.

“You hate New York,” I say.

“It’s growing on me.”

It isn’t the most ringing of all endorsements, and he keeps his eyes up on the ceiling, his face set in concentration, as though he’s trying to work out the most difficult problem. As though it’s full of numbers up there, and he’s searching for an impossible solution.

I turn my face up to that blank space, too. I think about walking with Reid in the city. He’s eased up, sure. He still loves the food and I think he’s come to appreciate the signs, too. But I haven’t forgotten the way his jaw clenches in the crowds, his irritation in the city’s loudest, brightest spaces.

“You have to love it,” I say cautiously, not wanting to hope. Not wanting to push, not this time. Not about this. “I think you have to love it to stay.”

I see my words float up to the place where we’re both staring. It wouldn’t be difficult at all, to hide something in them. It’s all there, after all, everything I’m not really saying, everything I’ve been trying not to let myself think.

The I, the love, the you. The stay.

I feel him turn his head toward me. “I love things about it,” he says.

I take a deep breath and tear my eyes away from the ceiling, from my imaginary letters. I look at him, and I remember what he told me that night in the bar, that he doesn’t always say what he means.

But neither of us says it. Neither of us says what I hope we’re both thinking, what I hope is written on both of our hearts.

“It’s soon,” I say instead.

He nods again. “And I don’t know if I can stay.”

We leave it at that for a while, the suburban quiet all around us, our hands still intertwined. I think I can feel Reid’s mind turning and turning. I think I can feel him tensing up, trying to solve this.

Getting blocked.

“Reid,” I whisper, tugging on his hand. “You want to play a game?”

He looks over at me. He’s got a trace of the sad eyes, but he swoonshes anyway.

“I already beat you twice at gin rummy,” he says.