He’s right, but I don’t want to give in to it. I look around, as though some new route will open up, some new staircase to the sky that’ll let me get closer. This one, it feels important—the background a deep red; the one W I can see has a drop-shadow, which none of the other signs had, and beneath that, I’m almost sure there’s a script. “What if I—”

And then it starts raining.

It’s not a drip-drop kind of situation, either. It’s the kind that starts right in the middle of things, big, soaking sheets all at once. People-scattering rain, and everyone around Reid and me is running to duck for cover, most of them cramming back under the scaffolding Reid was so relieved to be free of. One advantage to the massive, slouchy bag I carry is that I can put it over my head, though this feels pretty silly when Reid shifts his own bag long enough to pull out an umbrella. Even though he knows words like asshole, he definitely isn’t one, because he puts it over my head instead of his own, and points across the street to a blue awning, where a short, harried-looking woman is tugging a rack of fabric bolts back into her store. As we jog, our feet slapping against wet concrete, our clothes misted by the cars we dodge, Reid stays a half step behind me. I can’t say for sure, but I think I feel the way he keeps his hand hovering at my back.

Not touching. But hovering.

When we’re finally undercover, there’s a few seconds where we’re both surveying the damage. My tights soaked up to the knees, my dress stuck wetly to my thighs. His suit blackened with moisture, his hair copper-brown. I look up at him, feel a solidarity smile spread over my mouth. It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s funny how this went?

“You don’t have an umbrella?” he says, and it’s . . . not funny.

It’s scolding.

I stare at him, a long second of censure at his tone, at that haughty way he’s looking at me.

“Yes, I have one. But not on my person, obviously.” I think about my crinkly bag full of stuff. On the train I reached in for my box of Altoids and found a single sock, one of those half-foot ones that you can’t see beneath sneakers. It’s truly appalling that I don’t have an umbrella in there, but it’s also truly appalling that he’s pointing this out.

“It wasn’t supposed to rain,” I say.

Reid mumbles something from beside me.

“What?”

“I said forty percent.”

I keep staring. There is a single droplet of rain quivering on the end of the hair that curls at his temple.

“Forty percent chance of rain,” he clarifies. “On my weather app.”