“Kickball?” I raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t played that since third grade. At least.”

“And yet,” Cary said, smiling, with an overly patient air, “it’s still just as much fun. Maybe even more so, because you’re no longer constrained by the time frame of either recess or PE. Things don’t stop being fun just because you get older.”

“Is this like the grape soda thing?”

Cary laughed. “Possibly.” He pulled out his soda and candy, then handed the bag to me. “For you.”

“Thank you again,” I said, my stomach growling in anticipation. “Here,” I said, pulling out my hundred. “Please let me pay you back.” I was suddenly hopeful that maybe Cary could break it—maybe his plant-watering clients paid him in cash and he kept a lot of it on him for some reason.

“No,” Cary said firmly, even as he smiled. “It’s on me. But thank you.”

“Okay,” I said, putting the hundred back in my pocket.

“So what now?” he asked. A group of girls who looked like they were in their twenties hurried up the street toward us. They were dressed for a night out, you could see, even with their coats on—heels and makeup, a certain swaggery confidence in the way they strode down the sidewalk in a group. They were laughing and yelling as they walked, and Cary and I took a simultaneous big step back to let them pass. I watched them go for just a second, thinking with a fierce jealousy that that should have been me and Stevie right now, together, walking and laughing, cutting our way across New York City in triumph.

“Oh,” I said, when I realized that Cary had asked me a question I still hadn’t answered. “I’m actually going to see a play. My drama teacher wrote it.” I tried to say this like it was no big deal, but even I could hear I didn’t pull it off.

“Are you an actor?”

I nodded, not able to stop myself from smiling. “I am. And he teaches us in Connecticut, but he has his own company here in the city.” I felt a flush of pride as I said this. “The show starts at eight, and I have to get up to the theater district. And—would you actually mind googling the address for me? I don’t have a phone.”

“Of course,” Cary said, pulling his phone out of his back pocket. He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how you’re even managing without one. It’s like you’re living in 1984.”