to him tomorrow.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I thought so.”

So, not much progress there. But at least I knew he’d be around the next day.

As a last resort, I left Dov and Yohnny asleep in my mom’s bed and ponied up another twenty- ve bucks to hang with the waxed-out celebrities.

But the woman guard was nowhere to be found, as if she’d been moved into the back room with the statues of the cast of Baywatch.

When I got back to the apartment, I decided to write to Lily anyway.

I fear you may have outmatched me, because now I nd these words have nowhere to go. It’s hard to answer a question you haven’t been asked.

It’s hard to show that you tried unless you end up succeeding.

I stopped. It wasn’t the same without the notebook. It didn’t feel like a conversation. It felt like I was talking to silence.

I wished I had been there to see her dancing. To witness her there. To get to know her that way.

I could have looked up al the Lilys in Manhat an. I could have shown up on the doorsteps of al the Lilys of Brooklyn. I might have scoured the

Lilys of Staten Island, sifted through the Lilys of the Bronx, and treated the Lilys of Queens like royalty. But I had a feeling I wasn’t supposed to

nd her that way. She was not a needle. This was not a haystack. We were people, and people had ways of nding each other.

I could hear the sounds of sleep coming from my mom’s bedroom—Dov snoring, Yohnny murmuring. I cal ed Boomer to remind him of the

party, then reminded myself who was going to be there.

So a. It was strange she hadn’t told me she would be in town, but it wasn’t that strange. We’d had the easiest breakup imaginable—it hadn’t

even felt like a breakup, just a parting. She had been going back to Spain, and nobody had expected us to stay together through that. Our love had

been liking; our feelings had been ordinary, not Shakespearean. I stil felt fondness for her—fondness, that pleasant, detached mix of admiration

and sentiment, appreciation and nostalgia.

I tried to prepare myself for the inevitable conversation. The awkward teetering. The simple smiles. In other words, a return to our old ways. No

sharp shocks of chemistry, just the low hum of knowing our place. We’d had her going-away party at Priya’s, too, and I remembered it now. Even

though we’d already had the talk about things ending when she left, I was stil put in the boyfriend position; standing next to her for so many

goodbyes made me feel the goodbye a lit le more deeply within myself. By the time most of the people had left, the feelings of fondness were

nearly overwhelming me—not just a fondness for her, but a fondness for our friends, our time together, and the future with her that I’d never quite

wanted.

“You look sad,” she told me. We were alone in Priya’s bedroom, only a few coats left on the bed.

“You look exhausted,” I told her. “Exhausted from the goodbyes.”

She nodded and said yes—a lit le redundancy I’d always noticed in her without ever saying something about it. She’d nod and say yes. She’d

shake her head and say no.

If it hadn’t been over, I might have hugged her. If it hadn’t been over, I might have kissed her. Instead, I surprised both of us by saying, “I’m

going to miss you.”

It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that it humbles the present. Her absence was palpable, even though she was stil

in the room.

“I’m going to miss you, too,” she said. And then she slipped out of the moment, slipped out of the us, by adding, “I’m going to miss everyone.”

We had never lied to each other (at least not to my knowledge). But we had never gone out of our way to reveal ourselves, either. Instead, we’d

let the facts speak for themselves. I think I’m in the mood for Chinese food. I have to go now so I can nish my homework. I real y enjoyed that

movie. My family is moving back to Spain, so I guess that means we’re going to be apart.

We hadn’t vowed to write every day, and we hadn’t writ en every day. We hadn’t sworn to be true to each other, because there hadn’t been much

to be true to. Every now and then I would picture her there, in a country I’d only seen in her photo albums. And every now and then I’d write to

say hel o, to get the update, to stay in her life for no real reason beyond fondness. I told her things she already knew about our mutual friends and

she told me things I didn’t real y need to know about her friends in Spain. At rst, I’d asked her when she was going to come back to visit. Maybe

she’d even said the holidays were a possibility. But I’d forgot en. Not because there was now an ocean between us, but because there had always

been something in the way. Lily probably knew more about me in ve days of back-and-forth than So a had known in our four months of dating.

Maybe, I thought, it’s not distance that’s the problem, but how you handle it.

When Dov, Yohnny, and I arrived at Boomer’s place a lit le after six-thirty, we found him dressed like a prize ghter.

“I gured this was a good way to celebrate Boxing Day!” he said.

“It’s not a costume party, Boomer,” I pointed out. “You don’t even have to bring boxes.”

“Sometimes, Dash, you take the fun out of fun,” Boomer said with a sigh. “And you know what’s left then? Nothing.” He trooped o to his room,

came back with a Manta Ray T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and proceeded to put his jeans on right over his prize ghter shorts.

As we headed down the sidewalk, our own rock-bot om Rocky acted out his approximation of a boxer’s moves, punching wildly into the air

until he accidental y connected with the side of an old lady’s grocery cart, toppling both of them. While Dov and Yohnny helped them back up,

Boomer kept saying, “I’m so sorry! I guess I don’t know my own strength!”

Luckily, Priya didn’t live that much farther away. While we waited to be buzzed in, Dov asked, “Hey, did you bring the boot?”

Luckily, Priya didn’t live that much farther away. While we waited to be buzzed in, Dov asked, “Hey, did you bring the boot?”

I had not brought the boot. I gured if I saw some girl limping around the city wearing only one boot, I had enough of a recol ection of the item

to at empt a mental match.

“What boot?” Boomer asked.

“Lily’s,” Dov explained.

“You met Lily!” Boomer nearly exploded.

“No, I did not meet Lily,” I replied.

“Who’s Lily?” Priya asked. I hadn’t even seen her appear in the doorway.

“A girl!” Boomer answered.

“Wel , not real y a girl,” I corrected.

Priya raised an eyebrow. “A girl who’s not real y a girl?”

“She’s a drag queen,” Dov said.

“Lily Pad,” Yohnny chimed in. “She does the most amazing version of ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’ It reduces me to tears every time.”

“Tears,” Dov said.

“And Dash has her boot!” Boomer said.

“Hi, Dash.”

Here she was. Over Priya’s shoulder. A lit le hidden in the hal way light.

“Hi, So a.”

Now, when I would have loved an interruption from Boomer, he fel silent. Everyone fel silent.

“It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah, it’s good to see you, too.”

It was like the ful amount of time we’d been apart was fal ing between each sentence. There, on the front stoop, it was months of us looking at

each other. Her hair was longer, her skin a lit le darker. And there was something else, too. I just couldn’t gure it out. It was something in her

eyes. Something in the way she was looking at me that wasn’t like the way she’d looked at me before.

“Come in,” Priya said. “There are some people here already.”

It was peculiar—I wanted So a to hold back, to wait for me, like she would have when we’d been going out. But instead she led us into the

party, with Priya, Boomer, Dov, and Yohnny between us.