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HOUR 1
“It’s the city that never sleeps, Pen.” Colin acts as though if he puts enough emphasis on the right word, Penelope might come to understand his plan.
“You want to stay up for the entirety of your layover?” she asks as they shuffle along the black and white checked floor toward the front of the queue.
Colin hums absently as he studies the chalkboard menu. “What kind do you want?”
“Everything bagel. With plain, no, scallion schmear. And a coffee apparently.” She’d already had a cup hours ago when she first got up to write, the late-March sun slowly waking up to greet her as she trudged toward her daily word count. At this rate, her heart is poised to shoot out of her body and rocket off into space with the amount of caffeine she’ll have to ingest just to keep up with this plan. “But that’s twenty-four hours.”
The “this is mad” subtext goes unremarked upon by Colin, who breezily relays their bagel order to the person behind the counter.
“I don’t see why this is confusing for you,” he says, tapping his card against the reader.
“Are you not jetlagged?”
“Do you know what time zone Mexico is in?”
Penelope rolls her eyes. “Or tired at least?”
Colin shrugs. “Slept on the plane.”
He always managed things like that—sleeping in uncomfortable economy seats even though his tall frame was squished beyond reason, waking up with a zest for life that most people would need ten espresso shots for. The world molded around Colin so he could move through it with ease.
“Of course you did.” Grabbing their coffee, Penelope leads them through the crush of people toward a small silver cart tucked in the back corner, where she pours herself a splash of milk and looks on in mild horror as Colin dumps four sugar packets into his own paper cup. “It just seems a bit…I don’t know, excessive?”
“Penelope.” He only ever uses her full name when he’s serious, his stern expression underscoring this point further. “How long has it been since I’ve seen you?”
She hadn’t been home for the winter holidays—flights were too expensive for her grad student budget and frankly she’d been more excited to spend that time in the city than at her mother’s house. Months before that, Eloise had helped Penelope shove her life into two giant suitcases and lugged them all the way to the tiny New York City flat she now shared with three other girls. That was back in August, but Colin had already left by then—Tasmania? Tokyo? The frequency of his trips made them all blur together into one shapeless blob.
Penelope takes a long sip of her coffee—it's rude that he’s asking her to do math this early.
“Since July, I suppose. Your mother’s garden party.” He’d worn a striped linen shirt that matched the color of his eyes and Penelope recalls thinking it would be a fine final image to carry her through the length of her creative writing program.
It didn’t have to, though. Here he was, with sun droplets bouncing off the disco ball hanging in the corner and fanning across his smiling cheeks.
“So why wouldn’t I want to spend every precious hour I have here with you?”
Penelope’s stomach flips and she tries to hide her blush behind large sunglasses as they step out of the shop and onto the pavement. “I just don’t see how we’ll possibly fill that much time.”
She was used to a few hours in the same room, breathlessly catching each other up on the weeks or months that had passed while attempting to dodge interruptions from his siblings. She was used to postcards carrying his presence into her home—Colin loved the kitchiness of it and Penelope enjoyed collecting these tangible symbols of their decade-long friendship. She’d grown accustomed to him living in her phone, popping up in photos of serene beaches and notes about restaurants she absolutely, unequivocally had to try if she ever found herself in that part of the world.
But now he’s here and they have the whole day to spend together. Just the two of them. Penelope’s heart seesaws between gratitude and panic, settling somewhere in the middle.
“You’ll be surprised how quickly it goes by,” he replies, digging through the brown paper bag at his wrist and triumphantly retrieving one of his two bagels. He bites right into the sesame rind as they walk, unwilling to wait for them to find a proper place to sit.
“Is this usually how you spend long layovers?” Penelope can easily imagine him sprinting through some darkened Italian piazza chugging Red Bull just so he wouldn’t have to risk missing anything.
“I like to make the most of my time. And if I only have 24 hours with you, I want each of them to count.”
A stray sesame seed clings to the bottom of Colin’s lip as he smiles down at her and Penelope musters the whole of her willpower to keep from swiping it away with her thumb.
Her cause was lost long before he’d ever suggested this ridiculous plan. She was never going to say no to more of him.
Holding up her takeaway cup in surrender, she knocks it lightly against his. “To making it count.”
HOUR 3
According to the informational placard near the entrance, a Rothko painting was meant to evoke intense emotion in those who sat long enough with it. Penelope had never taken the time to give the artist’s works more than a passing glance on her previous tips to MoMA, but if she and Colin intended to kill 24 solid hours, they were practically required to take up this directive.
They’ve been sitting in front of a black and grey canvas for five minutes, their silence only intruded upon by passing footsteps and the occasional cough. Initially, Penelope had been worried it might be awkward. Their first hour at the museum mirrored the trajectory of their usual phone calls—her asking about his week in Oaxaca, him fishing for an update on the escapades of her neighborhood bodega cat—both of them chattering away without hardly taking a breath and hanging up before either of them ran out of anything to say.
But it’s nice, this silence. Penelope wonders what she might’ve been missing in all those pauses she’d been so desperate to fill.
Pulling her focus back to the painting, which reminds her of the surface of the moon, Penelope searches her mind and body for a feeling. She comes up empty, distracted by the outsides of their thighs sandwiching together.
“Tell me something,” Colin says quietly.
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
Penelope wets her lips. “I’m shelving my manuscript.”
He tears his gaze away from the painting. “When did you decide that?”
“Last week, after you called,” she says. “It’s just not working. I feel like I’ve outgrown what it was originally meant to be.”
After Colin had told Penelope he was coming to New York on his way back home, she took one look at her open doc and knew it wasn’t right. The exact problem had eluded her then as she skimmed through the pages, trying to see how she might shift things around. But now she knew—it was the gaps. All those places where her hands had stilled over the keys and her mind paused, the moments of discomfort where she might have let something vulnerable or messy slip out onto the page, all rushed through in favor of something safer.
She needed those gaps and the honesty that lived within them. It was the whole point of her move, to come to a new place and become more expansive, more herself. She’d never be able to get there, in the story or in her real life, without exploring all that the silence had to offer.
“But you love that story,” Colin says.
“I’m comfortable in it, but I feel like I need to let go of that comfort to make room for something better.” She meets his eyes and a soft smile passes over his lips.
Colin turns back to the painting. “I’m going to be staying in London for a while.”
Penelope blinks in surprise. He hadn’t mentioned this on any of their recent calls. “Really?”
“I’ve got so many stories backlogged from the past few months to publish that there’s really no need for me to be on the road as much.”
The canvas before her seems to expand, black bleeding over the edges and threatening to swallow up the entire room. From the darkness flows a wave of sorrow so acute she can feel it filling her lungs. How woefully ironic that he would finally decide to stay after she’d already left. She would always be missing him.
“Oh,” she says, a pitiful nothing of a sentence. Then, a shade more honest, “I thought you liked being on the road.”
“I do. But I think I need a break.” He gives her a sideways look and for a moment there’s a crack of light cutting through the darkness. “Who knows, maybe it will make room for something better.”
HOUR 5
The first truly warm day of spring is a sacred thing in London. It’s a day where everyone is allowed their delusions about the grey days of winter being fully behind them and the suffocating heat of summer being too far in the future to care.
The same holds true here. As soon as the temperature shifts from coat weather to jacket weather, the whole city comes alive. Across the park, people stretch out over the lawn, clustered in picnics and playdates and impromptu gossip sessions.
Cool blades of grass tickle her skin, cherry blossom trees sway in the distance, and Penelope feels like she too is coming alive again.
The same can’t be said for Colin, who is sprawled out on the grass beside her with his newly-acquired MoMA tote bag thrown over his face for, in his words, “sun protection.” His promise to not have a nap had been broken by the most god awful snore approximately five minutes later.
She won’t hold it against him. Pasta for lunch didn’t exactly align with their wakeful goals, but Colin’s excitement couldn’t be dulled even as they rolled their rigatoni stuffed bodies out of the trattoria and onto the nearest patch of grass. Though she did feel rather smug for not falling asleep first.
Stretching her arms up overhead, Penelope is content to remain just like this—fluffly clouds overhead, sun dancing across her skin, the sounds of the city and Colin’s steady breathing curling around her.
Rolling her head to the side, she finds Colin awake and looking back at her. He grins and she finds it contagious.
Penelope props herself on her elbow. “What?”
“Just looking.” A curious crease forms between his brows. “Sometimes, when I’m away, I’ll get this weird paranoia that I’ve forgotten what you look like.”
There’s a tiny ache in her chest, but she laughs it away. “Do I need to start sending you pictures as proof of life?”
He laughs with her, but the furrow in his brow returns. “It sounds ridiculous, but it can be really unsettling. So much so that as soon as I’m back in London I have to go somewhere that reminds me of you just to feel balanced again.”
Penelope swallows, pushing her heart back down where it belongs to keep from losing it completely. “Where do you go?”
“There’s a little side street over by Regent’s Park. I can’t remember exactly when I stumbled upon it or why it stayed with me—it’s really quite ordinary. But I was struck by how quiet and calm it was for being in such a busy area. And there’s all these little garden boxes outside each door, filled with tiny yellow and orange flowers, which look like they’re glowing when the sun hits them just right. Actually the whole street seems to glow.”
Something inside Penelope splits open—a gap filled with stillness and quiet. She tries to listen.
“And…I don’t know. Whenever I’m there I feel like I can see you again.” Colin averts his gaze, plucking blades of grass from the ground. “That probably doesn’t make much sense.”
“No, it—” Penelope looks beyond the reassurance she was poised to give him, finding something more honest. “I have the opposite problem with you. I walk around knowing you couldn’t possibly be here, and yet I think I see you everywhere—a bunch of almost yous running around the city.” Penelope picks at the grass in front of her. “Sometimes I worry I wouldn’t even recognize you if I did see the real you, that I’d think you were just another almost.”
A different kind of silence stretches out as he looks at her, the kind that crackles with electricity and makes Penelope feel the fullness of everything that quietly lives inside of it.
“I think I know how to fix your problem.” Colin’s easy smile returns, light and unburdened. “We just have to go through the city and take out those imposter Colin’s one by one.”
HOUR 6
Their theoretical search for faux-Colin’s—though real-Colin is concerningly serious about the matter—turns out to be a net positive for their original plan. If they truly intend to stay up all night—clandestine naps notwithstanding—they need to get up and moving.
A short stroll leads them to a place that always manages to shake Penelope from any kind of stupor. As soon as they step into The Strand, they’re pummeled with color and chatter. She’s instantly alert, her eyes unable to choose a single spot to settle their attention onto.
Penelope smiles to herself as she thinks of those late-night television skits. “This place has everything!” And it really does: books from every genre, historical texts locked behind glass cases, a giant, opulent reading room, and most importantly, coffee.
She catches Colin looking around in awe before he turns to her, completely resolute. “Okay, where did you see this pseudo Colin?”
He’s easily waylayed as soon as she grabs his wrist and tugs him toward the travel section. She easily recognizes the familiar faraway look in his eyes when he pulls a book off the shelf, the look one gets as a story begins to pull them in. It’s Penelope’s favorite thing about bookstores. Whenever her real life becomes too overwhelming or disappointing, she can wander between the aisles of a thousand different lives and get completely lost, shedding any sense of time or place.
On this trip, however, it’s proving difficult to remain anywhere but the present. The store is massive, yet somehow her body is always intersecting with Colin’s—fingertips brushing as they walk side by side, a hand at the small of her back when passing through a cluster of people, little sparks bursting from her skin each time.
She used to be consumed by these sparks, fleeting as they were. The sheer volume of little touches experienced just today would’ve burned sixteen year-old Penelope to a crisp.
Perhaps she’s become like one of those people who walks over hot coals. Though the heat remains as their shoulders and elbows knock together while digging through the $1 bin, fire no longer feels like a thing to be avoided, but a natural product of their proximity to one another.
Colin picks up a tattered paperback and Penelope rests a hand on his forearm, a surprisingly easy thing to do. He doesn’t jerk or pull away or seem in any way phased—maybe this is just how they exist around each other now. “Oh, I love that one.”
He flips the cover over. “What’s it about?”
“It’s a love story.” Heat rises from the glowing embers beneath her feet. “About two friends who become something more.”
Colin angles his body toward hers, the length of the book the only thing separating them. “How does it happen?”
“It takes a rather long time actually. They keep missing each other, only reuniting for brief periods over the years, but when they’re together it's like nothing has changed. They fall right back into this closeness that neither of them can fully describe.”
She takes the book from his hands, keeping her own gaze fixed on the cover as he watches her. “She’s been quietly in love with him forever, having no idea he’s felt the same for some time when the story begins. There’s not a single moment where everything changes and suddenly they realize what they mean to each other, but a million tiny moments of them falling in love until one day it becomes impossible to ignore.”
“Does it work out for them?” His voice sounds so quiet and soft, Penelope is forced to meet his eyes. His particular shade of blue had always given his stare a bit of extra intensity, the force of it now squarely centered on her.
Penelope wets her lips, feeling like her answer matters here. “Yeah, it does.”
Colin’s lips curve into a smile, a thousand rays of sunshine beaming down on her. He pulls the book from her grasp, making no effort to keep his fingers from tangling with hers in the process. Penelope doesn’t busy herself with sifting through the bargains while he studies the front cover, eager to jump headfirst into the gap this pause has created. His mouth opens and she leans in, ready to catch whatever comes out.
“Penelope?” The velvety voice comes from behind her, belonging to a familiar face.
“Alfred, hi!” She turns to introduce him to Colin, explaining that they’d met at a lecture series focused on the correspondence styles of historical figures on extended voyages, a subject she was drawn to for no particular reason.
For someone who usually treats every stranger like he’s their personal welcome committee, Colin is honestly a bit rude when introducing himself, so Penelope wraps up their chat quickly, promising to take Alfred’s recommendation on a book analyzing Napoleon's letters to Joséphine as they say their goodbyes. She turns back to Colin, whose energy has shifted in a way that can only be described as sour.
She thinks to ask him about it as he sorts through the clearance pile when he blurts out, “That guy definitely wants to fuck you.”
It feels like she’s choking on air. “No he doesn’t.” Her voice is all high and nervous. They never talked about this kind of thing, a self-imposed rule Penelope gave herself that Colin had been kind enough to follow until now.
“He one-hundred percent does.” It’s not said in a teasing way, or in a way that is silently followed by “and you should go for it.” It’s said plainly, like it's just a fact, and Penelope doesn’t know what to do with that.
“How would you know? You don’t even know him. I hardly know him.” She thrusts her hands into the box of books, the flaps of the covers slapping together as she builds a pile.
Colin stops rummaging. “I know it when I see it.”
Penelope drops her books. Why does she feel like she’s being scolded? This weirdly protective attitude is better suited to Anthony than it is to him.
But when she looks at him he doesn’t look at all like he wants to protect her. A darkness passes over his features and his eyes dip down to her lips, the space between them blazing more than ever, the coals at her feet challenging her to walk through them.
“So what if he does?” She holds her breath, waiting to see how he fills the gap. The intensity in his eyes trickles down to his jaw, held tightly enough to keep the words knocking on the back of his teeth at bay.
Colin clears his throat, a bucket of cold water snuffing out whatever had been simmering. “I want to get one of those bags before we leave,” he says, pointing in the direction of the display of souvenir totes.
Penelope stands still for a moment, contemplating trying to pick through the remnants of what just happened. There’s too many confusing fragments, too many missing pieces and too little time to puzzle them together. So she leaves them in a heap and follows him to the register.
HOUR 8
“I can’t believe you’ve been here almost a year and still haven’t had a proper hot dog,” Colin shouts from behind her as they trudge up the stadium steps.
“How great can they be?” she calls out over her shoulder.
“It’s basically a sausage, what’s not to love?”
“That’s a bit generous, don’t you think?” She shuffles awkwardly past people toward their seats.
“But more importantly,” he emphasizes, “it's a quintessential American experience!”
“Should I go buy a rifle and get a bald eagle tattoo next?”
She can hear the grin in his voice. “The night is young.”
The walk from the bookstore back to her apartment had been filled with lingering tension. Penelope thought it might never break, but as soon as a rat scurried across their path carrying an entire slice of pizza between its dirty little teeth, they’d both shrieked and then dissolved into laughter. The city delivered them the perfect reset button.
When they dropped their haul off at her apartment, Colin was back to his usual self, cheerily acquainting himself with her flatmates as Penelope changed into something befitting the brisk evening ahead. One of them had been far too interested in Colin for her liking. That is what wanting to fuck someone looked like, though it seemed Colin’s keen powers of observation dissolved completely when turned on himself.
Penelope pulls her mind back to the present as she settles into her seat and looks out across the field. Dusty purple paints the sky as the sun ekes out one final stand before the bright stadium lights take over completely. She doesn’t know a thing about baseball, only that it's too early in the season for either hope or despair, but that doesn’t prevent the buzz of possibility from percolating through the crowd and straight into her veins.
Although she’d been skeptical at first, Penelope is fully committed to Colin’s plan now. She doesn’t want to argue with him or spend the little time they have wishing for more. The day doesn’t need to conclude in some grand epiphany or be more than it is. They’ve got 24 hours, and she intends to make the most of it.
Colin sighs happily as he sits down beside her. “Never had a hot dog,” he mutters, shaking his head.
“Well, we can remedy that now so you can stop being so scandalized by it.” She holds out her hand and he retrieves a warm foil package from his new Mets x Hello Kitty commemorative tote bag and places it in her palm.
“You know, I’m starting to think you have a problem,” she says, brows raised as she tips her head toward the bag.
“I do have a problem,” he says. “It’s you not eating this fucking hot dog.”
Penelope rolls her eyes. He watches her intently as she peels away the foil. When she takes her first bite, it's like she’s the only person in this entire stadium.
“Well?” he asks impatiently. “What do you think?”
Chewing, she bobs her head from side to side. “I wish it was a sausage roll, but it's not bad.” She takes another bite. “Needs more mustard, I think.”
He pulls a yellow packet from his bag, applying the mustard with dedicated precision and Penelope is so in love with him it hurts.
Can she really blame her flatmate? He’s disgustingly attractive, even when shoving an unreasonable amount of hot dog into his mouth, mustard squishing out to corners of his lips.
“You’re a disaster,” she says in a tone that sounds a lot like “you’re my favorite.”
He grins. “You love it.”
She smiles back fondly. The noise of the crowd swells around them and Penelope is reminded that sports are happening on the field below. But no one seems to be looking at the field. No, everyone in their section is staring at them.
Her stomach swoops. She doesn’t need to look to confirm that their image is being splashed across the jumbo screen on the opposite side of the field—the rising chant of kiss, kiss, kiss! takes care of that.
Colin, for his part, looks bewildered, with redness creeping onto his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. He clearly hadn’t factored the kiss-cam into his quintessential American experience.
Penelope had two choices. She could do the whole “no, we’re just friends!” song and dance that only prolonged the experience and left everyone unsatisfied, forcing her and Colin to carry the awkwardness through the rest of the evening. Or…
Without thinking too much about it, Penelope leans in and licks the mustard from the corner of his mouth. The crowd hoots and hollers, their bloodlust satiated as the camera moves on to another set of victims.
Her shoulders relax and she releases a heavy breath. Colin hasn’t moved at all, the stunned expression cementing onto his face.
“Sorry, everyone was shouting, so I—”
“No, that was—good. Good thinking, I mean.” Colin sinks down into his seat and focuses back on the game, the remainder of his hot dog left uneaten.
HOUR 11
The subway back from Queens is packed end-to-end with disappointed Mets fans and twenty-somethings in club wear beginning their trek into the city. Penelope’s back is pressed snugly to Colin's front as more people pile in.
Neither of them acknowledged The Lick again. Colin had spouted off baseball facts and Penelope pretended like the taste of mustard and his skin didn’t linger on her tongue.
One of the things she loved most about Colin is that he never intentionally made her feel embarrassed. He was always quick to jump in with a joke or quip to lighten the mood, which she had been grateful for as a young girl with so many insecurities. Though sometimes she wishes he wouldn’t be so quick to fill the silence.
The air in the carriage is thick and warm. The train rocks back and forth on the rails, but Colin is still and steady at her back. She’s so comfortable with him despite how he makes her heart flutter and stomach flip. It’s a special combination she’s never been able to find with anyone else.
Her body relaxing, Penelope’s eyelids grow heavy and her mouth opens to release the yawn she’s been holding in.
Colin pokes a finger between her ribs. “None of that.”
“I can’t help it,” she whines, tipping her head back to look at him. “It’s past my bedtime.”
“No. Sleeping,” he reiterates. The train pulls up to the platform and Colin wraps his hand around hers and tugs them out the door along with the crowd. “I have an idea.”
HOUR 12
Colin’s idea involves chugging Red Bulls. Instead of in an Italian piazza like Penelope imagined, they do so outside a Bushwick bodega and proceed to find the nearest dance club.
There, the Red Bulls continue, this time paired with vodka. The combination is lethal. House remixes of early 2000s hits blare around them and attractive, sweaty people shimmy and grind under the blue and purple lights. Penelope wouldn’t call what she and Colin do dancing—they’re really just jumping around scream-singing the few words they remember at the tops of their lungs.
The cocktail has made her loopy, feeling so full and no longer dreaming of her bed. Penelope spends so much time locked away in her room or at the school library toiling away on her manuscript, she hardly ever gets to enjoy the city like this, just young and loose and alive.
Colin had floated the idea of something harder to really bump up their energy. Penelope had considered it, but she didn’t need this weekend to turn into a bender—tomorrow he would be gone and she would have to deal with the crash alone, picking up the pieces of herself that would shatter the moment he left.
Tomorrow he’ll be gone. The thought sticks in her mind, a wave of sadness slamming into her. She stops jumping, her feet filled with lead. Colin stops too. His fingers find the underside of chin, tilting her face up to meet his concerned expression.
“What’s wrong?” he shouts.
Penelope stretches to bring her mouth closer to his ear, their chests pressing together as she does.
“I miss you.” Not “I’m going to miss you,” even though that’s probably what she meant to say. But it’s true. She already missed him, the anticipatory grief creeping in with every minute that ticked by.
Colin holds her hand to his chest, his t-shirt damp with sweat. His heart races beneath her palm. “You don’t have to miss me,” he says. “I’m right here.”
He’s here in front of her and Penelope can’t imagine how she ever wanted to sleep through a moment of him. Neither of them move, gently swaying in the middle of the dancefloor. People spin around them, but Colin is looking at her so fondly her whole world feels distilled down to the small sliver of space between them.
It’s a punch to the gut, how much she loves him. She’s never been able to forget, but right now she feels it so acutely, how deeply it's intertwined with her very being. It practically makes her sick.
Oh. Penelope holds a hand to her mouth. Oh, she might actually be sick.
HOUR 14
Penelope recoils at the sudden appearance of bright light overhead. Blinking, she looks around and tries to collect her bearings, noting that the light is coming from the ceiling of a cab, which Colin is gently trying to coax her out of.
She vaguely recalls black and yellow checkers pulling up to the alleyway behind the club where—she runs her tongue over her teeth and heaves a sigh of relief—where she did not get sick! The victory is short lived once she realizes where they are.
“Wait, no,” she says as Colin helps her onto the pavement just outside her building. “What are we doing here?”
“I’m putting you to bed.” He closes the door behind her and waves his thanks to the cab driver.
“But the 24 hours aren’t up yet.” It wasn’t even close, barely past midnight.
“It’s okay. We gave it a good run.” He tucks her hand into the crook of his arm and tries to lead her up the steps. “Come on now.”
She snatches her hand away, rooting her feet to the bottom step. “No.”
For the first time today, he looks tired. “Pen, it’s fine, we don’t have to—”
“No.” She thrusts a finger up to his face and asserts, “We are not quitting. It’s the city that never sleeps!”
For how reluctant he looked, Colin doesn’t object when she drags him to the corner bodega, loads his arms so heavily with snacks he’s incapable of petting the resident orange terror, then instructs him to carry them up to her rooftop. Penelope makes a detour on the way up to strip the blankets from her bed and raid the linen closet for more. She throws a sweatshirt over her head, then doubles back to grab another for Colin. It's quite oversized on her, but his long arms will probably still poke out well beyond the ends of the sleeves.
Colin’s arms poke out well beyond the sleeves of her oversized purple crewneck, but he doesn’t seem to mind. She’d venture he’s grateful to have it every time a crisp gust of wind blows through. It’s not exactly rooftop season yet, but the blanket nests they’re constructing should give them a bit more time before it becomes unbearable. It’s a clear night and Penelope wants to show him how beautifully the city glows against the darkness.
Really, she wants to show him everything. She wants to take him to the top of the Empire State building and watch his face light up the closer he gets to the sky. To spend weeks, months, years finding all the secret gardens tucked between concrete and steel. To travel all the way to Coney Island so he can eat too many hot dogs and then immediately suggest they stop for ice cream after.
Spring has just begun and already it feels like they’re sliding back into winter, buds of hope and possibility dying before they can even bloom. She wants a thousand more hours with him, but they’re already out of time.
“This is some view,” Colin says.
Penelope pulls one of the blankets up to her chin. “Sometimes I can’t believe I live here.”
“Do you think you’ll stay? After you finish school?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it would be better for me if I did.” The city had a magical way of stoking one’s ambition—it’s the place that finally made her feel like a real writer. Living here is proving to her again and again that she’s capable and deserving of more than she’s ever allowed herself to believe. But she questions if it will ever feel like home. “Other times I worry about what I might miss being so far away.”
“It’s always a sacrifice. You just have to hope whatever you’re giving up is worth what you gain by leaving.”
“Has it been that way for you?”
“Not always, in hindsight,” he says with a weak smile. “But I can never regret following my heart. Eventually it leads me to the right place.“ He glances over at her, his face inscrutable. “I think if your heart is telling you to stay, then you should.”
Penelope stares out at the bright lights dotting the skyline and tries to listen. Her heart only knows one answer. It comes to her so quietly, the only evidence she’s even said it aloud are the misty droplets of breath left behind in the air. “I wish you could stay.”
It’s funny to think how worried she’d been about how they would fill the hours, thinking it would be too much and they might grow tired of each other, when really the alternative is so much worse. Now he was winding down his travels and the likelihood of them crossing paths like this again would dwindle to almost nothing.
Colin is staring at her profile intently, her words and all the others left unsaid lingering between them. She doesn’t dare turn to face him, the first hints of tears she doesn’t want him to see beginning to form.
“You know, most flights from Mexico back to London run through Texas—Houston, Dallas. Sometimes you can find one going through Chicago or Atlanta. It’s not very common to find a stopover in New York.”
Penelope fiddles with the tassels of her outermost blanket. “Sounds like you got lucky.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I reworked my whole itinerary and endured some truly heinous seating arrangements so I could spend a day with you.”
She shakes her head. “You didn’t need to go through all that trouble.”
“I did, actually.” Colin’s voice goes soft. “Because the thing is, I’m really tired of missing you.”
Penelope looks up and is met with his pleading expression. “I’m tired of my schedule being too packed to visit you properly. Tired of only getting to hear your voice through the phone and being deprived of the rest of you because I’m too far away. I’m so tired of visiting an empty street just so I can feel close to you again.”
There’s a whisper of something else in his pauses and in-betweens, so much like the murmurs found in her own that she’s been too afraid to listen to. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you have me. Right here.” Colin releases the grasp on his blanket cloak, reaching for her hand to place on his chest, right over his heart. “For as long as you want, I’m yours.”
Rapid thumps beat against her palm and Penelope can’t deny how fast her own heart is beating. She has him. She slides her hand up to his neck and feels his pulse racing there too. For as long as she wants. Her fingers thread into his hair and his eyelids flutter closed. He’s hers.
Penelope pulls him closer until there is nothing left to miss.
HOURS ?
Cold hands meeting hot skin. Giggly puffs of breath staining the night. Blankets being shoved away in favor of getting closer. Soft kisses that taste like spring and new beginnings. The swipe of his tongue against her bottom lip promising so much more. She has him.
Murmured reminders to be quiet as they stumble down to her bed. Layers and layers of clothing they no longer need. Streetlamps and moonlight bouncing off every curve of exposed skin. Fingers that leave scorching trails from her neck all the way down to her thighs. A scream miraculously trapped inside as he uses his mouth on her. A whispered plea for more that is swiftly granted with a fullness she never wants to give up. Slow rolls of his hips that make her forget all about time and whether they’ll ever have enough of it. For as long as she wants.
Nails digging into his shoulders for purchase as pleasure rocks through her body. Eyes locked onto hers as he follows with a gasp. Shuddered breaths giving way to soft laughs pressed into skin. Tender kisses bestowed upon foreheads and eyelids and tips of noses. Their bodies relaxing into the mattress, settling into truths that didn’t need to be spoken to be real.
Sleep chases her, but there’s no longer a need to fight it; everything she needs is wrapped around her. He’s hers.
HOUR 24
Sunlight gently taps at her eyelids, a soft nudge to rise that Penelope readily rejects. The garbage trucks roaring by provide more of a shove, but it's the heavy arm around her waist tugging her close that truly jolts her awake.
“Colin!” She shoots up and Colin throws an arm over his eyes.
“It’s too early for shouting,” he grumbles.
“It’s already half past ten! You’re going to miss your flight.” Penelope throws her legs over the side of the bed, but he catches her wrist before she can get up.
“About that…” He sits up and scratches the stubble that sprouted up overnight along his jaw. Penelope allows herself a moment to enjoy his morning scruffiness. “I already cancelled my flight back.”
Penelope blinks. “When?”
“On our way to the museum.” His smile is small and appropriately sheepish. “I knew straight away that one day wasn’t going to be enough with you.”
Penelope bites her lip, which does nothing to stop the grin from spreading across her face. She settles back against the headboard, renewed possibility blooming in her chest. “How long are you staying then?”
“That depends,” he says, lacing his fingers through hers. “How long will you have me?”
She taps her chin and pretends to consider this, as though the answer hadn't been clear since before he even stepped off the plane. “At least one more day.”