Page 36 of Growing Into Love

“Well, you’re about to get a good view of the skyline. And Hudson isn’t a bad ride on the Metro North train. How long are you here for?”

“Just a week,” I say.

Suddenly, the high concrete walls lining the highway fall away and my breath catches in my throat. New York City spreads out in the distance, the Empire State Building like an arrow shooting straight up into a clear blue sky. They look almost like toy skyscrapers, a model some child made forming an uneven horizon. I try to imagine seeing it all up close, surrounded by strangers, buildings towering over my head. So many lives being lived, so much to see and do. Without thinking, I instinctively reach out for Jaz. His palm is rough against my own. The hand of a man who knows hard labor yet delicate enough to handle a newborn lamb.

He squeezes my hand.

“This is really happening,” he says, echoing my words from earlier.

“It really is,” I say, echoing his. He releases me and pulls off his Liverpool jumper. His tee rides up, revealing a tempting swatch of smooth skin over chiseled abs. I turn to face the window, my cheeks on fire, my insides wriggling.

Soon, too soon, we leave New York behind and are cruising down a large highway lined with trees and brush, the occasional house peeping through.

I lean back in my seat and after half an hour, I glance at Jaz again. He’s frowning down at his phone.

“Still wishing I could check in with Clive,” he says when he catches me looking. Then he clears his throat. “Will David be wanting to know you landed safely?”

“Oh yeah,” I lie. “I’ll text him when I get to the room. He’s always checking in with me. Not in a patronizing way, though,” I add quickly. My fake boyfriend will not treat me like a damn child.

“Right,” Jaz says.

“There will be Wi-Fi at the hotel and at Windy Acres,” I reassure him. “Did you get a chance to look at the hotel website?”

“I’ve barely had a chance to process that I’m here,” Jaz says, glancing out the window.

“Right.” I kind of forgot he only agreed to this last minute. I’ve been waiting for it for nearly a year now. “Well, you’ll be staying in Del’s room, obviously. It’s called the Fairview—it seems really nice. They run shuttles to Windy Acres. All of the riders and trainers are staying at the hotel. The competition runs two days: Thursday and Friday. So we’ve got tomorrow and Wednesday to train and get over the jetlag. The Grand Prix is the final event, on Friday afternoon. They’ll give us a map of the course the day before and then we can walk through it Friday—usually they give you one hour.”

“I don’t know how to walk a course, Cass.”

“That’s fine, I can show you. It’s good for me to have someone to walk it with, so I can work out my route out loud. Now.” I face him full on, my skin tingling. He’s not Del, so I can confess my secret plan. “There’s a festival on Saturday at Windy Acres and we fly out Sunday. But I don’t care about some dumb festival.”

“Okay,” Jaz says, looking wary.

“I want to go to New York,” I declare. “We could leave Saturday morning, find some cheap hotel to stay at, and make a day and night out of it. What do you think?”

“New York,” Jaz says with a pretend shudder.

I slap his chest playfully, unable to stop the shivers at the feel of hard muscle under the soft fabric of his tee. “I am not getting so close to the promised land without stopping to explore.”

“Why have you always been so interested in New York anyway?”

“Whywouldn’tI be interested? It’s got everything—music and theater and food and fashion and all sorts of people. I want to have a martini at a swanky rooftop bar. I want to walk down Madison Avenue and pretend I can afford to shop there. I want to find the strangest, most unique type of food possible. And I want to buy a hot dog from a guy with one of those carts in Central Park.”

“Those last two might be one and the same,” Jaz jokes.

I slap him again and he laughs, holding up his hands.

“Okay, okay, we’ll go to the city and get a hot dog.”

“And go to Bloomingdales,” I say.

“And go to Bloomingdales.”

“And ride the subway.”

“This is getting to be an awfully long list,” Jaz says.

“You could have a pedi cab take you around Central Park,” the driver pipes up from the front. “Or one of those horse-drawn carriages.”

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