Page 22 of Meet Me In Central Park

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not. It wasn’t because either of us had habits that the other couldn’t stand, or because we couldn’t have rubbed along together for the rest of our lives. But I realised that’s all we we’d be doing – rubbing along together. And it wasn’t enough for me. I didn’t think it should be enough for her either. I knew then that I didn’t love her the way I’d thought I did, because the idea of letting her go was better than the idea of staying together.’

‘Could she see it was the right thing for both of you, too?’

‘She was upset, but she married the principal of her school within a year. So, I guess I’m pretty easy to get over when it comes down to it.’ Harry laughed in that easy, self-deprecating way he did, and I just hoped he was right, because I already knew I was going to miss him. ‘So, what about you, any serious relationships, even if you haven’t been in love?’

‘I thought I was in one when my parents died and back then I thought I loved him, but I withdrew from everything after that and apparently I was no fun any more. I must be pretty easy to get over too, as he took one of the girls we used to work with to Thailand at Easter and we only split up in the March. Look at us, what a pair of catches. Never been in love and never had anyone love us either by the sounds of things!’

‘He might have moved on, but I doubt he’ll ever really get over you. I’ve got a feeling that would be very hard to do.’ Harry leant towards me and I slid my hands into his dark brown hair, pulling his face closer to mine. We were so close, I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes as we passed by one of the street lamps in the park. The kiss was much more certain this time and I didn’t want it to stop there.

‘Have you got tea at your apartment?’ The words I whispered, after the kiss, hardly qualified for the most romantic sentence in the world, but I was hoping Harry would read between the lines.

‘Dannie gave me some of his Yorkshire teabags. He said it’s the only tea worth drinking.’ He gave me one of his funny looks, obviously wondering how I’d segued from the best kiss I’d ever had in my life, to discussing the merits of Yorkshire tea. It was no good; I was going to have to spell it out.

‘Can I come back to your apartment, with you?’ It would have seemed wrong to take him back to Aunt Dottie’s place, and I couldn’t risk Dannie and Rob seeing us going in together, or Dannie would be straight down to Bloomingdale's to register us for china.

‘For tea?’

‘Tea and whatever else takes your fancy.’ If I could have hidden my face underneath the blanket I would have done. None of this was like me, and I was cringing inside, but it was what I wanted and time was running out.

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Yes.’

‘In that case, there’s nothing I’d like better.’ Harry pulled me towards him again, and I knew for certain it was the right thing to do. I’d already had a perfect day and I had a feeling I was about to have the perfect night in New York too. After that, I’d go home and life would go back to the new normal it had fallen into since my parents’ accident.

Only I had no idea just how difficult going back would be.

10

‘So where are we up to with the fundraising?’ Karly was looking around the table expectantly.

‘My groups’ performances have raised over eight hundred dollars.’ Abbie handed out some more flyers. This time the actors were dressed as giant eyeballs. ‘This is our next one; it’s about the authorities invading our privacy. I’ve set up a checking account too, so we can all start paying our funds in and make payments out for the most essential works, as soon as we can.’

‘I’ve started doing some private family tours of New York, and I’m getting close to my first thousand dollars.’ I had no idea that Harry had already started fundraising and as he spoke, he was holding my hand under the table. We’d agreed to try and keep the progress of our relationship just between the two of us. The last thing I needed was for the others to know and put more pressure on me to stay, because I wanted to more than ever now. I just had to keep telling myself that when my grandparents got back from the cruise, they’d need me in the pub and, even if I could find a way around that, I couldn’t leave the city where my parents’ ashes were buried, in the churchyard that had been such a special place for us. ‘They’re aimed at what the kids want to hear about New York. I take them to the Museum of Natural History to talk about Night at the Museum, and we follow the Home Alone 2 trail and things like that. Sometimes we even go up to Belvedere Castle and talk about The Smurfs.’ Harry caught my eye and laughed.

‘That sounds brilliant.’ Karly beamed in his direction, and I wanted to say that I thought he was brilliant too, but I seemed to have lost the power of speech. I’d thought my Christmas date with Harry had been perfect. But it wasn’t the date that was perfect, it was him. When’d he’d looked at me, laughing at our private joke about The Smurfs, I’d felt that connection to him quadruple. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. I’d told myself over and over again that this was only a fleeting thing, thinking that would somehow protect me from getting in too deep, but I was officially an idiot. Nothing had been able to protect me from falling for Harry.

‘I’m probably enjoying it as much as the kids. I’d do it for nothing anyway, so raising money for the Community Center is just a bonus.’ He squeezed my hand under the table and I let out a long breath. Taking things an hour at a time was how I’d coped with losing my parents in the end, because looking towards any kind of future without them had seemed so overwhelming. I was just going to have to do the same with Harry, otherwise I was going to miss out on the time we did have left. Some of the tension finally left my shoulders and I realised he was still looking at me. ‘Are you going to tell them about what you’ve been doing in the shop, Libby?’

‘My aunt’s donating 50 per cent of all the personalised engraving money to the fund.’ It sounded pathetic compared to what Harry and Abbie had been doing. ‘And I’m running a prize draw, too, for the big Swarovski Christmas decoration, selling tickets at a dollar each. I’ve sold about two hundred so far.’

‘Yeah, and most of those are to Dannie!’ Rob rolled his eyes. ‘We’re holding a charity night at the deli, but Dannie’s still up for the calendar idea.’

‘I think it’s going to be too tight to try and get a calendar printed this year, unfortunately.’ Karly lifted one of the pugs onto her lap as she spoke.

‘And I’ve been doing sit-ups all week too!’ Dannie grinned. ‘So what about you, Paula? Have you been up to much, or have you been too busy analysing DeShawn’s mind?’

‘Actually’ – Paula put her hand over DeShawn’s – ‘we’ve been very busy fundraising. DeShawn’s sold some pictures, and we’ve been planning an art jam.’

‘An art jam?’ Maybe it was an American thing, but I already knew it had nothing to do with the stuff I spread on my toast.

‘It’s a bit like a music jam. We get a load of artists together, doing street art, and we auction off the pieces during the day. It’s a street art festival, I guess you’d say.’ DeShawn dragged his eyes away from Paula for just long enough to explain. It might have taken her forever to realise he was interested, but surely even she couldn’t doubt it now.

‘Sounds brilliant; we definitely need to jump on the Parsy bandwagon,’ Dannie said. ‘I almost had to queue up to get under the Greywacke Arch this week, with the amount of people who’d stopped to look at it, so I reckon that will go down really well.’

‘Maybe we could do some street food to sell on the day, too?’ Rob looked at Karly, who nodded back.

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