We take our drinks and head out, and it occurs to me as soon as we hit the sidewalk, into the cool October air, that I don’t actually have any idea what to say to Jack. I don’t usually have to come up with small talk for anyone, really. I walk to school alone, I walk back alone, and everywhere else I go tends to be in a group.
But Jack Campbell is nothing if not good at filling up silence.
“Where are you from, anyway?”
I wince. It’s not that I lied about it or anything, but after the first few reactions I got name-dropping a city in the South, I decided not to advertise it. “I’m that much of a sore thumb?”
“No, actually. You fit in alarmingly well.” I’m not sure if this is meant to be a compliment or not, and from the slight bitterness in his tone, I’m not sure if he is either. He clears his throat, the edge in his words softening. “But you were one of like, two people we didn’t already know freshman year, so I’m guessing you moved from somewhere.”
I’m never quite sure whether I’m embarrassed or proud of it. Today I settle on some mix of the two.
“Nashville, actually.”
“Huh.” Jack seems to mull this over, his tongue pressing into the side of his cheek. I can see something shift in the way he considers me, and it makes me uneasy—the not knowing.
I clear my throat. “If you’re about to make a cowgirl joke, you can save it.”
“Nah, it was gonna be Taylor Swift–themed.”
“In that case, you may proceed. But with caution. I was really into her when she was still country.”
“Was?”
There’s that little half grin again. I wonder if Jack has ever smiled with his whole mouth. Someday when he’s an old man, he’ll probably just have wrinkles on the one side.
“Am,” I concede. Just two days ago Paige and I were blasting “Shake It Off” so loudly on a three-way Skype call with our dad that he threatened to start singing himself if we didn’t quit. At that point, considering he has neighbors on both sides of him, it was our civic responsibility to shut it down.
We turn the corner and hit Fifth Avenue, which is emptier now than when I usually see it on the weekends. Today it’s mostly tourists and joggers who have gotten home from work. “Where are you from?”
“Born and bred,” says Jack, gesturing out in the direction of downtown. “We live in the East Village. Have since my great-grandparents.”
I feel an unexpected pang, then. An unwelcome kind of longing. My grandparents are still in Nashville too—on both my mom’s and my dad’s side. It seemed like Nashville was the root of our family tree, like there would never be any conceivable reason for leaving. Even now, four years on the other side of it, I haven’t fully come around to the idea.
I shove my bangs behind my ear, but the wet curl pops out, stubborn as ever. My hair is never more unruly than it is after practice, when I can’t style it between school and home.
“So you’re like some kind of unicorn.”
Jack’s lip quirks. “What?”
“When’s the last time you met someone in New York whose family is actually from New York?”
Jack laughs. “Up here? Not for a while,” he says. “But where I’m from … well. You meet a lot more New Yorkers downtown than you do up here.”
It is a true testament to how enthusiastically Ethan and Stephen are going at it with each other that I notice the two of them on the steps before I notice anything else in the surrounding area—not the intoxicatingly sweet smell of the nut vendor on the curb, or the massive fountains, or the group of little kids squealing and running up and down the iconic steps of the Met. The two of them are utterly oblivious to all of it, kissing like one of them is about to go off to war.
I clap my hand to my chest before I even realize what I’m doing, as if I’m watching one of the ridiculous rom-coms Paige puts on whenever she comes to visit. “Aw. Let’s just leave them be.”
“What? Where’s the fun in that?” Jack crows.
“They look so happy.”
“They look like they need to get a room,” says Jack. But he’s the one who starts walking away first, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “I should have known you’d be a terrible pranking partner.”
“How exactly were you planning on pranking them, anyway?”
“I guess now you’ll never know,” he says, elbowing me in the shoulder.
I rock to the side and push him back without thinking, the gesture so mindless and natural that only after it happens do I stop breathing for a second, sure I’ve crossed some kind of line. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve been interacting with everyone here from behind some kind of veil—as though I’m allowed to be here, but not engage. To look, but not touch. Like the entire social order of this place was decided long before my arrival, and any involvement I have in it is out of mercy from the people who actually belong.
But Jack is just smirking that faint smirk, walking farther down Fifth.
“So, seeing as I’m captain of the dive team now—”
“Is that so?”
“Well, you’ve seen that Ethan is clearly interested in other varieties of diving at the moment.”
“So you’ve decided to elect yourself?”
Jack shrugs, the smirk taking on a new sharpness. “What’s the point of having an identical twin if you can’t schlep your workload onto them every now and then?”
I hold his gaze. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
Jack is uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, watching a group of siblings stand very, very still for a caricature artist as their fanny pack–clad dad flits around them taking video of the whole thing.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got nothing better to do, so.” He licks his upper lip. “So, we should probably start coming up with ideas for fundraising. Before the coaches get on our asses about it.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“What else do we have to square away?”
I’m not sure how seriously I’m supposed to entertain this. Is Jack really just going to take over duties for Ethan and let him take the credit? I love Paige more than anyone in the world, but I can’t imagine giving up that much of my free time this close to trying to impress college admissions boards.
“Uh … well, there’s fundraising. And picking out options for people to vote on for the team shirts this year. And Ethan and I were supposed to meet up every week to plan things for meets—like sending out directions to other pools for away meets, and who’s bringing snacks. And write up the newsletter for the parents.” I’m sure at any second he’s going to interrupt me and back out of this massive time suck, but he just stares back, waiting for me to finish. “It’s—kind of a lot.”
Jack doesn’t miss a beat. “Fundraising, shirts, newsletters, snacks. Got it.” He shoots a glance back in Ethan’s direction, even though he’s well out of sight. “How about we grab food after practice?”
I stop walking. “Are you asking me out?”
The mischief in his eyes makes me regret asking before I even finish the sentence. I brace myself, sure he’s going to do that thing guys do, that thing Paige warned me about—Wow, someone thinks highly of themselves, or some similar belittling comment. Instead, he stretches his back and says, “Well, I wasn’t. But now that it’s on the table…”
I cross my arms over my chest.
“Not a date,” says Jack, holding his hands up in surrender, the eternal Jack grin still branded across his face. “Just to work out the season. We can go once a week, like you and Ethan planned.”
I consider him for a moment, still waiting for some kind of punchline, some ulterior motive. I don’t find any, so I offer my hand for him to shake. He raises his eyebrows at me. I raise mine right back.
Then he claps his hand to mine, shaking it firmly, just once. There is something warm and grounding in it, something that seems to mark a shift between Jack Campbell then and Jack Campbell now. Like maybe I have misjudged the idea of him I had in my head for the last few years.
Jack hikes his backpack up onto his shoulder and looks down Seventy-Eighth Street. “I’m gonna catch the 6 train home. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, see you then.”
It’s only then I realize we left my seven-block bubble a few blocks back. I stand on the sidewalk for a minute, feeling ridiculous for the jolt it sends through my system, staring at the back of Jack as he waits for the light to change as if he’s some sort of compass. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, still within earshot when he scrolls for a moment, pauses, and lets out a low “Shiiiiiiiiiiit.”
I touch my own phone, buried in the pocket of my jacket. It’s back to reality for us both.
