Page 75 of Maid For Each Other

Declan

I spent the entire next day playing catch-up in the office, responding to emails I’d ignored and accepting meeting invites I’d been putting off.

It was time to go back to real life.

I didn’t hate the fact that throughout the course of the day, nearly everyone I came into contact with mentioned Abi. It seemed the entire company had accepted our lie as truth, and the general consensus appeared to be that we were steps away from the altar.

Perfect.

On the other side of that coin, I didn’t text Abi at all, mostly because I knew I should probably start getting out of that habit. Besides, I knew she had class, and Benny’s, and was cleaning an apartment later. Our lives couldn’t be more different, so it probably didn’t even make sense to keep chatting.

But when I got back to my apartment after work, I got a text from her. It was short and sweet.

Hope you had a good day.

And God help me, I was glad to hear from her. I slipped off my shoes and went into the kitchen, wondering what the fuck was happening to me.

I texted:How was class?

Abi:GREAT. We mapped out my short story collection and it WORKS, Declan.

I replied:That’s fantastic.

I wished I could read them all.

Abi:So what New York things are you doing tonight? I still want to live vicariously through you.

I texted:I’m actually doing nothing tonight because I’m tired.

Abi:But you’re in the city that never sleeps. How can you just be sitting inside?

I grabbed a beer from the fridge and replied:I’m not a tourist, remember?

I hopped up onto the counter, still dressed in slacks and a dress shirt—I was so tired that I was unwilling to walk all the way to my bedroom to change.

Abi:You have no idea how jealous I am right now. NYC is seriously the one place in the world I’d go if I were given a free trip anywhere.

Curious, I texted:What would you want to do if you magically showed up here right now?

Abi:Walk. I think I would be happy walking the streets of New York for days. I’d walk to Central Park and go writeby those famous turtles near the big rock. I’d walk to the grocery store from You’ve Got Mail. And maybe go to a flea market in Brooklyn.

I texted:What about the Empire State Building? Statue of Liberty? Do you want to do all the touristy things?

Abi:Nope. I see those on TV and I’m sure they’re fantastic, but my goal would be to visit everything that made me feel like I lived there. Give me all the bodegas, let me roll around in honking horns. And I’d want to walk by all the publishing houses, just to manifest writing something that someday might show up in print.

It was so on-brand for Abi to want to visit “the city that never sleeps” but do something absolutelynotexciting.

I texted:That’s a very low-maintenance visit to the city. You don’t even want to go to a show?

Abi:I mean, going to a show would be cool but I wouldn’t want the time investment of trying to get tickets.

As we texted back and forth, I could picture it. I could picture her at a show (that she didn’t have to wait in line for tickets for), petting bodega cats even though she shouldn’t, writing in Central Park, and reading on my terrace.

Fuck.

I wanted her here.

I texted:You should come meet me.

---