Page 48 of Drawn Together
“You know…” I force my eyes up to his face, which is solely focused on not embarrassing himself. “I’m not sure how we could have a two-hour conversation on these things.”
“I wasn’t planning on us biking two hours straight,” he grumbles.
Then he better ring it in, because I have a feeling we are going to be here a while.
“What are we doing, then?”
He grunts a curse as the front tire hits another curb. “Prospect Park.”
“But I’ve been there before?”
“Not where we’re going. Talk when we get there. I can’t focus.”
So, I follow him and his horrible bike skills the whole way there, watching his forearms in our silence.
He’s right. I have certainly never been here before.
This part of the park is bursting with light, a watercolor of auburn and tangerines—golden maples, fiery red oaks, orange elms.
With a coffee cup warming my hands, I sit for a moment just to take in the view. Fletcher insisted we stop at Cafe Regular on the way, where I ordered a honey cinnamon latte and he got some kind of ‘golden latte’ that he insists is good for his immune system with turmeric, ginger, and black pepper sprinkled in it. Sounds like a disaster of a drink to me, but whatever.
A tiny bronze plate in front of a nearby bench tells me we’re at Fallkill Falls. It’s tucked away, not fully secluded—as we have passed a handful of others on our walk here—but quiet enoughwhere we can easily hear each other and listen to the chirping birds and babbling brook.
“Cool, huh?”
Cool? I give him a look and he smiles, dimple flashing me.
“It just reopened after being closed for like thirty years. I think a lot of people forgot about it. I did too, until that morning.”
He doesn’t have to explain what morning—I assume it’s the one where I nearly tackled him on the opposite end of this park.
“I walked all the trails that morning and ended up here. Thought you might like it.”
He seems to have a knack for that—finding things I like. It honestly feels like we are stumbling into a secret spot in the middle of Brooklyn that only fairies and troll goblins could know the passcode to get into. I can hear the water trickling behind the trees around us, but I have no desire to move from this exact spot with multi-colored leaves swirling around in brisk sweeps of wind. My shoulders shake a little. With the steady drop of the temp since we left our bikes at the renting station, I should be cold. But my eyes are so caught up on what’s around us that I can’t be bothered to focus on something as trivial as body heat. We’re in an autumn-themed kaleidoscope surrounded by dull noises of distant conversations and flowing water. A baby laughs. Shoes scuffle against the concrete path leading to a nearby stone bridge. Fletcher clears his throat.
I turn at the last sound and see he’s laid down a red and white checkered blanket in the broad span of green grass, and he is waiting for me to sit down first. He lifts his book of the week—Anne of Green Gables—and the pink flowers on the cover match well with the pink on his neck, cheeks, and the very tip of his crooked nose. It makes me want to pinch it.
I know he is wanting to get straight to it, but I think there’s a lesson to be made here.
“You know what I think your problem is?”
“Besides my poor coffee choices?”
“You think you have to be a romantic in order to romanticize.”
“Well, don’t you?”
“Not at all. There’s nothing romantic about this moment—”
He mutters low, “Well, I wouldn’t say nothing.”
“But, I can take time in my day to appreciate the…smell of crisp apples. The laughter of an old woman behind us. Kids carrying around freshly sharpened school supplies. The soundtrack of Sleepless in Seattle. Nora Ephron’s kitchen. Wool scarfs. Those pretty lamps with the stained glass that look like the windows in an old church—”
“Alright, I get it.”
I gesture a hand out. “Your turn.”
“For?”
