Even now, though, years later, Arden identified that feeling. That moment between certainty and mystery, between safety and soaring.
“Yes,” Arden said. “I know.” She swallowed hard, then thrust the tin in front of him. “Do you want a brownie? I baked brownies.”
Peter blinked a couple times when she pulled off the top to the tin. “Sure,” he said at last. He took a brownie.
As he was about to bite into it, Arden blurted out, “I read your blog. I love your writing.”
And that was all it took. Peter’s face split into a huge, dorky, tooth-filled smile, and for what felt like the first time all day, she exhaled.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Arden.”
“Thank you, Arden.” He stuck out his hand and shook hers, and she took all of this in, the smile on his face, the sensation of his palm against her own. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’m Peter.”
Dinner with Peter
Arden, Lindsey, and Peter went to a kitschy diner down the street from The Last Page. Arden knew she should be ravenous—other than that Dairy Queen Blizzard, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast—but as it was, when the waiter brought over her basket of chicken fingers, she couldn’t imagine being able to choke them down.
“So how did you find Tonight the Streets Are Ours?” Peter asked after he’d swallowed his first bite of veggie burger. He sat across from Arden and Lindsey, shifting his gaze between them.
“Arden found it,” Lindsey explained. “Just Googling some stuff, right?”
“What exactly were you searching for?” Peter asked.
“Um.” Arden felt herself blush. “The sentence ‘Why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?’”
Peter looked impressed—maybe with her memory, or maybe with the poignancy of his own words. “Did I write that?”
“Yes. About Bianca.”
“Oh. Of course.” Peter’s face slipped into a frown, but he shook it off. “So where did you get that phrase from?”
“I guess it’s something I’ve wondered sometimes,” Arden said quietly. This seemed like a lot to reveal to a stranger. But Peter didn’t feel like a stranger.
“And have you ever found any good answers to that question?” he asked, leaning forward.
Because I don’t deserve to be loved that much, Arden thought. But she didn’t say it, because obviously Peter did deserve that—that and more—and she didn’t want to let on that in this one regard, she wasn’t like him at all.
“I think maybe I just love people too much,” Arden answered aloud. “So if other people love me a normal amount, that doesn’t come close to matching the way I feel about them.”
She felt Lindsey shift beside her, but didn’t look at her. She couldn’t say these words to Lindsey. But she could say them to Peter, because he could understand.
“Maybe I do, too,” Peter said. “Maybe we’re like mutant superheroes. Part of some government experiment gone awry, and we were left with a preternatural capacity for love.”
Arden broke into a smile.
“No way,” Lindsey objected, as Arden had assumed she would. “That’s not even true.”
“You mean we’re not superheroes?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“That nobody loves Arden as much as she loves them. Tons of people love you, you know that. Your parents, Chris, me, our other friends…”
Arden nodded at Lindsey’s words, but she thought about their argument when the Heart of Gold stopped running, and how wide the gap was between her and Lindsey’s definitions of love. Love meant taking care of someone else. It meant solving their problems for them, protecting them, supporting them even in times of crisis. In her heart Arden knew: There must be more to love, more than this.
“So what happened with Bianca?” Arden asked Peter softly, then quickly added, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
But he did want to.
“She broke up with me three days ago,” he said, his long lashes fluttering as though he was blinking back tears. “She called before school, while I was still in bed. Usually I’d ignore a call while I was trying to sleep, but this was Bianca, and I never ignore calls from her. I used to silence my phone overnight, and now I leave it on just in case she needs something or wants to talk.
“Anyway, she called really early, and before I could say anything she told me that this was it, and it was over for real this time, and she never should have given me a second chance.”
“I’m so sorry,” Arden murmured. This wasn’t any new information, but hearing it from his mouth made her heart ache.
“Did she say why?” Lindsey asked.
“Well, a literary agent offered to represent me on Tuesday,” Peter began.
“Which is amazing, by the way,” Arden interjected. “Can we take a moment to discuss how amazing that is? I don’t know anybody who has an agent. You’re going to be a published author. You are! And then the whole world is going to know how talented you are.”
She hoped that this speech did a little bit to make up for Bianca’s demoralizing response. Peter was right: this should have been the happiest moment of his life. She wanted to give him that happiness.
“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know if I will actually get published. It might never happen. But just knowing that an agent, a professional in the field, read my writing and thought it might be good enough to be published? It’s unreal. It’s the only thing I ever wanted.”
He stared off into the distance of the diner for a moment, his gaze resting on the glittery portrait of a 1970s Elvis Presley hanging on the wall. Arden looked around, too. She felt overdressed for chicken fingers at a diner, but it didn’t take her long to notice a girl wearing an even shorter dress than hers and a guy wearing even more makeup, so that helped her feel at ease.
“Bianca,” Lindsey prompted Peter.
“Right.” He refocused on the girls. “I told her the good news as soon as I found out. I thought she would be proud of me. At first, it seemed like she was. But the next time we talked, she said she didn’t want Tonight the Streets Are Ours to be published. She didn’t want people reading it.”
“People do already read it, though,” Arden pointed out. “Whether or not it becomes a book, it’s out there.”
“I know. And she freaked out at me about that, demanding that I take down the whole website. She’d never looked at it before, and once she took the time to read it, she immediately hated everything about it. She said I had to take down Tonight the Streets Are Ours, and I had to tell the agent that I didn’t want representation, and I wasn’t allowed to publish a book that mentioned her in any way…”
He started picking apart his veggie burger, not eating it, but separating out each onion ring, ripping up the lettuce leaves. “I offered to change her name if she was worried about privacy, but she said that wasn’t good enough. And then I asked her to just understand. I’ve wanted to have success as a writer for my whole life. And if she really loves me, even a little bit, couldn’t she just try to want for me the same thing I want for myself?”
“Couldn’t she help you get the thing that would make you happy?” Arden supplied.
He nodded vigorously. “Exactly. But the answer was no. She couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. And I won’t take down the blog, or give up my chance at becoming a published author. So she broke up with me.” He paused, and swallowed hard. “I feel like a jerk saying this about her, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it was true: I think she’s jealous. I think she couldn’t stand to see me achieve something that would fulfill me and that didn’t involve her at all.”
“It did involve her though, right?” Lindsey asked. “Since you talk about her in there and stuff?”
Peter stared at Lindsey blankly. Arden grimaced and gave her a little poke in the thigh.
“Are you going to eat the rest of your fries?” Lindsey tried.
He considered it
for a moment, then said, “No. Too heartbroken.” He shoved his plate across the table, and Lindsey dug in.
“Trust me, she is a jealous person,” he went on, his words rushing out like they had been pent up inside of him for too long, like laying out the whole story for Arden was helping him fit together the pieces. “She’s constantly jealous over other girls, for example. Which is ridiculous, since I’ve told her so many times that she’s amazing and I’m crazy about her. But whenever someone else even remotely female is nearby, she gets all, ‘Oh, I see you checking out that chick. Do you think she’s hotter than me?’”
“You never mentioned that on the blog,” Arden said, not sure how she felt about this sudden chink in Bianca’s armor. Arden had been led to expect an angel. And what kind of angel felt threatened by mere mortals?
“It was such a small part of our relationship,” Peter explained. “It never seemed important enough to write down. I never imagined it would balloon in this way. Anyway, I don’t write down every single thing that happens on every single day. I write down the bits I want to think more about, or want to remember later. And Bianca making snide comments when I’m nice to the cashier at Starbucks?” He shrugged. “Not really something I want to think about.
“And isn’t that a problem, that she can’t trust her own boyfriend? I’m telling you, she could come in here right now and see us together and leap to conclusions about what’s going on between us, even though there would be no reason for her to be concerned.”
“That’s crazy,” Arden got out weakly.
Even though there would be no reason for her to be concerned.
Because, of course, who would look at Arden sitting in a diner with Peter and think there was something going on, something worth noticing? Only a crazy girl would think that.
She took a deep, calming breath and reminded herself, You didn’t come here to seduce Peter anyway. He just lost the love of his life. And you have a boyfriend.
Thinking of Chris, Arden did a quick phone check. One new text.
HOPE YOU’RE HAVING A GOOD NIGHT. CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TO MEET THE REST OF MY CAST! EVERYONE IS SO NICE.
Even though Chris didn’t come right out and reference their fight, she knew that this was him trying to smooth over things between them with his customary pluck. Like if he could just get her to text back Sounds great! then all their problems would be solved.
Instead she stuck her phone back in her bag and leaned across the table to ask Peter, “Did you tell your parents about your breakup?” because she was curious to know more about them, too; she was curious to know about every last character on Tonight the Streets Are Ours.
“Yeah. They hadn’t really wanted me to be dating Bianca in the first place, so it’s not like they care that it’s over.”
“Why didn’t they want you to date her?” Lindsey asked.
“Let’s see.” Peter tossed back a gulp of Diet Coke, and Arden watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “Oh, I know: because they don’t want me to get the things that I want in life.”
Arden was a little surprised that Peter would reveal this so openly and honestly to two girls he’d never met before. If their roles were reversed, she wouldn’t lay it all out there, about her sad workaholic dad, her neurotic kid brother, her mom who got sick of them all. Not when she knew from Tonight the Streets Are Ours that Bianca had a perfect family with parents who were still together and loved each other and their daughter as much as they ever had.
But Peter must have realized that he had already told Arden all his secrets. In his year of writing Tonight the Streets Are Ours, he’d laid out everything—maybe not for Arden, but she was the one who’d gotten it. It would be silly to try to keep something from her now.
And isn’t that such a freeing thing, to talk to somebody who already feels like your journal?
Perhaps Lindsey, too, felt that Peter’s openness gave them permission to know everything, because the next thing she said was, “So what happened to your brother?”
Arden kicked her under the table because, rude, Lindsey.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, his voice soft. He stirred the ice in his glass around and around.
“I have a brother, too,” Arden offered, “and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him. I’d do anything to protect him. So I can imagine how hard it must be.”
Peter nodded, but it seemed like he was trapped inside his own memories, not listening.
“But what happened?” Lindsey pressed on, her blue eyes bright with curiosity, as if she were Nancy Drew in the Case of the Missing Sibling.
“When he disappeared? Well. He’d just started at Cornell.”
“Wow,” Lindsey said. “Your brother must be smart.”
Arden nodded. She knew Cornell was an Ivy League college in upstate New York, but she couldn’t name anyone who’d ever gone there. Even though Allegany was one of the better schools in Maryland, it was not turning out yearly droves of Ivy League–quality students.
But, of course, Peter’s family lived in New York City. They were rich. Their children went to private schools and had an au pair. They probably took them to museums and the opera on weekends, sent them to summer enrichment camps, paid for SAT tutors. If Arden had all of that going for her, there would be no reason she couldn’t go to an Ivy League college, too—no reason other than her record of suspension and drug possession, of course.
“He is smart,” Peter agreed with Lindsey. “And stupid.” Peter stared off at the jukebox in the corner, like he was trying to decide how much to say.
You can tell me anything, Arden willed. I’m here for you.
“He—” Peter began.
His phone rang.
“Hey, man,” he answered it. “Yeah … Yeah … I know, I don’t, either … Sure, yeah, sounds cool. Jigsaw Manor?… Okay, you got it. Later.”
He clicked off his phone and gave Arden and Lindsey a broad grin, all traces of his missing brother gone from his face. Like it had never even happened. “Hey,” he said. “Do you girls want to go to a party?”
An early spring night’s dream
Arden drove to the party, which was in a different part of Brooklyn. She plugged the address into her phone and let the GPS direct her there, because, although the party venue was only a few miles away, Peter had no idea how to get there. Apparently he took the subway or taxis everywhere.
“But I could tell you how to take the G to the L to get there,” he offered from the backseat. She’d been worried that the Heart of Gold wouldn’t live up to whatever rich-person transit he was accustomed to, but instead he just seemed delighted that there was a car for him to ride in at all, no matter how busted it was.
“I’ll G your L,” Arden replied, having no idea what these letters stood for. “Do you even know how to drive?” It was funny, these gaping holes in her understanding of Peter. She knew everything and nothing; she knew his inside jokes and most profound anxieties, but not simple facts like his last name or whether he had a license. Which of those was more important? Which of those did you really need to know a person?
“It’s okay if you can’t drive,” Lindsey said from her customary passenger seat up front. “Say it loud and proud. It’s not really as important a life skill as people make it out to be.”
“Only if you, like Lindsey, have a built-in chauffeur,” Arden said.
“I can drive,” Peter said. “We have a summer place out in the Hamptons—”
“I know you do,” Arden interrupted.
He shook his head and laughed. “Of course you do. I keep forgetting how much you know. It’s hard to believe. Anyway, sometimes I drive my parents’ car when we’re out there. There’s just not much point to driving in the city. The subway runs twenty-four hours, and even if I did have a car here, it’s almost impossible to find legal parking. I’m surprised you have a car, actually.”
“Well, we don’t live here,” Lindsey said. “We’re just in town for tonight.”
“Where
do you live?”
The topic hadn’t come up at the diner, while they’d been busy discussing Peter’s love life. “Maryland,” Arden said. “Close to the happening states of both Pennsylvania and West Virginia. MaryVirgiPenn.”
“Arden is trying to make ‘MaryVirgiPenn’ a thing,” Lindsey explained. “It hasn’t caught on yet, though.”
“Except with you,” Arden pointed out.
Lindsey tilted her head in accord. “I do say MaryVirgiPenn a lot.”
Peter looked impressed. “That’s a far drive. What brought you to the city this weekend?”
Arden shared a sidelong glance with Lindsey. She could be honest. But would that creep him out? She would be creeped out if a stranger drove hundreds of miles just to see her.
“Arden’s mom lives in Manhattan,” Lindsey said finally, which was a true statement, if not the truth.
“Where?” Peter asked.
“One thirty-three Eldridge Street,” Arden said, reciting the address from memory. She’d intended to throw away that slip of paper her dad had given her. She’d just never quite done it.
“Ah, a Lower East Side lady,” Peter said. “Cool.”
“Not really,” Arden said shortly. She didn’t totally know what or where the Lower East Side was, but any place where her mother lived did not sound that cool to her.
Clearly Peter could tell that she didn’t want to say anything more about it, because he changed the subject. “Why do you call your car the Heart of Gold?” he asked.
“It’s after the spaceship in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Arden explained.
“Oh, yeah, I never read that book, but my brother was into it.”
Arden waited for him to volunteer more information about his brother here. When he didn’t, she went on. “Well, that was the name of their spaceship, and it got them everywhere they needed to be, just like my baby here.” Arden patted the dashboard.