I nod. “As your friend,” I clarify.

Fitz beams. “Okay then. Where do we start?”

   Juniper

WE START CONSTRUCTING our itinerary right there. Walking the High Line, I describe schools in New York while Fitz questions me on dorms, departments, dining halls, everything. It’s nice, having someone want to know everything I know, every item of college minutia I’ve collected over the past couple of years. I remember the way Matt would either furrow his brow or fake interest every time I would exclaim over a new program or campus location I’d found online.

I banish the thought. I am not comparing Matt and Fitz.

After finding benches looking out on the skyscrapers, we pull out our phones, exchanging information on distances and campus tours while plans begin to form. Eventually, we reconcile our diverging itineraries, selecting the schools we want to see from each and combining them into a logical order for the drive. Fitz defers to me on a couple of choices, canceling schools his mom suggested in western Pennsylvania so we can make it to D.C. and UVA. He says his mom won’t mind if we extend his trip a couple of days, and he’ll just have to check with his brother.

We decide to tour NYU and Columbia tomorrow, which will be one more day than either of us had planned in the city, but when we learned we both missed those tours for different reasons, it felt like fate. Tonight, we’ll have to rebook hotel reservations to fit the new schedule. I’ll probably have to pay my parents back for a couple of nonrefundable cancelations, but I’ll work it out. Fitz and I coordinate new hotels together too. Separate rooms, of course.

The minutes pass, dusk darkening into night.

We begin walking again, passing frosted trees and bushes, gleaming high-rises and office towers. When we’re nearing the end of the High Line, our hands touch. It’s innocuous, and yet I feel it throughout my whole body. The cold on my cheeks disappears. The realness of the world feels a hundred times richer. We become the heart of the city, the center of countless buildings and crisscrossing streets. I don’t know how it even happened. I guess we drifted nearer to each other while we walked, pulled by whatever imperceptible gravity drew us together in Boston and again in Providence.

Between one breath and the next, my hand slips into his. Our palms press together, his fingers closing over mine with a soft certainty. It brings us closer, in the way holding hands does. Our forearms entwine, our shoulders touch, our strides match.

I tell myself to drop his hand. It’ll give him the wrong impression.

But it doesn’t feel wrong. When we’re touching, I don’t feel lonely. I don’t hear the terrible echo of Tía’s question, the broken record repeating in my head since Matt left our hotel room. Who will I call when I’m in college on my own? With Fitz, who I didn’t even know a week ago, I’m reminded connections can come from the unlikeliest of places. With Fitz, the questions go quiet.

Even so, I vow I’m going to release his hand. While we walk, I pick the place. I’ll let go when we reach the girl eating gelato on the bench.

We pass the girl eating gelato on the bench.

I pick my new landmark. The barking dog by the bushes. Then the couple watching the river from the deck. Then the curvature of the train tracks embedded in the concrete, which Fitz explains is from when the High Line was an overhead railroad. Each one passes, and my hand remains firmly in his.

We reach the end of the High Line, where the Hudson River opens up in front of us. Together, we lean on the railing, watching the glittering New Jersey waterfront.

Fitz nods to our intertwined fingers. “So . . .” he says.

I grimace. “I know. I’m working on it.”

He grins. “Don’t work too hard.” I roll my eyes. “I could let go if you want,” he continues, his voice gentler.

“Do you want to?”

His eyes travel unmistakably to my lips. “No,” he says. The syllable is a relief I don’t know how to reconcile with the platonic requirement I gave him. “It’s just—” He stops suddenly. “Wow, I understand limerence now.”

“Limerence?” I repeat.

“The state of infatuation with someone, characterized by frequent thoughts of—”

I drop his hand. “Nope. None of that,” I interrupt. “No word-defining. It’s not making this easier.”

Fitz rounds on me, curiosity illuminating his freckled features. With his newly free hand he reaches up, and before I know it he’s tucking one loose strand of my hair behind my ear. “Why?” he asks. “You don’t happen to find my vocabulary charming, do you, Juniper?”

Ignoring the tingle his touch leaves on my skin, I huff, turning to walk down the stairs from the raised platform of the High Line. From this overly romantic place where I’ve ended up with a boy who’s beguiling me with his dictionary definitions.

He follows. “A turn-on, perhaps?”

“No!” I reply, walking in front of him to hide my flushed cheeks.

“Right. Out of curiosity, do you know what pulchritudinous means?”

I hit street level and spin, facing him. He pauses one step up from me. “We’re going to pretend none of this happened. The hand-holding and whatever this”—I gesture to the two of us—“is. We have a couple more days together, and I’d like to enjoy them as friends. Nothing more. So let’s just forget the whole thing.”

His mouth flickers halfway to a smirk. “I will if you will,” he replies.

I frown. “Not fair,” I say. “You know I don’t have a choice.”

“Oh, and I do?” He drops off the step in front of me, crossing his arms. “The rest of us can’t just choose what to forget. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Forgive me for not knowing,” I reply sarcastically. I start walking without caring where I’m going. The destination isn’t important, not when I know he’ll follow me until we finish the conversation. Not when I want him to. “I’m used to people not remembering things I think are obvious.”

“I couldn’t possibly forget,” he says. “Trust me.”

“I—have to get back to my hotel.” I crash into the subject change like a train careening off the rails. “The next time we see each other will be the NYU information session at ten a.m. tomorrow. Where there will be no hand-holding.”

“Or we could grab dinner,” he replies.

I shoot him an incredulous glare. “Fitz!” We cross the street in a crowd of tourists who part to circumvent us. “Dinner sounds suspiciously like a date, which is something I definitely would not agree to. We need to separate, or do something strictly platonic.”