Pepper

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 conceiv able 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.”