Page 34 of Sunny Side Up

fifteen

It finally happened.

The context of the date remained unclear: Was this a friend thing? A “we both have dogs” thing? I held out hope that he liked me—or was curious about liking me and just shy about it. I could work with shy. Shy was sweet. It made me want to kiss him even more.

Part of me was convinced it wouldn’t happen.

That he’d find an excuse to bail at the last minute.

I braced myself for this. I was ready for the cancellation text about his dog’s upset stomach or a mailroom emergency.

I replayed scenes of the afternoon with Ted in my head to remind myself that I already had a good thing going. Don’t get greedy.

But then, there he was: Dennis, walking toward me on the West Side Highway, his gray pit bull trotting alongside him.

The best view in all of Manhattan. He wore mesh shorts (in March, which was still freezing, mind you), an impressive pair of retro Nikes, and black wayfarers hooked to the V of his Patagonia half zip, which had such a wild pattern that it had to be from the eighties or early nineties.

No coat. His out-of-uniform style was somewhere between Toddler Dressing Himself and Major, Major Swag.

If Bill Cunningham were still around, he’d have stopped his bike in traffic just to get a picture of Dennis in this outfit.

“Ey yo, Sunny D,” he yelled. I was laughing already at the stupid orange juice nickname that he’d pulled out of nowhere.

He gave me an enormous bear hug, and I felt my body sink into his like it was a memory foam mattress.

I breathed him in: He smelled like soap, fresh laundry, cold air on his warm skin. I could have stayed there forever.

Our dogs finally met. Sophia was on her back, the little minx, legs up, letting Georgie sniff her.

“Is a threesome in our dogs’ future?” Dennis laughed.

“Only in New York.” We started our walk south from Chelsea toward the West Village and below, weaving around bicyclists on the path. “Do you mind if I light this?” I asked, pulling a joint from my purse. It was the weekend, after all.

“Sunny D is a bad girl? Wowwww.” He winked.

I offered him the joint, he accepted, and then we passed it back and forth for a few moments of contented quiet.

But then I started overthinking what I should say to break the silence—which could have been the weed, honestly.

We’d been texting nonstop ever since I’d replied to his Friday text, and he’d already seen the aftermath of my ugly cry.

Still, side effect of a strong crush: sudden shyness.

The whole thing scrambled my brain, to be honest. But in a fun, swirly, low-stakes-boy-drama way.

… Especially considering that, when I’d finally responded to Dennis’s text, I’d done so while peeing after Ted and I had sex for the second time.

The next morning, I was all bummed that Ted had to leave for his standing Saturday squash game, but then I spent all day glued to my phone in a text marathon with Dennis, the two of us one-upping each other with our endless jokes while I bumped my shopping cart into snack displays at Trader Joe’s.

There was something different between us now, in person, and I think I was nervous because I didn’t want to break the magic spell. But it felt nice, that kind of nervousness: It felt pure, and innocent, and real. Thank god Dennis spoke first.

“So, I looked up Andy Cohen.” The smirk on his face was as wide as the Hudson River. “Your friend, not the guy from my old school. Just in case he comes up in trivia again.”

I started cracking up. “He is not my friend . He is a very famous person who you probably walk past once a week and don’t even realize! He lives in the West Village.”

“Well, I know that now,” said Dennis. “With his son. I found an article about him on NYMag.com—”

“I’m impressed you know what ‘NY Mag’ is. And that they have a website.”

“Excuse me, Sunny D,” he said, turning up the Queens accent. “I’m a native here, rememba?”

“Oh I rememba,” I said, imitating him. “But just one question: Do you actually have the internet at home? Or do you just use the library’s Wi-Fi, since you’re there anyway taking out war documentaries on VHS?”

“Ohhhh, Sun Burn,” he said, and bumped my hip. I felt the blood rush all over my body.

“Gotta know about that history so we don’t repeat the past. I’m gonna make you come with me to World War II trivia night next time. There’s gotta be a place around here that does that.”

“No, no,” I pleaded. “I’ll do anything, I promise.” He pretended to pout, but he couldn’t stop smiling through it and looked ridiculous. “Pretty please? C’mon. I want to hear what you learned about Andy Cohen.”

“Okay, fine,” he said, then launched into a full recap of some article from, like, three or four years ago.

I hung on every delightful word. Hanging out with Dennis truly felt like hanging out with my best friend.

And even though it complicated matters with our dogs and their leashes, I linked my arm through his like it was my regular resting place.

“I love it over here,” I said, exhaling a sigh, perhaps better befitting a meditation class than the side of a highway.

“Me too,” Dennis said. “I used to walk this path every Sunday afternoon with my grandma, right up until she got sick.”

“That’s sweet, taking care of your grandma like that.”

“We sort of only had each other. She grew up in a big family, but they’d all passed away. My parents hate the city, moved as far as they could as soon as they could. And I’m an only child, so suddenly, all she had left was me.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” I said. “Being out on your own like that.”

“I’m sure you felt the same way when you moved here?”

“At first, yes. My parents were always calling, asking me to come back. Worried about me alone in the Big City. But I love it here, the energy, the pace. The people.”

“The people are like nothing else,” said Dennis. We both smiled.

We walked for a while in comfortable, perfectly stoned silence.

Somewhere around Little West Twelfth Street, we passed a billboard for a kids’ clothing line.

“This is probably inappropriate to say on a second date—”

I’m sorry, a second what?

“What’s with the goofy smile?” He nodded his chin at me and bumped his shoulder into mine.

“Second date ,” I said, bumping back. “So this is a date. I didn’t realize the first one counted…”

“Ouch,” Dennis said, pretending to stab himself in the heart. “It was, thanks for noticing. And this is our second. But I’m about to ruin it: I want to be a DINK.”

“A what ! Is that some sex term I’ve never heard of?!”

Dennis’s face flushed red as he burst out laughing, and I wanted to wrap him in my arms. “Your mind, I swear.” He shook his head and it made my heart melt all over again. “I bet NY Mag uses DINK a lot; not sure if you’ve ever heard of that magazine, though.”

“Nope,” I said, working hard on my deadpan.

“DINK stands for Dual Income, No Kids. See? DINK.” He drew out the D , the I , the N , and the K with his finger.

“I got it,” I said with a laugh.

“You can travel as much as you please, get eight hours of sleep, splurge on what you want now but also still save for retirement.” He trailed off, looking at me. I could tell he was preparing himself for this to be a deal breaker.

“Are you kidding? I love a man who brings up retirement on the second date.” He was describing the future I had long envisioned for myself. It freaked my parents out, but Michael and Ellie wanted three kids, minimum. My parents would be set.

“I’d love to be one-half of the D in a DINK someday,” I said. “And I plan on being the world’s greatest aunt.”

“One-half of the D , huh,” he said, laughing. “Sunny D!”

“You are twelve years old,” I told him.

“You’re eleven,” he said. “So much worse.”

We grew quiet again, and this time was even more pleasant than the last. I did worry, for a moment, that because this was a date—a second date, according to him—maybe it was weird, or wrong of me, that I had slept with Ted on Friday, and now this?

Sunny , I reminded myself, first of all, you and Ted wanted to see more of each other, not ONLY each other.

I agreed with myself: That was a fair point.

You’re the one in charge of your body , I continued internally. You’re an adult. These men are adults. You’re allowed to do what you want, with whomever you want, whenever you want, so long as it’s consensual, safe, and you’re not cheating on—

Why was I suddenly giving myself a lecture?

I had to get out of my head. I spoke first.

“Where would you want to travel first, as a DINK?”

“London maybe. Or Paris? I’ve actually never been to Europe—”

“You’ve never been to Europe,” I said, turning toward him, stopping us, both hands on his shoulders. My mind racing to all the places he had to see first.

“I know, I know. The USPS doesn’t exactly call for international business trips.”

“Well, we’ll just have to work on that.” My mind flooded with visions of the two of us abroad together—drinking fancy wine and eating fancy cheeses, sipping from those tiny espresso cups with oversize loaves of fresh bread on uneven cobblestone streets.

“DINKs has a nice ring to it,” I said. “But I think we’d technically be DINK WAFDs .”

Dennis bit his lip in thought before smiling. “Dual Income, No Kids. With a Few Dogs. I’m in.”

“Me too,” I said, bending down to give the Golden Girls a few scratches. They seemed just as content with Georgie as I was with Dennis.

We’d hit the end of the West Side Highway.

I couldn’t believe how far we’d walked, how magically tucked away in conversation I’d been. There was something about Dennis that made me feel like I’d known him forever.

In what felt like a blink, we were approaching the Battery Park border.

We found a bench that faced the Hudson River and took a seat.

The sun had started to dip in the sky, beginning to set behind the New Jersey skyline.

It was one of those afternoons where time stood still.

We kept chatting about everything and nothing—families, sports, animals, weirdest dating stories, funny former coworkers—though Dennis’s USPS routes had most of my stories in that latter category beat.

Maybe it was his aura, his openness, but I felt so at ease with him.

“So why did you wait so long to ask me out?” I asked, elbowing him lightly in the side.

Dennis laughed and shook his head.

“Honestly? I wasn’t sure if someone like you would be interested in me.

Any time I’ve tried dating you Manhattan girls, it always ends in them wanting me to put my uniform on in the bedroom.

Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of fun to be had there,” he said, chuckling a little, “but it would never go beyond that.

I was always the rebound to them, or the story they could tell their friends.

I got tired of not being taken seriously as a real person.

“When I met you, I was blown away by how attracted I was to you. Then I found out you were hilarious, cool, smart… the total package, as we say at the USPS.”

I shook my head, a giant grin across my face. Loving every minute of this, loving that he couldn’t help himself—he just had to break up his earnestness with a bad joke.

“But then, after you told me about your fancy job with all your fancy fashion week stuff, all your famous celebrity friends, Brooke, Noor, Andy Cohen—”

I started cracking up. “Andy Cohen is not my friend!”

(Meanwhile my heart was melting because he remembered my friends’ names.)

“Anyway,” he paused, lowering his voice and his eyes. He seemed to be distracted by our dogs, who were lying together in a puddle at our feet. “I was honestly worried that I wasn’t, uh, sophisticated enough for ya. So I just wanted to take it slow, feel it out, you know?”

We both seemed to consider this.

I took in his deep-blue eyes, noticed the flecks of brown in both of his irises. I watched his long black lashes blink down, then rise, as he lifted his face up in line with mine.

I leaned in toward him, just a bit. Brought my hand to the spot where his fleece’s collar met the curve of his shoulder, then let my fingers drift up to the nape of his neck.

Dennis kept my gaze while my eyes scanned his face. Out to the end of his nose, across his forehead, creased in thought. Along the outline of his beard, which began just under the apples of his cheeks, then ended in thick, dark scruff with an oak-red tint.

Farther down still to his slightly chapped lips, with the left side of his smile perpetually turned up in amusement—as though his inner monologue were the funniest thing in the world.

As though he knew something that I didn’t.

Or maybe he knew what I was thinking, and was waiting to see if I would do it first.

It was here that I held very still. Our chests rose and fell in tandem, the misty clouds from both of our exhales joining together in the cold March dusk, then evaporating.

All day I’d been worried about breaking this spell around us, between us.

This supernatural force that seemed to be conspiring to bring us together.

But as our lips finally found each other’s then interlocked, then released—both pairs pausing, waiting, to catch the breath that had just been lost—I realized that the magic I’d been worried about spooking away was right here, being created by our own two bodies every time they made contact.

We kissed again, and again, softly, slowly. Our lips asking questions, then answering them. Full of insatiable curiosity.

Eventually, the dogs got impatient, and we realized just how late it had gotten. A Sunday. Both of us with an early Monday and a long week ahead. We walked all the way back up Chelsea together, dogs in tow, holding hands. We kept stopping along the way to kiss some more, in different ways.

It was the longest we’d gone without talking in two days.