If I came by, would you let me in?

I really have no reason to be here. I’ve always hated it here. The beaches aren’t clean and the people aren’t nice. I didn’t bring any friends with me. I got a temp room in Motel 4 and I haven’t even unpacked. It’s June and I should be back at home, working, but I’m on vacation in Jersey, a place which I abhor.

Would you be glad to see me, at the door of your high-rise apartment in New York City? It’s a ferry ride back to you, you know. But, of course, you also think I’m in California.

It would be better this way, we said. Better to be separated and hurt like hell than have to endure a long-distance relationship. I’m pretty sure the idea was mine. You never could have developed such an asinine plan.

I’m just a general idiot, but you always knew that. If you knew I was wasting away in Jersey when I don’t even like the ocean, you’d call me, say ‘come on over’, and that would be that, pretty much. I wouldn’t leave. I wouldn’t want to or need to. I could edit copy here. I could sell pretzels on the street corners here, as long as you were there.

I’d call, but I threw away your number a year ago in a fit of self-loathing rage. I’m pretending that I don’t have it memorized.

Somehow, I’ve wandered miles from my Motel 4 and I am now at the boarding dock on the NY-NJ ferry. A ferry ride away, and I could find you, glamorous and fashionably cynical in s penthouse a couple blocks from Broadway, almost a partner in your law firm and making half a million dollars a year.

I am so damn proud of you. I always believed that you could do it, despite what everyone else always said. Not smart enough, too smart, too clever, too trusting; you made it anyway. You kicked all of their asses.

I could stop by and congratulate you. I should stop by and congratulate you.

Getting on the ferry comes almost unconsciously. It’s natural. You’re like a homing signal to me.

I go to New York.

I find your apartment with ease. You’re not home. I fall asleep outside your door.

You find me drooling slightly on your mail. So much for second first impressions, I guess.

As I guessed, you’re dressed up, and you look beautiful. On purpose, now; before it was always accidental.

You’re unsure but you let me in anyway. We hug and you give me a glass of Evian from your freezer. I tell you I’m here on business.

Then I freeze, because lying to you is something to which I will never grow used.

"I came to see you. I’m staying in a Motel 4 in Jersey."

Smiling, you tell me, get your stuff, silly, stay here. We can catch up! It’ll be like a slumber party.

A joke about lingerie pops into my mind. I quell it; my ground here is shaky at best and I don’t want to step off it completely.

"Be back in two hours," I say, and race for the ferry.

I am back in an hour and twenty minutes with all of my stuff and a receipt from the Motel 4.

You welcome me in, wearing adorable cloud pajamas made of fleece. Adorably, your brown hair is pulled into two sleek pigtails, and you’ve got ice cream sundaes fixed on your kitchen counter.

God, I love you.

No one else would make me an ice cream sundae after I broke her heart. No one else would be wearing fleecy cloud pajamas, and now, I notice, there are little glittery stars, with their perfect mahogany hair pulled into long pigtails, makeup off and face scrubbed clean, cheeks rosy, brown eyes unblinking, trusting, caring. No one else would offer me her floor after an irrational trip to the East Coast, but I’m getting a feeling that it’s not a trip.

It’s a migration to my home.

My spoon falls to the table, and I splatter fudge on your expensive-looking hardwood table, but you just laugh. I don’t.

"Hi," I say.

Smiling adorably, you reply, "Hi."

"So I’m in New York."

"Really? ‘Cuz I wasn’t exactly sure about that, you know. Only lived here for ten years and everything. Thanks for the clarification."

I laugh a little more than necessary. If I keep laughing, I won’t have to talk.

When you start looking at me like I’m totally psychotic, I decide I have to talk.

"I’m thinking of staying."

Her small eyebrows knitted slightly. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Why?" she asked, in a puzzled and innocent voice. "Don’t you have a job there?"

"Well…" My throat dries before I can continue. "Yeah."

You spread your hands slightly. "Why?"

"Pretty much you," I reply, with no better explanation.

You’d been sitting across the table from me. Suddenly, you’re next to me, fleecy pajamas pushed up to your elbows, brown eyes boring straight into mine, so close I can see the flecks of ice-blue toward the pupil.

"Oh, really," you ask, but it’s not a question as much as a space filler.

I swallow roughly. "Yeah," I say as my voice cracks.

"Good," and you kiss me, and it’s like the sundaes you made, vanilla and chocolate and strawberry, but with a small ingredient that I’ve never been able to find in bottles, especially on the West Coast where there’s no you.

It tastes like home, and I make frantic plans to put all of my things in boxes and bring them back to this perfect spot before I stop thinking at all.