I wish I could say we made up, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m ready to forgive her, but she has to meet me halfway. The days of me kowtowing are over.
“So where are we headed tonight?” Lennon says. “Mission and Western Avenue, or Mission and Euclid Street?”
We now have four different routes we walk. One is our old path, from when we were kids, and one goes through the farmers’ market, which is so deserted at night, it’s practically romantic—you’d be surprised what two people with dirty minds can do on bales of hay. Two of the routes go in different directions around the edge of the Bay, but my favorite one snakes through a park, where we can climb a hill and look at the city while sitting under a big old oak tree. It’s not dark enough for ideal stargazing, but it’s private enough for making out.
Oh, the make-out spots we’ve discovered. They’re on all our routes.
“It’s too brisk for the Bay routes,” I say. “Andromeda will get fussy.”
“We could take Wick Boulevard up through the edge of the warehouse district and cut through to the train tracks up on the hill.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a fifth route.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
For our one-month anniversary, he made me a picture map. It has all the milestones of our intersecting lives. Where we met. The night we played poker with his dad. Our first fight. Our first kiss. The homecoming debacle. The sequoia cathedral. The night we said I love you at the observatory.
A map of us.
It’s years in the making, and it’s messy and convoluted, some of it even tragic. But I wouldn’t change the route, because we walked it together, even when we were apart. And the best part about it is that it’s unfinished. Uncertainty isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it can even be filled with extraordinary potential.
“So what will it be?” he asks when the light turns green. “Old route, or new route?”
“Surprise me,” I say.
He smiles down at me, and I thread my fingers through his. We put one foot in front of the other. Clear head, steady steps. And we move forward.