August nods, and then. Well. She’s not sure what makes her ask. Maybe it’s that she’s starting to feel like an extra in an extremely low-budget Love Actually, surrounded by people loving and being loved in all their messy, unpredictable ways, and she doesn’t trust or understand it. Or maybe it’s that she wants to.

“Does it ever, like … I don’t know. Make you lonely? To love somebody who can’t meet you there?”

She regrets it immediately, but Annie laughs.

“Sometimes. But, you know, that feeling? When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? It’s good. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.”

And August—well, August finds herself without a single damn thing to say to that.

 

* * *

 

There are two things coiled in August’s chest these days.

The first is her usual: anxiety meets full-on dread. The part of her that says, trust nobody, even and especially anyone that pushes softly into the chambers of your heart. Do not engage. Carry a knife. Don’t stab them, but also, maybe stab them if you have to.

The other, though, is the one that really freaks her out.

It’s hope.

August finished her final semester at U of M last fall in a haze of final exams and half-packed cardboard boxes. Her Craigslist roommate was always at her boyfriend’s, so August spent most days alone, to campus and back in her shitty secondhand Corolla, rolling past Catfish Cabin and people spilling out of juke joints, wondering what everyone else got that she didn’t. Memphis was warm, its humid afternoons and the way its people treated one another. Except August. For two years, August was a cactus in a field of Tennessee irises.

She’d moved to get some space—some healthy space—from her mom and the case and all the New Orleans ghosts she doesn’t believe in. But Memphis wasn’t her place either, so she filed the transfer papers.

She picked New York because she thought it would be every bit as cynical as her, just as comfortable killing time. She thought, honestly, she’d finally land somewhere that felt like her.

And it does, a lot of the time. The gray streets, people with their shoulders braced against the weight of another day, all sharp elbows and tired eyes. August can get into that.

But, dangerously, there are people like Niko and Myla and Wes, and like Lucie and Winfield and Jerry. There’s a kindness she doesn’t understand and evidence of things she convinced herself weren’t real. And worst of all, for the first time since she was a kid, she wants to trust in something.

And, there’s Jane.

Her mom can tell something’s up.

“You sound all dreamy,” she says on one of their nightly calls.

“Um, yeah,” August stammers. “Just thinking about a pizza.”

Her mom hums approvingly. “You’re really my kid, huh?”

August has had crushes before. Girls who sat two seats over in freshman geometry, boys who touched the back of her hand at hazy UNO parties, people who passed through her classes and part-time jobs. The older she’s gotten, the more she prefers thinking of love as a hobby for other people, like rock climbing or knitting. Fine, enviable even, but she doesn’t feel like investing in the equipment.

But Jane is different.

A girl who gets on the train at some blurry point and off at an unknown destination, who totes around a backpack full of useful items like a cheerful video game protagonist, whose nose scrunches hard when she laughs, like, really laughs. She’s a beam of warmth on cold mornings, and August wants to curl up in her the way Noodles curls up in patches of sunlight that haunt the apartment.

It’s like touching a hot stove and laying her hand on the burner instead of icing it. It’s insane. It’s irrational. It’s the antithesis of every wary, thousand-yard distance she’s ever kept. August believes in nothing except caution and a pocketknife.

But Jane’s there, on the train and in her head, pacing the floorboards of August’s room in her red sneakers, reciting Annie’s words back to her, Even when it’s bad, it’s good.

And August has to admit, it’s good.

Wednesday morning, she steps onto the train with dangerous optimism.

It’s a pretty typical crowd—a half-dozen teenage boys huddled around someone’s phone, a professional-looking couple toting briefcases, an enormously pregnant woman and her daughter hunched over a picture book, tourists buried in Google Maps.

And Jane.

Jane’s leaning against a pole, leather jacket shrugged down to her elbows and backpack slouching off one shoulder, headphones on, black hair falling in her eyes as she nods to the beat. And it’s just … hope. August looks at her, and hope blooms like crepe myrtle blossoms between her ribs. Like fucking flowers. How absolutely mortifying.

Jane looks up and says, “Hey, Coffee Girl.”

“Hey, Subway Girl,” August says, grabbing the pole and pulling herself up to all her five feet four inches. Jane’s still taller. “Listening to anything good?”

She pushes one headphone back. “New York Dolls.”

August huffs out a laugh. “Do you ever listen to anything released later than ’75?”

Jane laughs too, and there it goes again, desperate and cloying hope in August’s chest. It’s gross. It’s new. August wants to study it under a microscope and also never think about it for the rest of her idiot life.

“Why would I?” Jane asks.

“Well, you’re missing out on Joy Division,” August says, referring to the talking points she may or may not have written down after Myla’s punk lesson. “Though they do owe a lot to the Clash.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Joy Division?”

“Yeah, I know they’re technically post-punk and all, but. You know.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of them. Are they new?”

Jane’s fucking with her. August puts on her sarcastic voice and tries to be smooth. “Yeah, brand-new. I’ll make you a mixtape.”

“Maybe,” Jane says. “Or maybe if you’re nice, I’ll let you go through my collection.”

The light shifts as they pass into a tunnel, and there’s a jerk in the train’s momentum. August, who has been subconsciously leaning into Jane’s space like one of Niko’s most desperate houseplants reaching for the sun, loses her balance and stumbles right into her chest.

Jane catches her easily, one hand on August’s shoulder, the other at her waist, and August can’t stop the gasp that escapes at her touch. It’s lost in the grind of the train against the tracks when it shudders to a halt.

The lights black out.

There’s a low murmur, a few swears from the group of boys.

“Shit,” August says into the darkness. She can feel the palm of Jane’s hand burning into her waist.

“Stay still,” Jane says, and she’s so close that August can feel her breath ruffling her hair in the dark. She smells like leather and sugar. Her hand slides from August’s waist to the small of her back, sturdy, holding her in place. “I got you.”

Physically, August doesn’t react, but spiritually, she’s fully on fire.

“The emergency lights are gonna come on…” Jane says confidently. “Now.”