“Those are the good kind of moms,” I reassure her as we begin making our way toward the west side of the park.
Rachel tosses our garbage into the green trash can and links her arm in mine, careful not to jostle Matteo. “You don’t have to walk this way with me,” she says, checking her watch. “Doesn’t the shop open at noon?”
“Josh and May are there. Plus, I need to get flowers for the counter, and Carlos on Seventy-Fourth and Broadway always has the best ones.”
“Damn, I miss those pop-up Manhattan flower carts. Almost as much as I miss May. Give her a squeeze for me, it’s been way too long. And wait, who’s Josh?”
“Newish hire. Mostly helps with inventory and stocking, but it’s sweet to watch him overcome his shyness customer by customer.”
“I’m surprised you even know what shyness looks like. Have you ever met a human being who didn’t instantly adore you?”
“Blake Hansel, fifth grade.”
“No, he just really adored you, in the pull-her-pigtail kind of way,” Rachel says as we exit the park and step onto the bustling Central Park West sidewalk. We embrace, careful not to smoosh the baby between us.
I pull back and give Matteo a proper goodbye, unapologetically inhaling his sweet baby smell, mingled with—yep, there’s the eruptive poop. “Goodbye, handsome. You sure you don’t want to run away with me?”
“You, young lady, will text me more often,” Rachel orders with a pointing finger as she begins walking backward uptown toward her parents’ place in Morningside Heights.
I salute in acknowledgment and wave goodbye.
The second my best friend’s back is turned, I pull out my phone to see if I have more messages from him.
Okay, fine. So maybe I’m a tiny bit in love with a man I haven’t met.
My dear Lady,
Pistachio gelato, you say. That’s my mother’s favorite, on the very rare occasions she lets herself eat food with actual flavor or calories. Alas, I confess the often-added green food coloring creeps me out.
Yours in renewed devotion to sorbet,
Sir
* * *
To Sir, with alarm,
Did you just compare me to your mother? Not sure how I feel about that…
Lady
* * *
My dear Lady,
I hear it now. I take it back and reassure you that in no way do I think of you as my mother.
Yours in apology,
Sir
Two
Okay, a little bit about me.
My name is Gracie Cooper and I’m thirty-three years old, middle child, New Yorker by birth and choice, proud owner of a champagne shop called Bubbles & More, and I love my life.
Now, let’s be clear. I can’t quite claim it’s the life I’d envisioned as a kid, and let me tell you, my best subject in school was daydreaming, so I did a lot of envisioning my future life. And no. Thirty-three does not look like I thought it would.
I don’t have the husband or the kids. I live in a cramped one-bedroom walkup, not the tastefully renovated brownstone. In my daydreams, my parents were happily running their champagne shop together, and I was a world-famous artist (hey, if you don’t dream big, why bother!). My brother and sister lived close by, happily married with their own kids, and noisy family dinners would ensue every Sunday like clockwork. It’s also worth mentioning that in my daydreams, adult Gracie’s hair and boobs were a lot less flat.
Alas. Destiny served up something a little different.
My mom died young—a hit-and-run accident a few blocks from our home in Brooklyn when I was seven. Four years ago, I was gearing up to tell my family I’d been accepted into art school in Italy, only to be blindsided by my dad’s Stage IV cancer diagnosis and his bluntly stated dying wish that Bubbles stay in the Cooper family.
My sister and brother hadn’t exactly leapt at the chance to take over, and I was already Dad’s de facto protégée in the wine business, so no art school.
Instead, I’m a shop owner who paints only as a hobby. And considering my sister and I have drifted apart and my brother moved to New Hampshire on a whim… no weekly family dinners either.
Not the life I imagined, but it is a good life. And I’d be lying if I didn’t take a lot of pride in what I think of as my personal superpower: the ability to accept and embrace things as they are, not as I wish they could be.
Which is why it’s so darn frustrating that there’s one dream I can’t seem to let go of, one area in my life where my heart refuses to settle for anything less than the daydream:
The guy.
No matter how many times I put myself out there, no matter how many dates I go on—and believe me, there have been plenty—I can’t let go of the sense that when I see him, I’ll know.
Rachel calls it my Cinderella mode. I call it having high standards.
Okay fine, really high standards.
But why should I settle for less than a stomach-flipping meet-cute or the kind of romance you see in old movies and listen to in Frank Sinatra songs?
My Sagittarius musician with the floppy brown hair, crooked smile, and dad bod is out there. I’m positive.
Which brings us full circle back to SirNYC.
It’s crazy, even in my own head, but messaging with him is the closest I’ve ever felt to it. Which is why I can’t quite give up our unusual friendship, because until Prince Charming shows up? Sir is really good company.
Turning onto Amsterdam Avenue, I head toward Carlos’s flower stand, taking my time and letting myself enjoy the energy of New York City coming out of summer hibernation. Two taxis narrowly avoid a fender bender, communicating their dislike with that classic blaring NYC horn. Two old ladies gripe about Zabar’s raising the price of smoked fish. An ambulance siren wails in the distance. A lanky man in headphones sings a pitch-perfect rendition of “Wait for It” from Broadway’s Hamilton.
I smile at the city’s soundtrack. Home.
I was born in Brooklyn, but I’ve lived in Manhattan since I was eight. And I mean no disrespect to the fine residents of Prospect Heights, but this bustling rush of the city, with skyscrapers and people way too close together… this is my New York.
After my mom was killed, my dad moved us to Morningside Heights, a West Harlem neighborhood right on the Upper West Side border. Manhattan represented a fresh start for all of us. A chance to navigate life without my mom in an apartment that didn’t have her stamp all over it. A new school district for me and my siblings, plus an easier commute for my dad to the Midtown shop.
None of it was easy. I still remember the horror of having to ask my dad to pick up pads on his run to the bodega while my older sister was at summer camp. And of course I missed my mom like crazy. I still do.
But something weird happened when my dad drove the U-Haul over the Brooklyn Bridge and we were instantly surrounded by skyscrapers. Something inside me seemed to click—a sense of rightness.
I once went on a date with a guy from Toledo (who by the way did not have that click of rightness) who said Manhattan either got into your blood or made your blood run cold. It’s a little graphic and gross, but he’s not wrong. I was in the first category.
On Amsterdam, the crosswalk signal is red, but like any true New Yorker, I pay attention to actual traffic, not signals, giving a friendly, semiapologetic wave to the NYPD officers who either missed, or more likely, turned a blind eye to my jaywalking.