Wait. What was happening?

I didn’t know what to do or say. Grandmère had prepared me for tons of situations—from dealing with thieving maids to escaping from embassies during coups d’etat.

But honestly, nothing could have prepared me for this.

Was my ex-boyfriend really intimating that he wanted to get back together?

Or was I reading too much into things? (It wouldn’t be the first time.)

Fortunately just then our main courses came, and Michael steered the conversation back to normal ground like nothing had happened. Maybe nothinghad happened. Suddenly we were talking about whether or not Joss Whedon will ever make aBuffy the Vampire Slayer feature film and how much Karen Allen rocks and Boris’s concert and Michael’s company and Dad’s campaign. For two people with relatively nothing in common (because, let’s face it, he’s a robotic-surgical-arm designer. I’m a romance writer…and a princess. I love musicals and he hates them. Oh, and we have totally dissimilar DNA) we have never, ever run out of things to say to each other.

Which is completely weird.

Then, without my knowing quite how, we got to Lilly.

“Has your dad seen the commercial she made for him?” Michael asked.

“Oh,” I said, smiling. “Yes! It was wonderful. I couldn’t believe it. Was that…did you have something to do with that?”

“Well,” Michael said, smiling too. “She wanted to do it. But…I might have encouraged her a little. I can’t believe you two still aren’t friends again, after all this time.”

“We aren’tnot friends,” I said, remembering what Lilly had told me about how he’d said she had to be nice to me. “We just…I don’t know what happened, really. She never would tell me.”

“She’d never tell me, either,” Michael said. “You really have no idea?”

I flashed back to an image of Lilly’s face as we sat in G&T that day she told me J.P. had broken up with her. I’d always wondered if that had been it. Could this whole thing have been over a boy? Is that what I was being sodense about?

But that would be so stupid. Lilly wasn’t the type of person to let something as dumb as a boy get in the way of a friendship. Not with her best friend.

“I really,” I said, “have no idea.”

The dessert menus came, and Michael insisted on ordering one of each dessert, so we could try them all (because this was a celebration), while he told me stories about the cultural differences in Japan—how one takeout restaurant delivered meals in actual china bowls that he’d place outside his door when he was finished eating, and the restaurant would come back to pick them up, which takes recycling to another level—and some of the embarrassments he’d suffered because of them (karaoke ballad singing, which his Japanese coworkers had taken very seriously, high among them).

And as he talked, it became clear that he and Micromini Midori? Not a couple. He mentioned her boyfriend, who is apparently a karaoke champion in Tsukuba, several times.

Then I started giggling in a different way when, after all the desserts came, I noticed two girls in a boat in the center of the lake, arguing fiercely with each other, and rowing in circles, not getting anywhere. Lana’s plan of spying on me completely and utterly failed.

It was later, after the check came—and Michael paid, even though I said I wanted to takehim out, to thank him for the donation to the hospital—that thingsreally started to fall apart.

Well, maybe they’d been falling apart all afternoon—steadily crumbling—and I just hadn’t been paying attention. Things have a tendency to do that in my life, I’ve noticed. It was when we were standing outside the Boathouse, and Michael asked what I had to do for the rest of the day, and I admitted that—for once—I had nothing to do (until my therapy appointment, but I didn’t mention that. I’ll tell him about therapy someday. But not today), that everything disintegrated like one of the madeleines we’d been nibbling on.

“Nothing to do until four? Good,” Michael said, taking my arm. “Then we can keep on celebrating.”

“Celebrating how?” I asked stupidly. I was trying to concentrate on not smelling him. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything else. Like where we were going.

“Have you ever been in one of these?” he asked.

That’s when I saw that he had led me over to one of those cheesy horse carriages that are all over Central Park.

Well, okay, maybe they’re not cheesy. Maybe they’re romantic and Tina and I talk about secretly wanting to ride in them all the time. But that’s not the point.

“Of course I’ve never been in one of these,” I cried, acting horrified. “They’re so touristy! And PETA is trying to get them banned. And they’re for people who are on dates.”

“Perfect,” Michael said. He handed the carriage driver, who was wearing a ridiculous (by which I mean, fantastic) old-timey outfit with a top hat, some money. “We’ll go around the park. Lars, get up front. And don’t turn around.”

“No!” I practically screamed. But I was laughing. I couldn’t help it. Because it was so ludicrous. And so something I’ve always wanted to do, but never told anyone (except Tina, of course), for fear of being ridiculed. “I amnot getting in there! These things are cruel to horses!”

The carriage driver looked offended.

“I take excellent care of my horse,” she said. “Probably better than you take care of your pets, young lady.”

I felt bad then—plus, Michael gave me a look, like—See, you hurt her feelings. Now youhaveto get in.

I didn’t want to. I really didn’t!

Not because it was stupid and touristy and I was afraid someone would see me (of course I didn’t care about that, because secretly it’s something I’ve always longed to do). But because—it was a romantic horse-and-buggy ride! With someone who wasn’t my boyfriend!

Worse, with someone who was my ex-boyfriend! And whom I’d sworn I wasn’t going to get close to today.

But Michael looked so sweet standing there with his hand out all expectantly, and his eyes so kind, like,Come on. It’s just a cheesy carriage ride. What could happen?

And at the time, all I could think was that he was right. I mean, what harm could one buggy ride around the park do?

Also, I looked all around, and I didn’t see any paparazzi.

And the red velvet bench in the back of the carriage looked roomy enough. We could definitely both fit on it and not touch or anything. Like, I could easily sit there and not run the risk of smelling him.

And really, in the end, how romantic could a cheesy touristy buggy ride be to a jaded New Yorker like myself? Despite J.P.’s portrayal of me inA Prince Among Men as a kook who is constantly in need of rescuing (which is completely inaccurate), I’m actually very tough. I’m going to be a published author!

So, rolling my eyes and pretending to be allI’m so over this , I laughingly let Michael help me into the carriage and sat down on the lumpy bench. Meanwhile, Lars climbed up beside the lady in the top hat, and she started the horse, and we got going with a lurch….

And it turned out I was wrong.

The bench wasnot that big.

And I’mnot that jaded of a New Yorker.

Even now, I can’t really say how it happened. And it seemed to happen pretty much right away, too. One minute Michael and I were sitting calmly beside each other on that bench, Not Kissing, and the next…we were in each other’s arms. Kissing. Like two people who had never kissed before.

Or, rather, like two people who used to kiss a lot, and really liked it, and then had been deprived of kissing each other for a very long time. And then, suddenly, were reintroduced to kissing, and remembered they liked it. Quite a bit.

And so they started doing it again. A lot. Like a couple of kiss-starved maniacs, who had been in a kissing desert for approximately twenty-one months.

We basically made out from, like, Seventy-second Street, all through the park, and up to Fifty-seventh. That’s, like, twenty blocks, give or take a few.

YES. WE KISSED FOR TWENTY BLOCKS. IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. IN AN OLD-TIMEY HORSE CARRIAGE!

Anyone could have seen us. AND TAKEN PICTURES!!!!

I have no idea what came over me. One minute I was enjoying the clip-clop of the horse hooves and the beautiful scenery of the lush green leaves of the park. And the next…

And yes, I will admit it did seem like Michael was sitting AWFULLY close to me on that benchy thing at first.

And, okay, I did sort of notice his arm went around me when the carriage first lurched forward. But that was only natural. I thought it was sweet. It was the kind of thing a friend—a guy friend—might do for a girl friend.

But then Michael didn’t take his arm away.

And then I got another whiff of him.

And it was all over. I knew it was all over, but I turned my head to tell him—in a polite way, of course, the way a princess would—not to bother, that I’m with J.P. now and that it’s hopeless, I won’t do anything to hurt or betray J.P. because he was there for me when I was at my most despairing, and Michael should just give it up, if that was what he intended. Which it probably wasn’t. But just in case.

But somehow those words never came out of my mouth.

Because when I turned my head to tell Michael all that, I saw that he was looking at me, and I couldn’t help looking back, and something in his eyes—I don’t know. It was like there was a question there. I don’t know what the question was.

Okay. I guess I do.

In any case, I’m pretty sure I answered it when he brought his lips down over mine.

And, like I said, we kept on kissing, passionately, for twenty-something blocks instead. Or whatever. Math’s not my best subject.