When Love Arrives (H.S.)

Chapter 6

I was skimming the first few pages of my new book as Harry sat across from me on the train, with his legs stretched across to my side. His large, brown boots kept nudging me to annoy me as I tried to concentrate. With a huff, I decided to cease any effort to get reading done. Try making conversation, you dingus, I could practically hear my best friend in my head. 

"So, uh," I said, causing Harry to look up from his phone. "Why are we taking the train away from Manhattan? That's the best place to get pizza on Earth." Well, nearly.

Harry smiled at me. "It's a surprise!" 

"A surprise? I don't like surprises, you know that," I said, matter-of-factly. 

"You'll like this one, though," he said.

I paused for a moment, his emerald eyes particularly piercing as the sunset illuminated them through the train window. "Will there still be pizza?" 

He laughed. "Yes, yes. There will be pizza."

Minutes later, I heard the automated voice speak over the loudspeaker: "This station is Jamaica."

"That's us," he said, getting up.

Suddenly, it all made sense and my heart skipped a beat. "Queens?"

"Yeah. You've heard of it?" he asked, very tongue-in-cheek, seeing if he could pull one on me. 

"I should have known," I said. He waited for me to elaborate. "You talked to my grandfather, obviously."

"Yeah, remember I met him yesterday? He's a cool guy, we talked about a lot of things," 

"Mhm," I pretend to act dumb as we walked a few blocks to my grandfather's old restaurant. A place that I had not been since he sold the place quite a few years ago. 

Harry gave me a smirk as we stopped in front of the restaurant. It looked different, but very much the same. Things were newer now, but not so new that it wasn't the same place. That made it easier to be there, and harder. The hard thing about going back to places from your past, is that you're acknowledging that they're in the past. They're not exactly your places anymore, they're just places you used to go frequently enough that you miss going there. 

The sign was new, with "Peter's Pizza" lit up in red letters on a white slate. It had always been "Peter's Pizza", but Gramps' name wasn't Peter, neither was the guy he bought the place from when my dad was a kid. That's the funny thing about pizzerias, I guess... If you were to pick a funny thing about pizzerias, as I certainly would. 

I rolled my eyes at Harry as we walked inside, knowing that it must have been my Gramp's bright idea to drag me here. The bell rang as we walked through a door and a young girl who I didn't know was at the counter. 

I told her we wanted a pizza to share and we grabbed our drinks and took a seat. I pulled at my wallet to pay, after swatting Harry's away, when I heard an all too familiar voice. "Melly?"

A short old, Spanish woman walked out of the kitchen, her arms open for an embrace that I was forced to awkwardly accept with an uncomfortable laugh. "Hey, Syl. It's me, yeah."

She pulled away, a smile on her face as she took my own between her pudgy hands. "What brings you back here to me?"

"I brought her," Harry interrupted, a smug grin on his face.

Sylvia, who I had known my entire life. She was my nanny growing up, and she knew almost everything about me from hours upon hours of eating and working and practically growing up in the pizzeria. That's how my parents knew her, and my grandpa was nice enough to give her a break from sweating in the kitchen to practically raise me. I hadn't seen her in almost two years. "And who might this be?" she asked, eyes wide and an assuming smile on her face.