His face crumples and he lowers it into his hand again. “I’m not a good person, Hilary. I’m not who you thought I was. I knew what he did to you. He bragged about it to Eric and me. I saw you cry. And instead of helping you, I . . .” He lifts his tortured face and looks at me. “I’m no better than he was.”

I stand and throw my trash in the can next to the bench, then look down at him with my hands balled on my hips. “If you want to sit there feeling sorry for yourself, there’s nothing I can do about it, but I suggest you get over yourself and see things how they really were. You want perspective? I’ll give you mine. You did help me. You helped me finally feel something after years of being numb. You helped me find happiness in the middle of my own personal hell. You helped me understand what lo—” I cut off mid-rant when I realize what I was about to say. “I think if you really look back on all the wrong you believe you did, you’re going to realize it was Lorenzo who did it. And until you can let go of his, you’re never going to be able to forgive yourself for yours.”

I turn and march back toward the flea market, but Alessandro has my arm before I get five feet. “Hilary, wait.”

I spin. “For what? For you to finally decide you’re not the devil incarnate? That could take a while.”

He breathes a sigh. “I know some of what you’re saying is true. I just need to sort through some things. But thank you.”

“For what?”

“For everything you just said. Knowing how you feel helps.”

I feel all my frustration and anger run off me like melting ice. “The only thing I couldn’t forgive you for was leaving me, Alessandro. As far as I’m concerned, nothing you did while you were here needs forgiving.”

He closes his eyes and when he opens them, they’re moist. “Thank you.”

We just stand here staring at each other for a few long heartbeats, then I loop my arm through his elbow and start toward the booths. “Come on. Treasures await.”

We wind back through the market toward the subway, but just as we get toward the end, a coffee table in a booth with beat-up furniture catches my eye. It’s huge and clunky, all thick legs and a solid top, and totally ugly, with nicks in the wood and cigarette burns in the dark, chipped finish. But maybe because of all that, it has so much character that it almost seems alive, like it will just start talking any minute and tell us its life story. And just looking at it, I know there is one and it’s super interesting.

“How much for the table?” I ask the long-haired guy at the booth.

He eyes Alessandro and then me, sizing us up, no doubt. “Sixty,” he finally says.

I scrunch my face at him. “You’re joking, right? ’Cause it’s worth, like, five.”

He barks out a laugh. “This is antique. It’s worth hundreds.”

“I don’t think circa 1964 qualifies as antique,” Alessandro says from over my shoulder.

I shove him. “Butt out. I’ve got this.” I turn back to the vendor. “Ten.”

“Thirty,” he counters.

“Fifteen.”

He looks at the table and then at me. “Twenty-five, and that’s a low as I can go.”

I stick my hand in my bag and dig past my new gloves for everything I can find. I come out with a ten, eight crumpled ones, and a handful of change. “I’ve got”—I count out the change—“twenty-one sixty-three. Take it or leave it.”

He holds out his hand. “I hope you enjoy your new coffee table.”

I grin and hand him the wad of money . . . and then realize I have no way to get this sucker home. I look at Alessandro with wide, what-have-I-done eyes.

“Am I allowed to butt back in now?” he asks with an amused smile.

“What was I thinking?”

“That you needed a coffee table, obviously.”

“Yeah . . .” I say, looking back down at it. “But now I’ve got to get the freaking thing home.”

“We’ll manage it.” He casts a glance over the flea market. “Have you seen enough?”

“Considering I just spent my last twenty-one dollars, yeah.”

He spins and grabs the front end of the coffee table so it’s behind him. “You get the back.”

I loop my bag over my neck so it doesn’t slide off my shoulder and scurry around to grab the other end. I stagger like a drunken sailor as we start up the street. “Shit. This thing weighs a fucking ton.”

Alessandro glances over his shoulder at me. “It’s a quality piece of furniture. You have a good eye.”

I don’t know if he’s messing with me or what, but I’m too busy trying not to drop my end to give him a hard time. People don’t start to look at us funny until we’re half a block from the flea market, where walking down the street carrying a clunky wooden coffee table isn’t an everyday occurrence. He starts to steer us around the corner onto Eighth.

“Go straight,” I say. “If we go another block to the Times Square station, that will get us closer to the apartment without having to transfer.

We jostle our way through the thickening crowds and when we get to the subway, Alessandro stops at the top of the stairs and sets his end down. I look into the pit, sure we’re screwed. “Will they even let us do this?”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” he answers. “I’m going to tip it on its side,” he says, lifting his end again. “You ready?” I nod and we turn it so the legs are sticking out the side. “Can you hold it like this while I get myself situated?” he asks.

I don’t have a clue what “situated” means, but I say, “Got it,” anyway.

He shifts to the underside behind the front legs and turns his back to me, hooking one hand under the bottom edge. He raises his other arm over his head, grabbing the top edge as I hold the table steady. “You okay back there?” he asks, craning his neck to look at me over his shoulder.

“Did you used to be a furniture mover or something?”

He starts slowly down the stairs and I keep his pace. “European apartments tend to be tight, and there are generally no elevators, so you learn to be creative.”

And now people are looking at us like we’re crazy. Everyone coming up from the subway has to squish to the side of the stairs so we don’t take them out with a table leg, and there’s a flood of people behind us that pushes hurriedly past once we get to the bottom.

We put the table down and I look at the gates. “Now what?”

“You’ve got your MetroCard handy?” he asks, flicking his out of his back pocket.

I dig mine out of my bag and hold it up.

“If we flip it legs up, you won’t have to hold it so high to get through the turnstile.”

He looks so serious, as if we’re doing brain surgery or something, and it suddenly strikes me as funny. I crack up.

“You have a lovely laugh.”

Something in his voice makes me stop. When I look at him again, his face has gone from dead serious to soft and slightly amused.

There’s a rush in my stomach, a sudden whirring of butterflies, but I shut it down. “Let’s go,” I say lifting my end of the table.

No one tries to stop us as we wrestle it through the gates and onto the subway platform, then set the table on its legs next to the wall.

I sit on it and lean against the tile wall as we wait, rubbing my sore palm on my jeans. “Thanks for doing this,” I tell him.

He sits next to me. “My pleasure.”

I think about what I told him that night after Club 69—that I’d never needed him—and wonder if he knows it’s a lie.

When we hear the train in the tunnel, we slide off the table and pick it up. But when the train gets to the platform, I see it’s packed.

“We should wait for the next one,” Alessandro says, starting to lower his end.

“Uh-uh,” I say and push him backward toward the door.

At first, most of the people standing in the door don’t move, like if they ignore us, we’ll go away.

But I’m not going away.

I shove the table and Alessandro staggers back into the crowd, bumping hard into a skinny guy with his nose in his iPad. Eyes widen behind him as the people there realize we’re coming whether they like it or not, and they press deeper into the car.