He texts at 11:04 p.m., while you're lying on your bed pretending you're not waiting for it.

Come downtown. Whitehall Terminal. Wear something warm.

You read it three times. No explanation, no please, nothing about why a man who's been on his feet since six that morning wants to see you at midnight. You put on the thickest sweater you own anyway, and then, because you know yourself, you put on the good boots.

He's waiting outside the terminal in his black jacket, collar up, hair wrecked by the wind. A cigarette burns in his hand and he drops it the second he sees you, grinding it out under his boot like he's been caught.

"You came," he says.

"You said warm."

"You're not warm."

"I'm warmer."

His mouth twitches. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"I'll show you something."

He doesn't take your hand. He just walks half a step ahead, close enough that your shoulders brush, and you follow him through the terminal, past the almost-empty waiting area and the commuters nodding off against the walls, onto a big orange boat that smells like diesel and cold metal.

"The Staten Island Ferry?" you say.

"It's free."

"I know it's free."

"It's also the best view in the city," he says, to the deck, "and nobody ever believes me."

He leads you up and out to the open back, where the wind finds every gap in your clothes. October on the water at midnight is a different kind of cold. It's the kind that gets inside your teeth. You're shivering before the engines even start.

Ellis notices. Of course he does. He notices everything and comments on nothing, which is why you aren't ready when he steps behind you at the rail and shrugs off his jacket.

"Ellis, you'll freeze."

"I run a walk-in cooler for a living."

"That's not the same."

"Arms."

You put your arms through. It swallows you, heavy and warm from his body, smelling like the faint ghost of cologne he wasn't supposed to wear tonight. He pulls the front closed over your chest with both scarred hands and then, instead of letting go, he just leaves them there. Then he steps in, his chest against your back, his chin almost resting on your head, his arms bracketing yours on the rail.

The boat lurches. The city starts to slide away.

You don't breathe for a second.

"Look," he says, low, right against your ear.

You look. Lower Manhattan unspools behind you, glass and light and the dark spike of the new tower, every window a small lit decision somebody made at midnight. The harbor opens black and wide. And then, out in the distance, small and green and impossibly steady, the Statue of Liberty, lit up like she's keeping a secret.

"Oh," you say.

"Yeah."

"I've lived here for years. I've never done this."

"Nobody does." His breath moves your hair. "They go up the Empire State Building and pay forty dollars to see the same thing through glass."

You laugh, and it comes out shaky. "Is this a Chef Hall has opinions about tourism moment?"

"This is a shut up and look moment."

You shut up. You look. The wind snaps at the edges of his jacket and the engines thrum through the deck into the soles of your boots. His heartbeat is steady against your spine, unhurried, a rhythm you've fallen asleep to without ever admitting it.

"I used to bring Jake here," he says, a long while later.

You go very still.

"After we left." His voice has gone flat and careful, the voice he uses on the pass when something's wrong. "First few months. We didn't have anywhere that was ours yet. Couch at a friend's, then a room we couldn't really afford. Some nights it was too much, being in the room. So we'd come out here. It's free, it runs all night, and it's warm if you sit inside." A pause. "He was fifteen. He'd fall asleep on my shoulder before we hit Staten Island. I'd wake him up at the terminal and we'd ride it back."

"Back and forth?"

"Till it was almost morning."