Chapter 5
Before Cece wakes up, there’s the briefest of moments—lying in bed, the world gauzy and hushed through closed eyelids—when she misses Jonathan, his arm slung over the small of her back, the bedsheets always freshly laundered and starchy against her cheek.
They’d been set up by friends, and despite Cece’s misgivings about blind dates and the usual entanglements that accompanied involving friends with her love life, she was ready for something serious, and Jonathan, she’d heard, was as serious as they came.
“In a good way, obviously,” they said. “He’s got his life together.”
At the time, serious sounded nice to Cece.
After nearly half a decade in the New York dating scene, serious seemed like the only sensible option.
She’d concluded that there were simply too many beautiful women in the city.
It was a numbers game, and no matter how Cece looked at the equation, she was drawing the short straw.
There were no consequences for men who couldn’t commit, men who didn’t believe in marriage, men who wanted to just be friends who occasionally slept together.
No matter their outrageous demand, no matter the astounding level of ambivalence, they knew there were a dozen beautiful women just around the corner if they were kicked to the curb.
After looking at the situation from a purely statistical point of view, Cece had a hard time holding it against them.
Which made it all the more surprising when she met Jonathan at a Japanese restaurant in Alphabet City and found him to be direct, decisive, and yes, serious.
He was sitting at the sushi bar dressed like he’d just come from work: brown loafers, gray slacks, and a navy blue button-down shirt complete with a gray Patagonia vest. It was an unremarkable outfit, a bland, inoffensive style made ubiquitous by finance bros.
Cece remembers thinking that if she’d passed Jonathan on the sidewalk every day for a week, she might have never noticed him.
But that wasn’t the point! Where had carnal attraction gotten her?
What had her previous judgments and aesthetic tastes produced?
Nothing was the short answer. She told the hostess she was meeting someone and breezed into the cramped restaurant and gave her best smile when Jonathan saw her.
She hoped she lived up to whatever picture her friends had shown him.
And then a marvelous thing happened: Jonathan stood up, shook her hand, and took charge, and suddenly Cece felt foolish and superficial for caring about something as frivolous as a vest.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” he said. “I was just thinking…Sushi is a terrible idea for a first date. I can’t believe I suggested it.”
Cece was still lingering on the word lovely. Who said that word aloud anymore? “This is fine. I heard good things.”
Jonathan was already putting a few bills down on the bar. “I’ve got nothing against the food. I was thinking more about the chopsticks, and the fact that we can’t sit facing each other.”
“I hadn’t thought about that…It’ll be hard to find a table anywhere else. It’s prime dinnertime.”
“Way ahead of you. I managed to get us a table at an Argentinian steak spot just up the street. You aren’t a pescetarian or anything like that, are you?”
Cece was impressed by his preparedness and his ability to pivot. But mostly, she felt like he was thinking about her—what she might want, how she might feel. “Sounds great.”
“I know steak’s a bit heavy, but it beats being humiliated when they inevitably offer me the kid chopsticks.”
“How can I say no?”
“Perfect,” Jonathan said with a grin, his teeth impossibly white. “We can always walk it off. The restaurant’s right by the park.”
They’d yet to have a proper conversation, and here Jonathan was, adding to their date, a first date at that!
And yet, it didn’t feel presumptuous or arrogant.
Cece got the distinct sense that Jonathan wouldn’t be offended or hurt if she declined to join him.
He struck her as the kind of man who wasn’t afraid to say aloud what he wanted, even if it meant failure or rejection.
They never made it to the park. They remained at the restaurant until they closed, which was only possible because Jonathan bribed the hostess to let them stay well beyond their reservation slot.
He was fascinated by Cece’s job and had to cut himself off after asking too many questions.
“It never crossed my mind that you could assess uncertainty, not just in financial or insurance markets, but in life,” he said, cutting into his steak with zest, “but of course you can!” As someone with two brothers, he wanted to know what it was like to grow up with a sister.
He asked what her parents did and whether she was close to them.
He spoke excitedly of the future—a five-year plan that involved making senior VP at his private equity job, crossing Venice, San Sebastián, and Marrakesh off his travel bucket list, and finally beating his best friend at tennis, something he hadn’t accomplished since their days at Deerfield—and Cece listened intently.
Except for swimming in high school and college, her own goals had rarely extended beyond the professional.
As someone who saw the future as risk to be predicted and avoided, she was taken with Jonathan’s approach.
Here was someone who imposed their will on the complete unknown, willing the desired outcome into existence.
Data, models, predictions—Jonathan used them, but he didn’t let them stop him from taking action.
It wasn’t a matter of if his goals would come to fruition, but when.
Cece was genuinely impressed. “Those are some grand plans.”
“Indeed. Although not very much fun when done alone,” Jonathan said while he looked around the empty restaurant.
“I suppose not,” Cece said, wary of the somber tone their conversation had taken. It would be just her luck that she finds a driven, serious, good-looking guy, only to discover he’s a depressive.
“I hope this isn’t too forward, but I’d like to see you again. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve had a good conversation on a date.”
Prior to leaving her apartment, Cece had made numerous promises to herself: Don’t be afraid to bail early if the date’s a disaster, don’t ask him questions and make him feel overly important, and upon pain of death, do not, if asked, agree to a second date.
Something in her face must have betrayed her trepidation.
“What’s that inane rule men are always following?
Something about waiting at least forty-eight hours before calling someone after a date.
I never understood that…Look, our friends set us up, which means they pity us, which means we’ve been on the dating scene far too long, which means we’re either damaged goods or just way too picky. ”
Cece laughed. “Some friends.”
“I don’t want to waste your time or mine. I’m looking for something serious, and I think you are too, so let’s find out if something’s here. And if not, that’s okay. But at least we’ll have eaten some good food and gone on some fun dates.”
Put this way—so matter-of-fact, so simple—Cece could find no plausible reason to decline the invitation.
And after they’d exchanged numbers and Jonathan walked her to the corner of A and East Sixth and put her in a taxi, she thought about what he’d said and how it had put her at ease.
Through the smudged windshield, traffic thinned, and green lights stretched for what seemed like miles, and the cab rolled on, jostled and bumped by the rutted streets.
The cabbie got a call and began speaking with someone in his native tongue.
Cece liked to think it was his wife, calling to check in on him during his shift.
She leaned back in the unforgiving seat and closed her eyes.
Jonathan, with his forthrightness and maturity, felt like the perfect match for someone like her, someone who craved predictability and security.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that he had a good job, had attended a reputable college.
It was obvious he came from a good family, a family that no doubt occupied a social class well above Cece’s.
If she had to guess, Jonathan’s parents lived the kind of life her mother wished they could afford to live, which meant her mother would approve of him.
These weren’t the most romantic notions, but where had romance gotten her?
! She was ready to settle down, even if that wasn’t the phrase Cece would have used, not in a hundred years.
At last, she was ready for something simple and good.
Luxuriating in a Saturday off from work, the dark shape of Bernard snoring at the foot of her bed, Cece stretches her legs out until they’re hanging off the twin mattress.
She wiggles her toes, touching air. A mosquito whines somewhere in the room.
Cece flails for a flip-flop on the floor and hucks it in the direction of the incessant drone.
What has she done? Why is she here, in this room, alone?
She wonders what Jonathan is doing at this precise moment, and then, before her mind can wander, she wipes the thought, like a hand across a foggy windowpane.
The sky is streaked the most glorious daffodil yellow by the time Cece makes it down to the boatyard.
Last night over text, Morgan had insisted they leave at some ludicrous hour, and now Cece finds herself grumpy and resentful until he puts a warm mug of coffee in her hand and says good morning, boyish cheer on his face.
Lorraine’s gossip fades faster than the foghorn somewhere in the distance.