Chapter Thirteen
The Date
Sydney
His name is Tanner.
He’s in line behind me at the coffee shop near the community center, and when I turn around with my latte, I accidentally step on his shoe.
He’s tall and blond, wearing a button-down that suggests he works somewhere with a dress code but not a strict one.
He laughs when I apologize. It’s a good laugh.
“You could at least buy me a muffin to make up for the assault on my footwear.”
I laughed. “You want a muffin?”
“Compromise. We split it.”
That’s how it starts. We end up at a two-top by the window, sharing a blueberry muffin. He asks what I do, and I tell him about the senior center. He laughs at the visual of senior citizens dancing to Flo Rida. By the time my latte is gone, he’s asked for my number, and I’ve given it to him.
He texts me that afternoon.
Tanner: Any chance you’re free Saturday night?
I stare at the message for a while. I’m on the couch.
The twins are at preschool. The house is quiet, my laundry is drying, and I can smell the garlic from whatever Archer has started for dinner.
I think, I could just not answer this. I could say I’m busy.
I could keep living in Archer Lockwood’s life and pretend everything is fine until it breaks me.
Or I could go on a date.
Me: I’m free.
I tell Archer that night while we’re cleaning up from dinner. Casually. Like it’s not a big deal, because it’s not. I’m a grown woman, and I can go on a date without it being a whole thing.
“So I have plans Saturday night.”
He pauses with a plate halfway to the dishwasher. “Okay.”
“I met a guy at the coffee shop. We’re getting dinner.”
He sets the plate down slowly, as if it might break if he puts it down wrong. “A guy at the coffee shop.”
“Yeah.”
“You gave a stranger at a coffee shop your number?”
“He’s not a stranger, Archer. His name is Tanner. He works in, um—finance, I think? I didn’t ask for his résumé.”
“You didn’t ask him anything?”
“I asked him things. We had coffee. Shared a muffin. It was a whole conversation.”
He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. “Syd, the guy could be a serial killer. You don’t know him.”
“He could also be a nice guy who likes blueberry muffins.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I frown at him. “I’m going to dinner, Archer. In public. I’ll have my phone. If I’m not home by eleven, call the cops.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
He doesn’t laugh. His jaw is clenched tight, and he doesn’t look happy, but finally, he says, “Okay. Have fun.”
“Thanks.”
“Text me where you are. When you get there. When you leave.”
“Archer.”
“Sydney.”
I roll my eyes. He holds my gaze. For the first time in fifteen years, I look at him across the kitchen and think: you don’t get to have an opinion about this. You really, really don’t.
Lauren calls Friday night while I’m trying to figure out what to wear for tomorrow. If I even brought anything date-friendly with me to New York.
“Okay, walk me through it.”
“His name is Tanner. We’re getting dinner Saturday.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Tall. Blond. Nice laugh.”
“Job?”
“Finance, I think.”
I hear her shifting, probably settling into her spot on the couch. I can picture her exactly—oversized sweatshirt, wine in hand, legs tucked under her. I miss her so much that my chest hurts for a second.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” she says. “Tomorrow, you’re going to go buy yourself something new. Not for him. For you. Get a dress, a cute top—get something that makes you feel like you’re the prize.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t argue. And get your nails done. Maybe a blowout if you have time.
This isn’t about the guy, Syd. This is about reminding yourself that you are a whole person who can have a whole Saturday night that has nothing to do with your best friend and his children.
I’m guessing you haven’t prioritized taking care of yourself over there. ”
I swallow. And look down at my hands—she’s right, my cuticles are pretty atrocious. She’s so right that I want to fight her on it just to prove I’m not completely transparent, but there’s no point. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll go tomorrow.”
“Good.” She pauses. “And Syd?”
“Yeah?”
“If he turns out to be nice, let yourself have a good time. Don’t spend the whole night thinking about Archer. You’re allowed to enjoy yourself.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I don’t answer. She doesn’t push.
Saturday morning I drive to an upscale shopping area Winnie once mentioned and do every single thing Lauren told me to do.
I buy a black silk top that dips low in the back and makes me feel sexy.
I get my nails done. I stop at a salon and get my hair blown out.
I come home with shopping bags, new lipstick, and a version of myself I haven’t seen in the mirror for a long time.
The twins are in the living room when I walk in. Archer is on the floor with them, building something out of magnetic tiles. He looks up when I come in, and his eyes scan me—the bags, the hair, the nails—and he doesn’t say anything, but I can see the calculation happening.
“Someone’s fancy,” he says.
“I got a blowout.”
“I can see that.”
Lily scrambles up off the floor and runs over to me. “Syd, why is your hair like that?”
“I got it done for my date tonight.”
“What’s a date?”
“It’s when a grown-up goes out with another grown-up to get to know them.”
Her eyes widen. “Auntie Syd is going to have a BOYFRIEND.”
“Lily—”
“DADDY! AUNTIE SYD IS GOING TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND!”
“Okay, Lil—”
“LUKE. LUKE. AUNTIE SYD IS GOING TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND.”
Luke looks up from his magnetic tiles, mildly curious. “Who?”
“His name is Tanner, but he’s not my—”
I’m cut off by Lily, who spins around with her arms out, announcing to the room, “Auntie Syd and TANNER.”
“Lily, shh,” Archer says. His voice is calm, but there’s an edge beneath it. “Auntie Syd is just going out to dinner. It’s not a big deal.”
“But she’s pretty,” Lily insists, as if that settles everything.
“She’s always pretty.”
“Not THIS pretty.”
Archer doesn’t correct her, and I feel his eyes on me—quick, assessing—before he turns back to the tiles.
I head upstairs to get changed.
I put on the top and my nice jeans that fit perfectly.
I do my makeup at the guest room vanity with music playing on my phone, all the while aware of the activity in the house below.
I can hear Archer’s low voice talking to the twins, the cartoon Lily chose playing too loudly, and the clatter of something being dropped in the kitchen.
I come down at 6:45 to find him at the counter pouring milk into sippy cups.
“I’m heading out,” I say.
He turns to look at me.
The glance lasts maybe two seconds. His eyes travel over my outfit, my hair, then return to my face. His jaw tightens for a moment, and he turns back to the sippy cups.
“Have fun, Syd,” he says.
He doesn’t look at me again. I grab my bag and the Lexus key fob. Lily runs at me from the living room, hugs my legs, and asks me to come back and tell her everything. Luke waves solemnly as I leave.
I step outside, still feeling Archer’s lack of attention, and that sensation follows me to the car.
Tanner meets me at a wine bar in the West Village.
He’s waiting at the bar when I walk in, and he stands up when he sees me, and his face does the thing a man’s face does when he’s happy about what he ordered, and for a second, I feel it. That little flicker. The reminder that I’m still a person men look at.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He leans in to hug me. He smells like cologne and Tide laundry detergent.
We sit down, and he orders a bottle of red without asking what I like, which—fine. Okay. I can work with that.
He’s nice. That’s the problem. He’s fundamentally, fine-ly, pleasantly nice.
He asks about my job and listens to my answer.
He tells me about his job, and I listen in return.
He completed a marathon last year, has a dog named Chip, and mentions he’s allergic to shellfish, which he tells me unprompted. Okay.
I drink my wine. I laugh when I’m supposed to laugh. I make eye contact. I do all the things a person on a date does.
And I feel nothing.
Not a flicker. Not a hum. Not the faintest electrical charge. Tanner is a perfectly good man having a perfectly good dinner with a woman who is mentally at home in her best friend’s kitchen, wondering if he’s put the twins to bed yet.
By the time we’re an hour in, I know. I know the way you know a pot’s about to boil over. This isn’t going anywhere. It was never going anywhere. I’m not here, not really, and no amount of blueberry muffins or black silk tops is going to change that.
He walks me out at 9:15. We hug goodbye on the sidewalk. He says we should do this again sometime, and I smile and say something noncommittal, and I think we both know it’s a no.
I stand on the sidewalk watching his cab pull away, and I check the time.
9:16 PM.
Too early. Way too early. If I go home now, Archer will know. He’ll do the math, and he’ll figure out this date was a dud, and I don’t want him to have that information. I don’t want to walk into that house feeling like I failed at something I wasn’t even sure I wanted.
So I don’t go home.
I walk three blocks to a little ice cream place and I get a cone—a scoop of mint chocolate chip.
I eat it walking down Bleecker Street in a black silk top and my good jeans, and the city is doing its Saturday night thing around me, all sidewalk music and laughter and couples arguing about where to go next, and I feel—not great. But better. Better than the wine bar.
I stop at a bookstore on the way back to the car.
I’m not looking for anything. I just want to be somewhere warm and quiet for a while.
I wander through fiction and end up in memoirs and pick up a book about a woman who walked two thousand miles because her life was falling apart, and I read the first page standing in the aisle.
The first page is about how nothing in her life was working and she didn’t know how to fix it, and I almost put the book back on the shelf because reading about my own life in someone else’s memoir feels like a little too much.
I buy it anyway.
By the time I get back to the car, it’s 10:02. Late enough. Late enough that a woman might come home from a good evening with a man she might see again.
I drive home.
The house is quiet when I let myself in, and most of the lights are off. I drop my bag and walk into the living room.
He’s on the couch.
His phone is on his chest, the TV is on low, and his eyes are closed. His breathing is slow and even.
He’s asleep.
He fell asleep waiting for me.
I stand in the doorway and look at him. His legs are too long for the couch—one foot hangs off the end, his sock dark against the pale fabric.
Something in my chest caves in.
He was worried. He made himself stay up until I got home, and when the couch and the game and the day caught up with him, he fell asleep anyway, waiting.
“Arch.”
Nothing.
“Archer.”
He stirs. His eyes open, find me, and for a second, his whole face goes soft with relief before he catches himself and sits up, clearing his throat.
“Hey.” He rubs his face. “What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“You’re home.”
“I’m home. You can go to bed now.”
It comes out sharper than I mean it to. Or maybe exactly as sharp as I mean it to. I haven’t decided yet.
He blinks. “Syd—”
“Goodnight, Archer.”
I don’t wait for his answer. I pick up my bag, walk upstairs, and I don’t look back.
But I he’s sitting on the couch, confused, watching me go, and I don’t care.
I don’t care because I just spent an evening trying to want someone else, and I couldn’t, and I’m angry about that.
Not at Tanner. Not even at Archer, really.
At myself. For still being here. For still wanting this. For drawing sharks, folding his laundry, sleeping twenty feet from his bedroom, and pretending any of it is enough.
I close the guest room door, sit on the bed, pull off my shoes, and look at my nails—the fresh manicure Lauren told me to get, the one I got for a date that meant nothing with a man I’ll never see again—and I think about Archer asleep on the couch with his phone on his chest, waiting for me to come home safe.