Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Okay, okay. Let’s shake off the week, shall we?” I held up the martini glass and took a sip. It tasted like gasoline. I looked longingly at the thirty-dollar rosé it had taken ten minutes to choose.
At 8:30 p.m., Emilie slipped her doorman a twenty, and he hailed a cab to take us to the restaurant on Bond Street.
We were the last ones to sit down. Caroline handed our jackets to a waiter as she launched into short but thoughtful introductions that somehow put everyone at ease.
By the time we got to the part where we all pretended to be too full for dessert, it was like we were eight former sorority sisters who still made time for monthly dinners.
One of the girls, Margaret, had just gone through a breakup after a five-year relationship with her college boyfriend.
They’d been broken up for three months, and she wasn’t shy about how much she still missed him.
He’d been the one to end it. She was taking her therapist’s advice to “just get back out there,” but dating was, so far, an underwhelming venture.
Each guy was more superficial than the last. All they wanted to talk about was their stock portfolio, how many people were in their Hamptons share house, or the podcast they were making with their friends.
She worked at a nonprofit for underprivileged Asian American youth and lived in Park Slope.
Maybe it was the Brooklyn address or the wine, but before I knew it, I was announcing in an exaggeratedly self-aggrandizing voice, “I know someone great!”
Encouraged by the hopeful expression on every face at the table, I committed the cardinal matchmaking sin of failing to undersell and overdeliver.
“Seriously, he’s perfect. I promise he doesn’t even know what the Nasdaq is—but like, in a good way—and I’m pretty sure he’s never even been to a group fitness class.
Not to say he isn’t fit, just naturally tall and lean.
Hates the Hamptons. Total diamond in the rough,” I heard myself say in a voice that didn’t even sound like mine.
I offered to see if he’d be interested in a setup. She nodded enthusiastically as Caroline euphorically clasped her hands as if to say she’d really nailed this group.
The restaurant split the bill eight ways, making it a unicorn New York establishment. I opened the bill holder, and my eyes landed on a handwritten note scribbled at the bottom of my receipt. The waiter’s name was Alex, and he wanted my number.
I blushed as I tried to covertly show Emilie the note, but the girl seated on the other side of me saw it first.
“I knew he was into you!” she whispered. “He was reading the specials to you.”
Margaret looked delighted. “This is exactly how you should lose your Manhattan dating virginity. Blind dates are terrible.”
I reached uncomfortably for my credit card. “This would be a blind date,” I corrected her.
“Not really. We just spent three hours with him. He’s so cute.”
“And funny!” Caroline added.
I could tell it would be new friend suicide not to leave my number.
As soon as we left the restaurant, I got a text from a 646 number asking if I’d be up for a drink sometime.
I stared at the text for a few seconds, wondering if I’d ever be that person again—someone who got excited about someone cute asking for my number. I put my phone away without responding. I’d been in New York less than three months, and life already felt like drinking from a fire hose.
We tagged along with the group to a nearby speakeasy for another drink. Emilie excused herself while I ordered a round of cocktails. I checked my emails absentmindedly as the bartender made the drinks, then looked over and saw Emilie coming from the direction of the door.
“Were you smoking again? You said you were going to the bathroom,” I said as I handed her a martini, my voice sharper than I intended.
She looked guilty. “If I say yes, will you leave it alone?”
“I don’t know. Two cigarettes in one night makes you a smoker.”
She sighed and dropped her head dangerously close to the glass. “I wasn’t smoking. I was on the phone.”
“Ah. Why did you say you were going to the bathroom?”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” she said, her British accent more pronounced the slower she spoke.
“I don’t know what that means. You didn’t need to go to the bathroom?”
She lifted her head and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I mean when I called you. When you refused to step out and meet me for lunch.”
“Meaning, you don’t actually hate your job?”
She nudged me down to an emptier part of the bar.
“There’s a man at my firm. A much . . . older man.”
“And?” My mind flashed to Leo. Was Emilie living my fantasy?
She swirled the cocktail without taking a sip.
“We’ve been seeing each other for a while now. It started last summer.”
“When we were studying for the bar?” No one could pull that off, not even Emilie.
“No, the summer before that.”
“When you were a summer associate?”
She nodded. “And all through last year. He’d come down to DC, or I’d take the train up here for a weekend. Sometimes we’d meet at the halfway point, at a bed-and-breakfast on Baltimore Harbor.”
“So he’s a partner?”
“Yes.”
“A married partner?”
“No. He’s never been married.”
“How old is he?”
“Fifty.”
I couldn’t believe I had been clueless for well over a year. Then again, I hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with her about sleeping with Ben or my feelings for Leo.
She said they both decided to keep the relationship a secret once she got to the firm, but then they started working together eighty hours a week on a complicated appeal, and it was Emilie who realized she couldn’t handle it.
“Every time I try to talk about us, he uses work as a weapon. He says, ‘When am I supposed to think about the future? When I’m home at two a.m. after editing your work?’ That’s always his excuse. And he always says ‘the’ future. Not our future.”
She looked distraught. I couldn’t believe she’d been able to keep all of this under wraps. It was so layered. I felt sad that she hadn’t trusted me enough to bring me into the fold.
“What are you going to do?”
Her eyes were wet. I wished I’d made time to meet her for lunch.
“I don’t know, but I’m just so miserable.
I haven’t known what to do since the first time we met that summer.
Sam, you know me. I’m not someone who falls for a guy and loses my head.
He’s a career bachelor whose world revolves around work.
And yet somehow, my feelings only get stronger, and .
. .” Her voice sounded strained. “It’s started to feel like the opposite for him.
He doesn’t even look at me the same way anymore.
It’s like I’m a . . . distraction. It’s so incredibly painful.
Sometimes I lie awake at night and feel like I can’t breathe.
If he ends things, I can’t stay there. It would be hell. ”
I shook my head. “Man, we’re really a pair. I’m divorced, and you’re trying to lock down a forever bachelor.” I briefly considered telling her about sleeping with Ben. I wondered if it would make her feel better to know we all had secrets. But I wasn’t sure making this about me was the right move.
She made a face. “I don’t even think people can have a successful career and a happy relationship. Look at my parents. If my mum had wanted to work, my dad would’ve been fucking miserable.”
I thought back to what Leo said about focusing on work. If it was ever possible to have both, it certainly wasn’t going to happen before my career had really even started.
I stared at the bartender’s toolbox of green olives, cocktail onions, and cherries and almost wanted to tell her about my feelings for Leo.
But after what had happened with Charlie, I was reticent to give anyone else reason to paint me as morally adrift.
Even if it might level the playing field a bit and help her feel less alone.
I also knew I didn’t have any good advice. All I could do was listen.
“Even if I’m coming into this story at the end of the book, tell me everything. How it started, all of it.”