Chapter 2

Emory picked the place—a small Italian spot in the West Village with paper tablecloths and wine that came in juice glasses. No one we knew would be here. That was the point.

She was already at the table when I arrived, her coat still on, her hands wrapped around a water glass. She looked at my face and didn't say anything. Just pulled out my chair.

We ordered. We talked about nothing for a few minutes—her job, a movie she'd seen, the weather turning. I appreciated that. The runway before the landing.

Then she set down her fork and looked at me.

"Okay," she said. "Tell me."

So I did.

I told her about the restaurant on Hudson. Daniel saying Lara's name and the way Sterling's phone lit up and went dark in the same breath. The way his thumb kept moving in circles on my knee like everything was fine.

I told her about Broadway. The navy dress. The cab to the firm. Lara sitting on the edge of his desk with her wrist turned up in his hands, and the oat milk latte with the lid set neatly beside it. Two sugars. Six years later and he still knew.

I told her about the cab ride home. The way he'd turned it around on me so fast I'd almost believed him. *A woman is being beaten and you're worried about how it looks.* The Tiffany box the next morning. The way I'd let him fasten it around my neck and told myself I was being reasonable.

I told her about the text from Lara. *Men like Sterling need to feel like heroes. Don't make things harder than they have to be.*

I told her about the three late nights. The bar soap smell that wasn't his.

And then, because I was already in it, I told her about Columbia. The moot court. The night he'd gotten a call from Lara—some emotional crisis, some thing she needed—and he'd looked at me across the prep table and said *I have to go, you've got this, you're better at this than I am anyway.* And I had stood up there alone in front of the panel and argued both sides of the case and won. And I had lifted that trophy by myself and smiled for the photo and told everyone Sterling had a family emergency.

I had never said that out loud before. Not once in five years.

Emory listened to all of it. She didn't interrupt. She didn't make a face. She just listened the way she always did, like she had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be.

When I finished, the food had gone mostly untouched.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, very quietly: "How many times has he chosen someone else's emergency over something that mattered to you?"

I opened my mouth. I started counting.

The moot court. Broadway. The Tiffany necklace that was supposed to stand in for an apology. The three late nights. The showcase—

I stopped.

"The showcase is next week," I said. "He promised he'd come."

Emory looked at me. She didn't say anything else. She didn't have to.

I picked up my wine and drank.

***

I cooked on Thursday.

It sounds small. It wasn't. I hadn't cooked a real meal in months—not since things had started feeling like something I needed to hold carefully. But I bought the ingredients on my lunch break and came home early and put on music and made the carbonara from scratch, the way he'd taught me, the way we used to make it together on Sunday nights when the city felt far away.

I set the table. I lit a candle. I told myself this was just dinner. I told myself I wasn't trying to prove anything.

He came home at seven, which was early for him lately. He kissed me and said it smelled incredible. He poured two glasses of wine and sat down and we talked—really talked, the way we used to—about his case, about a piece I was working on, about nothing important. For forty minutes I almost forgot what the last three weeks had felt like.

Then his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen. Something shifted in his face, fast and small. He stood up.

"One second," he said. "I'll be right back."

He took it in the hallway. I heard his voice drop into that register—low, focused, the one that meant someone needed him. I sat at the table and looked at the candle and listened to the sound of him being someone else's hero through the wall.

He came back twenty minutes later. The food was cold.

"Lara's husband has been calling her again," he said. He was already reaching for his jacket on the chair. "She's scared, Char. I have to go over there."

I looked at the table. The two plates. The candle still going.

"Okay," I said.

He paused. "You're not going to say anything?"

"What would you like me to say?"

He looked at me for a moment. Then he kissed my forehead and left.

I sat there until the candle burned low. Then I put the food away and washed the dishes and went to bed.

***

The showcase was at a small gallery space in Dumbo—exposed brick, track lighting, maybe sixty people. Nothing major. But I had three pieces on the rack, pieces from the sketchbook I'd been keeping for two years, the one I'd never shown Sterling. It was the first time any of it had been in front of real eyes.

Sterling had circled the date in the kitchen calendar three weeks ago. *Charlotte's show,* in his handwriting, with a small star.

His text came at six forty-seven, eighteen minutes before it started.

*Lara's emergency hearing got moved up. I'm so sorry, babe. I'll make it up to you. You're going to be incredible.*

I read it standing in the bathroom of the gallery space in my good blazer. I put my phone in my bag.

When I walked out, Emory was in the front row. She had a coffee for me and a look on her face that said she already knew, and that she was here anyway, and that it was enough.

I stood in front of my three pieces and answered questions and smiled and meant it, mostly. A woman in a sharp coat asked me twice about the construction on the second jacket. A buyer from a small boutique in Nolita took my card.

Afterward, I folded the program and put it in my bag, next to the phone I hadn't checked.

I didn't call Sterling on the way home. I watched the bridge lights on the water and thought about the drawer—the one inside me, the one I kept filing things into. Columbia. Broadway. The cold carbonara. The star on the kitchen calendar.

It was getting full.

I wondered, for the first time, what would happen when it wouldn't close anymore.