The rest of the afternoon passed in tedium, with Laurie dropping off files and marked-up memos on my desk. Her eye kept catching on the roses, but she seemed strangely determined not to comment. Near the end of the day, my phone rang again.
“Jules,” Evan said, his voice heavy. “I’m so sorry. I’m on my way to the airport right now. Michael just told me. Spire’s sending a team to this conference in Las Vegas, and he wants me along, too. I’m there all weekend. I feel terrible.”
“A conference? Why?”
“I’m not sure. It’s global macro, stuff I don’t even work on. Michael said he’d fill me in later.” A loud honk sounded. I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “Shit,” he said. “This traffic is insane. I’m sorry, Julia. I really am. I’m on the red-eye back on Sunday, so I’ll see you Monday, okay?”
“Whatever. It’s fine,” I said. Evan, once again relegating me to second place, proving how little I mattered to him—a fact that was equal parts upsetting and liberating. I felt a weird mixture of anger and relief. It was fine. In fact, maybe it was better than fine. I’d be spared from dinner at some overpriced midtown restaurant, with mediocre food and nothing to talk about. The weekend was all mine. I put a smile back into my voice. “See you in a few days.”
*
I began running longer, farther that fall. I could go for six miles, eight, even nine or ten without tiring. Far north along the river and back down to the Queensboro, or in long loops around Central Park. I thought maybe I’d train for a marathon. Or at least a half marathon. The miles flew by while my mind was lost in daydreams, breath steaming in the cold morning air, the rhythmic crunch of gravel under my shoes. I felt my body growing lighter, stronger. For six months my imagination had been starved of oxygen, but I was breathing at last, enormous gulps of air.
For the first week, after that kiss in the cab, Adam and I had studiedly sober interactions: brightly lit coffee shops, a walk at lunch, a gallery opening in the evening. Testing the water. That deliberateness seemed so grown-up, part of the reason I was sure it was the right thing to do. We didn’t talk about what had happened in the cab, but it saturated our relationship with a new intensity. Adam would e-mail me at work to tell me a funny thing he’d overheard or share a link to a story he thought was interesting. He’d ask how a meeting went, how my day was going. Things he hadn’t done before. It thrilled me, the knowledge that Adam—Adam McCard, the most dazzling man I’d ever met—was thinking about me all the time.
We made plans to have dinner on a Saturday night in early November—a week after the kiss—then stop by his friend’s party afterward. Evan would be working late, as usual. We met at the restaurant, a small place in the West Village. He was waiting for me at the bar, and I could taste the liquor on his breath. I knew this was it, the night when things would go one way or another, once and for all. I was nervous. The way I imagined an actor might feel before the curtain rises for the first time.
We had a drink before dinner, then shared a bottle of wine. Adam greeted the ma?tre d’ by name. The sommelier, too. He was a regular. It skipped across my mind that he had probably brought other women here before, other girlfriends, but I didn’t care. It was my turn. There was candlelight, thick linen napkins, leather armchairs. The menu, tiny type on creamy paper. Jewel-like coins of tuna tartare, halibut crusted in a bright green sleeve, a tangle of golden pasta. The wine was a rich, deep Burgundy—at least that’s what Adam told me—and I was tipsy by the time we stood up to leave, my nervousness forgotten. Adam helped me on with my coat. He was so handsome up close. The dark hair, the cheekbones. He leaned forward to kiss the tip of my nose.
“Come on,” he said. “Nick’s place is right around the corner.”
The doorman nodded us inside a stately brick building on Christopher Street. Adam held my hand through the crowded apartment to the bedroom, where we added our coats and scarves to the pile heaped on the bed. It was a big room, an adult-size bedroom, with a proper four-poster, a woven rug, art on the walls, floor lamps. It looked like a room Nick must share with a girlfriend, one with good taste and plenty of money.
These were all Adam’s friends. He was a few years older than me, and he ran with a crowd a few years older than him, so these people were miles beyond anyone I knew: journalists and editors and lawyers and producers, people who no longer had assistant in their titles. Adam steered me through the party, introducing me to everyone he knew. At one point, he bumped into a woman smoking a cigarette next to an open window. He turned to apologize, and I watched both of them light up with recognition. “Sara,” he said, kissing her on the cheek, then tugging me forward. “Hey. You two should meet.”
She was Japanese, her hair like a long curtain framing her face, her clothing artfully draped, her build slender and delicate. Her silhouette was like an old Al Hirschfeld sketch. “Sara, this is Julia Edwards. She was at Yale a few years behind us. Jules, Sara runs a gallery in Tribeca.”