“I’m sure there is. Right, Clementine?”
Then they looked at me expectantly.
“I . . . haven’t read it, actually,” I admitted, and Fiona tsked in that way of hers that will end up making their future child incredibly contrite. I ducked my head in embarrassment.
“Well, you should!” Drew replied. “He’s been all around the world, just like you. The way he relates food to friendship and memories—I want him.” She turned her hungry gaze toward the kitchen. “I want him so badly.” And whenever she had that kind of look in her eyes, there was no stopping her.
I took another sip of too-dry wine and picked up the dessert menu to scan it. While we usually took lunches together—it was a perk of having best friends who all worked in the same building as you—we mostly stayed around Midtown, and the restaurants in Midtown were . . .
Well.
I’d eaten more sandwiches and lobster mac and cheeses from food trucks than I cared to admit. Midtown in the summer was tourist central, so trying to find a lunch spot anywhere that wasn’t a food truck or the greens at Bryant Park was nearly impossible without a reservation.
“Well, when you get him, I have a question about this dessert menu,” I said, pointing to the first item there. “What the hell is a deconstructed lemon pie?”
“Ooh, that one is the chef’s specialty,” Drew informed us as Fiona snatched the menu from me to read about it. “I definitely want to try it.”
“If it’s just a slice of lemon sprinkled with some granular sugar on a graham cracker,” Fiona said, “I’m going to laugh.”
I checked my phone for the time. “Whatever it is, we should probably order it and head back. I told Rhonda I’d be back by one.”
“It’s Friday!” Fiona argued, waving the dessert menu at me. “No one works on Fridays in the summer. Especially not in publishing.”
“Well, I do,” I replied. Rhonda Adder was my boss, the director of marketing and publicity, and copublisher. She was one of the most successful women in the business. If there was a bestseller to be had in a book, she knew exactly how to squeeze it out, and that was a talent in and of itself. Speaking of talent, just so Fiona and Drew knew the situation, I added, “I have three authors on tour right now—and something is bound to go wrong.”
Drew nodded in agreement. “Murphy’s Law of Publishing.”
“Murphy’s Law,” I echoed. “And Juliette cried herself sick this morning because of her boyfriend, so I’m trying to lighten her load today.”
“Fuck Romeo-Rob,” Drew intoned.
“Fuck Romeo-Rob,” I agreed.
“Speaking of dating.” Fiona sat up a little straighter, and put her elbows on the table. Oh, I knew that look, and I inwardly suppressed a groan. She leaned in to look at me, arching her eyebrows. “How’re you and Nate doing?”
Suddenly, the wineglass looked very interesting, but the longer she stared at me waiting for an answer, the less resolve I had, until I finally sighed and said, “We broke up last week.”
Fiona gasped like she’d been personally insulted. “Last week? Before or after you moved?”
“While I was moving. The night you all went to the play.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Drew added, more curious than her distraught wife.
“You didn’t tell us!” Fiona echoed in a cry. “That’s important!”
“It really wasn’t that big of a deal.” I shrugged. “It was over text messages. I think he’s already dating somebody he met on Hinge.” My friends looked at me with utter pity, but I waved it off. “Really, it’s fine. We weren’t that compatible anyway.”
Which was true, but I didn’t include the fight we had before the texts. Fight was a strong word for it, though. It felt more like a shrug and a white flag tossed onto an already-abandoned battlefield.
“Again? You have to work late again?” he’d asked. “You know this is my big night. I want you here with me.”
To be fair, I had forgotten that it was the opening night of a gallery with his work. He was an artist—a metalworker, actually—and this was a big thing for him. “I’m sorry, Nate. This is important.”
And it was, I was sure of it, even though I couldn’t remember what the emergency had been to make me stay late.
He was quiet for a long moment, and then he asked, “Is this how it’s going to be? I don’t want to be second to your job, Clementine.”
“You’re not!”
He was. He absolutely was. I kept him at arm’s length because at least there he wouldn’t be able to see how broken I was. I could keep lying. I could keep pretending I was fine—because I was fine. I had to be. I didn’t like people worrying about me when they had so many other things to worry about. That was my allure, right? That you didn’t need to worry about Clementine West. She always figured it out.
Nate let out that heavy, body-heaving sigh. “Clementine, I think you need to be honest.” And that was it—the nail in the proverbial coffin. “You’re so closed off, you use work as a shield. I don’t think I even really know you. You won’t open up. You won’t be vulnerable. Whatever happened to that girl in those photos? With watercolor under her fingernails?”
She was gone, but that much he already knew. He met me after she was already gone. I think that might have been why he didn’t just dump me after I canceled plans on him the first time, because he kept trying to find that girl with watercolors under her fingernails that he saw once in a photo in my old apartment. The girl from before.
“Do you even love me?” he went on. “I can’t remember you saying it once.”
“We’ve only dated for three months. It’s a little early, don’t you think?”
“When you know, you know.”
I pursed my lips. “Then I guess I don’t know.”
And that was it.
I was at the end of this relationship. Before I said anything I’d regret, I hung up the phone, then texted him that it was over. I’d mail his toothbrush back to him. God knows I wasn’t going to take a trip to Williamsburg if I didn’t have to.
“Besides,” I added, grabbing the too-expensive bottle of wine to top off my glass, “I don’t really think I want to be in a relationship right now. I want to concentrate on my career—I don’t have time to mess with guys I might end up dumping in a text message three months later. The sex wasn’t even that good.” I took a large gulp of wine to wash down that horrid truth.