“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” he says. “Obviously. And I still miss her every day.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. I’m not sure what’s appropriate to say, or how to say what is. And I feel something else, too. Some withdrawal. I want to remove myself from what he has just shared. It’s only our second date. Maybe this is too soon, too much. It feels private.
The thing no one ever wants to say about dating is this: It’s hard to be real, sure. It’s harder to let someone else be.
And then it’s as if he can tell because I see him pivot, reorient himself. And for a brief moment I hate my inability to handle this. That I have failed to meet the moment, and now it is gone.
“You know what they say about a man with a dead wife?”
I brush myself off. “Great in bed?”
He laughs. It’s genuine, full-bellied.
“Great for perspective.” Jake takes my hand across the table. His fingers are warm even though the night is cool. I want to grab his hand and hold on. “I’m sorry if that’s heavy.”
“Life is heavy.”
“Does it scare you?”
I consider the question.No, yes.“Should it?”
“I guess it depends,” he says. “One thing I’m not so good at anymore is casual.”
I think about the piece of paper. All that blank space. I think about Martin in Paris and Noah in San Francisco and Hugo in Los Angeles. I think about all the canceled plans and missed texts and miscommunications. I think about every time someone saidI just didn’t think it was such a big deal.
“So, serious,” I say.
Jake shrugs. “I don’t think the opposite of casual is serious, actually.”
“What is it, then?”
Jake looks at me. His hazel eyes appear almost gold underneath the light of the heat lamp—tiny specs of sunlight. “Depth,” he says. “The opposite of casual is deep.”
Chapter Eleven
Stuart
Stuart and I met in high school. He was Mr. Advanced Placement—the kind of kid the teachers are scared of because when he challenged them, he was usually right. He had the highest IQ in our class (we took IQ tests, I guess, which seems kind of problematic, looking back). He also took the best notes; they were legendary. Color-coded, broken down by exam and cross-referenced with textbook page numbers. Rumor had it they were still in circulation. Naturally, Stuart was responsible for organizing the study rosters, if you were lucky enough to be in his classes.
I wasn’t. I was more focused on getting kissed than getting into college. I’d been curious for a decade, and it still hadn’t happened. Between the fifth grade and the eleventh I did not receive a single piece of paper. Stuart was also a senior, and we’d becomefast friends. We were both on the debate team, and we were both frankly excellent at it.
My parents loved Stuart. He wasn’t Jewish, but he was everything else. Smart, sophisticated, and headed to an Ivy League school. It wasn’t romantic; we just had the same interests—mostly that we thought ourselves better than everyone else. We loved Russian novels, dinner parties, and pretending we knew anything about wine. It wasn’t until seven years later, when I ran into him in New York City, that he became a prospect.
I was there visiting my old college roommate, Alisa, and we bumped into Stuart in line outside at Sadelle’s one Saturday morning in May. Stuart looked great. No, better than that. He lookedfamous.
While in high school, he was pale, a bit doughy, with the kind of burgeoning intellectualism that borders on pedantic. Now, he looked like a banker who woke up at 4:00 a.m. to get in a workout before the market opened and had the number of the city’s best florist on speed dial.
“Daphne, hi.” He gave me a warm hug and immediately introduced me to his dining companion, a significantly older gentleman named Ted. “What are you doing here?”
I explained that I was in town to visit Alisa—she quickly introduced herself—for the weekend, and that I still lived in LA.
“I don’t miss it at all,” he said. “Can you believe it?”
I had temporarily moved back in with my parents. “I can, yes.”
We ended up ordering and eating together, and when we were finished, Stuart asked if I had any interest in dinner that night.
“Only if you have the time,” he said. “It would be great to catch up some more.”
