I noted how his T-shirt pulled against his chest when he moved. How he stood up every time Alisa or I left the table to use the restroom.
“That would be great,” I said.
He picked me up at Alisa’s at 8:00 p.m. She was living in the East Village at the time, in a third-floor walk-up she miraculously had all to herself. The dream of living in New York was one I had long resigned I would never have. Not because I couldn’t see myself making it in New York, or because I didn’t think I could figure out a way to be there on little money, but because it was clearly not the direction my life was moving in. As much as I longed to and would eventually put the 405 between me and my parents, I knew I didn’t want half the country between us. I knew I couldn’t tolerate that distance. I relied on them in ways I did not think a twenty-five-year-old should. But I wasn’t sure how to get out of that, either. It would be another two years before I was assisting at the network, and it felt like all I’d done since college was float from one entry-level position to another.
But I still loved the city. The way things always felt like they were coming together. In Los Angeles things disperse, simmer, yawn. In New York they connect, spark, crash.
“You look amazing,” Stuart said.
I had on black, wide-leg pants, and a lacy white top that hovered just above my naval. Strappy black heels I had borrowed from Alisa and long, dangly feathered earrings.
“Thank you,” I said. “You too.”
He wore a button-down shirt and dark jeans, and he looked as good if not better than he had that morning.
Stuart took me to ABC Kitchen, this big, airy restaurant in the Flatiron District. He ordered for us: flatbread and grilled carrots with cumin and butter radishes and a market salad, french fries, and halibut. One bottle of cabernet.
Not only was Stuart now accomplished—I found out he, predictably, worked for a bank and had just been made the youngest partner. But he also turned out to be as interesting as I always suspected he might become. He had recently completed a skydiving certification. He was on a list to go to the Republic of the Congo and hike with the gorillas. And in his spare time he had founded and sold a tutoring start-up that was now worth about twenty million dollars.
“How’s it going in LA?” he asked me.
In high school Stuart and I had bonded over the fact that we felt we were special, different, better than the run-of-the-mill girls and guys at our school who ate frozen yogurt from the Bigg Chill and carried Louis Vuitton shoppers as if there were only one standard of belonging. But now, Stuart had made good on all of that potential. He had something to show for it. I wasn’t sure what to say for myself.
“Figuring it out,” I said. “After college I thought I’d maybe go to law school, but the LSAT was not my test.”
“Yeah, the lawyer thing,” Stuart said. “Not for me.”
“Me either, apparently.”
In truth, I feared my youthful bravado had stayed a little too long at the fair. It was past midnight and sloppy and directionless. It wasn’t that I no longer had hopes and dreams for myself. At twenty-five there was a lot I wanted to accomplish, but I alsofelt stuck. I wasn’t sure what steps I should take next, or in which direction. It felt like people at thirty were just waking up with fulfilling careers, but I was only five years away, and it didn’t seem likely that was going to happen for me.
“Whatever you do, you’re brilliant at. You always were. You had that magic touch that people just wanted to be around. You were cool. You started a table tennis league and got kids to stay after classes for it.”
“Technically it was Ping-Pong.”
“See?” Stuart said. “Cool. In high school I had the biggest crush on you.”
I felt my body reactively flush. I had known that, of course I had. My parents had pointed it out, my classmates, even our Spanish teacher thought we spent way too much time together. But that wasn’t how I saw him. Stuart wasthe friend, notthe guy.
Years later, sitting across from him, I thought about how totally wrong I was.
“Come on,” I said. “We were buds.”
“Yeah, but I was still a teen boy. You were hot and smart, and you didn’t give a shit.”
“I did,” I said. “I just faked it pretty well.”
Stuart leaned toward me. He lightly threaded my index finger through two of his own. “And now?”
“Oh,” I said. “Now I fake itreallywell.”
Stuart’s apartment hung over the East River. It was comprised almost entirely of windows. There was a gray couch, white matching chairs, and more stainless steel than I remember seeing inAmerican Psycho. But the view—the view was absolutely breathtaking.
He poured us each a glass of wine and then settled himself on the couch. “Come here,” he said.
I did.
He put his arm around me. I leaned my head into his shoulder and then picked it back up again. He smelled like deodorant—masculine and clean.
