“Where did you go just now?” Caleb asked.
“I was just remembering how I used to be afraid of the ocean at night.”
He laughed. “No, you weren’t,” he said. “That was me.”
Not how I remembered it, but I decided to let it slide. It was very strange to meet someone you already know. “How are your parents?”
“Dad’s great. Still flying.” A divot appeared between his brows. “Mom is... the same. Trying to keep up with every Jones on the planet. How are Sally and Harold?”
I once heard my mom call his momthe definition of a piece of work. The woman cared only about social status in a way that better befitted Wells’s family. “Same, too. Dad’s still fishing.”
“I miss them.” Caleb narrowed his eyes. “My tooth gap is gone. Is that what you’re staring at?”
I blushed. “I wasn’t—I didn’t know you wanted it fixed.”
“I didn’t,” Caleb said. “But my foolish college self sat on the trunk of my buddy’s parked car one night. Imagine my shock when my face met the pavement.”
“No!” I shuddered. “Imagining teeth exiting mouths makes my insides freak out.”
“You and me both.”
My drink was pale yellow-pink, tall, in an icy glass with flecks of green mint. Sweet, acidic. Perfect. The waiter gave us the kind of bow a barbershop quartet might bestow upon its audience. “What brought you to New York?” I asked, when what I really wanted to say to this objectively handsome figure from my past: Who the hell sponsored your glow-up?
“My friend was moving out of his apartment, but didn’t want to break the lease, because—”
“Wait. Let me guess. Rent control?”
“The gift of New York,” Caleb confirmed. He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them, an act that nearly sprang tears into my eyes. It was his old thinking-face, the one he’d adopt at my kitchen table when we were figuring out what to do, in the library while studying, or at the downtown café if he was going to spout off some nerdy thing or another. It was something I hadn’t consciously noticed back then, but now all I could see was the past catching up to me, though this time his jawline sported an impressive amount of scruff.
I mentally flipped through what to say, until I landed on something safe. “Tell me about this magical bite of taco you had in LA?”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Green chiles. Paper-wrapped tortillas. I could move back just for those, but talking about food someone else isn’t tasting might be boring.”
“Move back?”
Caleb nodded. “Went to grad school out there.”
“What’d you study?”
He reddened. “I got my PhD in Archival Studies.”
“You’re kidding.” I arched a brow. “And what does one do with that?”
“I work at the Museum of Natural History.”
“You do? I love that place.” Natalie and I used to go all the time, especially after the last Ben Stiller movie in the trilogy came out. Then we’d get tea and croissants at Malvo’s, which used a special Greek butter that made us want to lie down in bliss. My stomach rumbled. “What do you do there?”
“I’m a curator.”
“Youare?”
He nodded, his eyes crinkling in the corners.
“What do you specialize in?”
“Mostly ocean-related exhibits. If we do a series on import-exports and ports, I’ll run an exhibition on the kinds of goods that were traded. When we did a history of widows’ walks, I set up old sea captain artwork and got a mock walk built for people to try themselves. We did a collab with the science museum on the breakdown of chemicals in ocean water a couple years ago that was pretty popular.”
“I remember it!” I sat back against the booth. “I can’t believe that was you. It sounds like it was made for you, even though my mental picture of a curator is admittedly one of stereotypical grandparent-style professors.”
