A brief silence in which both women are looking at me, and I am looking at neither of them.
"Good." Blaire's pen moves again. "Where are you taking her?"
The question irritates me in a way I can't fully account for. Not the question itself, the professionalism of it. The way she's already filing it as a strategy piece, something useful, a building block. She doesn'tknowme. She thinks she walked in here and read a stranger from a file and she did, except shedidn't, becauseI amnota stranger and she doesn't knowthat, and thenot-knowing has been sitting in my chest since she walked through that door and hasnotgotten smaller.
Fuck. I need to start smoking.
"Verona," I say. "I was going to take her to Verona."
Blaire and Rosalie look up at the same time with expressions so similar I would find it funny under other circumstances.
"The restaurant," Rosalie says slowly. "In this building."
"Yes."
"The building in which you live," Blaire adds.
"Correct."
"And work in." Blaire again.
"Also correct."
She sets her pen down carefully, the way you set something down when you're carefully choosing your next words. "Mr. Sullivan. You cannot take a woman you're trying to impress to a restaurant where every member of staff knows your name, your order, and your standing reservation. That is not a date. That's a home court advantage wrapped in a breadbasket."
Rosalie converts something into a cough. Unconvincingly.
"It's a good restaurant," I say with a shrug.
"I'm sure it's exceptional. It's also a power move so obvious it will read as either arrogance or insecurity, and neither works for the image we're building." She tilts her head. "What do you know about her? What does she like?"
I think about Jenn. Her elaborate squats. Her practiced smile. The way she saidsome other timelike she was keeping score. The way I walked across the gym floor and saidYou're of childbearing agelike a man who has never once successfully interacted with another human being in a romantic context.
"She likes—" I start. "She works out."
Blaire looks at me.
"In the mornings," I add.
"Does she have interests? Hobbies? Food preferences? Anything that would indicate what kind of experience would feel like an effort rather than a convenience?"
The problem is, I have spoken to Jenn a total of perhaps eleven minutes across eight months of proximity, and this morning's interaction does not reflect well on either of us.
"I'll find out," I say.
"Before tomorrow?"
"I'll make it work."
She holds my gaze for a moment.
"I'll send you a list of appropriate venues by end of day," she says, writing in her little fucking notebook.Write this!I scream inside my head, mentally shooting her the middle finger with both hands.
"Somewhere that requires a reservation you had to work for, where the press might see you but not obviously, and she can talk about afterward without the story beinghe took me downstairs."
"Downstairs," I repeat.
"You live here, Mr. Sullivan. Everything in this building is downstairs. She should feel like you came to get her, not like you pressed an elevator button."
