“When I was ready to go—the party wasso boring,by the way; Fashion Week is so much hype”—Nicola doesn’t try to hide her eye roll—“I went to find David. He was standing where he’d been standing all night, right near the oysters, talking to the same person I’d seen him talking to every time I glanced over. And that person was Juliana.”
“So you met her too. You both know her.”
Jack tents his fingers. “I met her briefly.”
“And what’d you think?”
“What I thought was—well, this is going to sound really weird, but it’s the only way I can describe it. What I thought was, This is a big party, but I feel like I just walked in on two people alone in a room.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I got out of there. And then, when all the model-y and fashion people went off to do whatever they do, Juliana and David went on a walk.” Jack pauses again, as if allowing the import of this to sink in.
“Okay,” says Nicola. “A walk. What’s the rest of the story?”
“That’s it. The walkisthe story.”
David and Juliana talked long into the night, the way you do, Jack explained, when one conversation with one person can make you remember that there’s a whole world of people out there you haven’t yet met, a buffet of personalities and backstories yet to sample.
“Are you saying David cheated on Taylor?” David had always been, to the dismay of many (just ask the female half of his high school class), hopelessly monogamous.
Jack shakes his head. “I don’t think he technically cheated on Taylor.” Nicola figures she must look dubious because he says, “I’m not even talking about sex, see.” Nicola tries really hard to look away when he sayssexbecause she’s still feeling his hand tracing her elbow, his finger on her lips. “I’m talking abouttalking,you know? The way you do when you have all the time in the world.” For a moment he looks pensive, almost sad, so Nicola doesn’t point out that he still very much presents as someone who has all the time in the world. “They had this connection, according to David, this really deep, instant connection.”
“From talking one night?”
“From talkingall night,” Jack said. “As in, they walked around the city until dawn. They saw the sunrise from the High Line. They were like Ethan Hawke and that French girl in that movie, you know?”
Nicola does know that movie. She and her roommates watched it one drunken night in college. “Before Sunrise.”
“Exactly,” he says.
Nicola understands that you can have a night like this in New York in a way you cannot have in most parts of Minnesota, because New York is lousy with all-night diners and all-night bars and lights that don’t go out. “The city that never sleeps,” she says.
“Never sleeps,” concurs Jack. “Never ever.” His palm is on the back of her neck for an instant, then not.
What transpired between Juliana and David on that one night in New York City? Nobody knows. The machinations of the human heart are mysterious, enigmatic, utterly personal.
“What I gather,” he says, “is that David understood parts of Juliana that nobody had bothered to understand before. And vice versa, with David. Especially the race cars, this crucial part of David’s DNA that Taylor never cared about.”
“And Juliana did? From one night?”
“It only takes one night,” says Jack. “In the right circumstances.” He fixes her with a gaze. She tries to look away but can’t. “Or the wrong circumstances,” she says.
A tip of Jack’s head concedes this point. “Also that.” He goes on: “Juliana could see it coiled inside of him, all that desire. Taylor wasdating a Yale graduate, acceptable husband material, not an aspiring race car driver. Definitely not a mechanic. She had other things in mind for David.”
“Eye Candy.”
“Mr. Mom.”
Jack snorts.
“But wait, then what?” Nicola asks. “What happened after that one night?”
“Well,Iwas a good boy, asleep by midnight. But the next day, when I saw David? I swear I’ve never seen him that way. It was like he was high, but he wasn’t high. David doesn’t get high.”
“He drinks,” Nicola says loyally.
“Hedefinitelydrinks. But this was not Drunk David. I’ve seen a lot of Drunk David. He was—I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, I guess the easiest way to describe it was he was acting like someone in love.”
