“I’m so sorry, Katie.”
“That Cormac McCarthy died? It’s fine. We weren’t close.”
“No,” he said. “For everything.”
Nodding, I rose from my seat. “I’m, uh... I’m really tired. Just read that Talia Hibbert next, okay? Also, the three books of Meredith’s I brought. We can keep going some other time.”
Tyler stood too. His hands, gesturing, but coming up empty. “Should I text you, or...?”
I was trembling from head to toe, but composed myself enough to say, “Didn’t they teach you how to interpret the subtext at Brown?”
The following evening, I went out with Danny, and everything felt normal and right and good again. We were in the West Village,eating ice cream on somebody else’s stoop, and Christopher Street was sparkling. The sun was low and gold, and that last hint of soft blue sky was slipping between the wine bars, bookshops, and Edith Wharton–era brownstones that lined this impossibly perfect slice of the city. This was summer, just how I’d pictured it: Cute boy. Beautiful strangers. Sandals and short little dresses and nights that didn’t end. The air, smooth, hopeful, and only smelling faintly of trash.
I took a lick of my melting cone—passionfruit chocolate chip—then turned to Danny, offering a taste. He was already stealing a second and negotiating for a third when my phone dinged between us one, two, three times.
“One of your other boyfriends?” he said, wiping a rogue smear of melting vanilla off his wrist before it could stain the rolled-up sleeve of his untucked button-down. Danny was twenty-nine and an attorney, and whatever it was we were doing here, it was decidedly unserious. He was not my first Danny, and I sure as shit would not be his last Katie. But it didn’t matter. Because this, right here, was exactly what I’d wanted: to get railed in a sundress, to keep my heart in one single, fully functioning piece.
I glanced at my phone.
Call me.
Need to discuss the seating chart.
Janine and Oscar from group bought a table, and we might have to shuffle everything if they aren’t sitting with the New Hampshire people anymore.
I wrote back,I’mactually outright now. That boy, Danny, I told you about. Can we do it before work tomorrow?
There was no response for a minute. I inhaled, tapping my foot, staring at the screen. Danny, who was peering over my shoulder, ran his fingers down my spine and asked me what was up. I ignored the churning in my stomach and told him it was just my mom—that she was just a little needy, that was all—like it was nothing. Like I wasn’t hanging on every word she was never going to say.
Finally, she replied,Fine.
I winced, my ice cream forgotten. All the good in my evening, gone. Danny turned to me a little more.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just...” I took a deep breath and rose to my feet. Danny followed me, and we began to wander, making our way toward Washington Square. “Well, when I was...”
He looked at me, waiting. I looked at him, wavering. Danny, as far as I could tell, had suffered precisely zero traumas in his lifetime, other than winding up a half inch under six feet tall and having been wait-listed at Harvard Law. He’d settled for Penn, gotten a job as a summer associate at a fancy firm in Hudson Yards, and now made a shit ton of money working seventy-plus hours a week. He had a nice smile and warm brown eyes and four siblings who were not dead. We’d been hanging out for three weeks and fucking for two, and in that moment, I remembered what we were doing here, what I was doing here, and I pushed it all aside.
That boy did not want to hear about my mommy issues any more than I wanted to admit I had them.
And so I tossed my cone in the trash, pinned him against the cool marble of the arch, and kissed him. I kissed him until the bittertaste of the cold, hard truth was gone. And then, when I finally felt like my old self again, we went back to his place, and I buried the truth a little more.
The rest of the week was more of the same. Tyler read a dozen books, memorized the trope list, and spent nine hours analyzing one-star reviews on Goodreads, which Selma had taught me to do fall semester of my freshman year, when I first became her intern and was learning what it meant to “write to market.” By Friday, before we went our separate ways for the weekend, Tyler understood the importance of a three-act structure, knew how to use a beat sheet, and could explain—with nuance—the difference between a happily ever after and a happy for now.
On Sunday morning, I booked Lola and myself a couple of bikes at my spin studio, where I attempted to maintain Cassandra’s reggaeton-inspired choreography while Lola shook her head. As a courtesy, during the second half of class, I pretended not to notice her humming along, dripping in sweat, enjoying it.
After we’d showered and changed, we celebrated Lola’s only day off from Georgina’s by going directly to the café, helping ourselves to free coffee and pastries, and then meeting up with our friends at the pool at John Jay Park, where we lay out on flimsy white chaise longues, plastic slats pinching our baking skin. Along FDR Drive, horns honked and tires screeched, but whatever. Summer was a state of mind.
Lola was on her stomach, arms dangling by her sides, flipping throughAnna Karenina. “That boy still has a thing for you, by the way.”
“Raj?” I said. “The locker room attendant I boned last year?”
Lola looked up from her book. “No, babe. Tyler.”
I buried my head in my Sophie Kinsella. “He’s just transferring his trauma onto me. I read about it.”
“Where? On TikTok?”
