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“No, the job I moved here for doesn’t start until the end of August. I’m not even supposed to be in New York right now.”

“Really?” A line of foam from the Guinness clung to his mustache. He licked it away. “Where were you meant to be?”

“Touring Europe with my boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend?” David leaned back in his chair. “Where is this boyfriend of yours, then?”

“In Amsterdam, without me.” I swallowed some more Writers’ Tears. “We broke up.”

“Who left whom, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“He left me.” I looked at my watch. There was one minute remaining before this terrible day was over. “Fifteen hours ago, in Chicago, at the airport.”

“He’s a feckin’ eejit to leave a beauty like you. What’s his name?”

“Colton,” I said, still processing the fact that this mesmerizing man had called me a beauty.

David lifted his glass. “Sod off, Colton, you bastard.”

I clinked my glass to his for the second time. “Sod off, Colton.”

“You bastard,” David prompted.

“You feckin’ bastard,” I said. My face felt weird until I realized there was a smile on it.

The singer was at the microphone, calling the band back to the stage. David stood but stopped before walking away. “What would you say to sticking around, Audrey?”

“Might as well,” I replied, my neck bent back from looking up at him. “I can’t sleep while you’re playing.”

“Lucky me,” he said, pinning me to my chair with his sapphire eyes.

Onstage, the musicians huddled like football players discussing a play before breaking apart to retrieve their instruments. The recorded music faded as the singer stepped up to the microphone. “This next one’s our take on an old Gaelic lullaby. It goes out to all the New Yorkers who cannot sleep.”

David gave me a wink before shouldering his violin. I sat back and sipped my whiskey, suddenly wide awake.

Their set ended after a rousing finale at one o’clock in the morning. David packed up his violin and carried it over to my table. While the musicians mingled and the bar gradually emptied out, I told David my sad tale about the short-story writer from Pennsylvania who’d just dumped me. I’d met Colton on the campus in California where I was starting my fellowship, still brokenhearted from burying my father. When Colton extended his arm to take my hand, it was like a firefighter reaching down a well to rescue the lost soul who’d fallen in. I grabbed hold as if my life depended on it.

“Did you love him?” David asked, cutting to the chase.

“I thought so.” Though Colton Jones affected the hardscrabble vibe of the rust belt, in truth his Pittsburgh lineage traced back to the robber barons who owned the steel mills, not the men who worked in them. While I was writing Dad’s Apprentice, he crafted short stories featuring male malcontents intended, he claimed, to skewer the misogynistic worldview his characters espoused. My relationship with Colton was probably a terrible idea from the jump, but after my father’s death, my body needed to feel something—anything—to know it was still alive. Colton called the heat we generated between us love. My bruised heart chose to believe him.

The university usually staggered their fellowships, but I’d deferred mine for a year after Dad’s diagnosis, which meant Colton and I shared the same office for two years straight. As our time together neared an end, we each landed positions: mine a temporary lectureship at the college north of Manhattan, Colton’s a tenure-track slot at a liberal arts school in Ohio. He dodged the question of how our relationship might endure the distance by proposing we spend the summer traveling across Europe together. When Colton asked for my passport so he could buy us both first-class Eurail passes, he was shocked to learn I didn’t have one. Embarrassed at having never been abroad, I paid extra for expedited processing in order to get it on time. But Colton kept adding destinations to our itinerary until, pricey passport in hand, I protested the trip was too expensive for me. He offered to cover the extra costs, but I refused to be beholden. The entire red-eye from Los Angeles to Chicago was one long whispered argument. I accused him of being privileged and insensitive. He said I was bourgeois and self-sabotaging. By the time we straightened our seat backs for the descent into O’Hare, the relationship was doomed. He broke up with me in the gate area of his connecting flight to Amsterdam in a scene I’d recognize, a year later, in a short story he’d publish in The New Yorker.

David reached across the table to take my hand. “Like I said, Audrey, he’s a feckin’ eejit.”

I’d had housing in Manhattan lined up for September but nowhere to live until then. With my laptop connected to the airport’s wi-fi and my vision blurred from crying, I changed my international ticket to a same-day flight to JFK, then found a sublet on Craigslist that seemed decent for the price. When I called the guy who’d listed it, he offered a discount too deep to pass up if I paid for the whole summer up front.

“The apartment’s disgusting,” I told David, finishing my second pour of Writers’ Tears. He pointed to my glass, one eyebrow raised. I shook my head. “I spent an hour scouring the tub so I could take a bath before bed.”

“And then we started up with our infernal racket.” A bandmate placed a hand on David’s shoulder. He nodded and stood. “We’re going out for a bite. Won’t you join us, Audrey?”

“I better not.” I stood, too, legs wobbly from whiskey and lack of sleep. His strong arm caught me around the waist. “Can I tell you something, David O’Shea?”

“Anything, love.”

“When I walked in here, I was having one of the worst days of my life, but somehow you made it one of the best.”

David smiled. “You made my day, too, Audrey Beacon.”