I nod. I sigh. “He started working that angle on our second date.”

  “And the religion thing?” Rufus says, untwining the wire around the prosecco cork. “You would really have deprived us of your legendary Passover seders?”

  “You just like to make fun of my gefilte fish,” I say.

  “That is not fish. It’s just not. Also? Ryan called me Randall every time I saw him,” Rufus says. “For three years.”

  “He did not!” I gasp. “That is deeply un-presidential.”

  “Yeah, I’m not voting for him,” Rufus says, and pops the cork on the bottle. “Opa!”

  “So, what are we drinking to?” I ask as he fills my flute.

  “To you not moving to D.C.,” Rufus says.

  “To you never being fucking FLOTUS!” Meg says.

  “I will drink to that,” I say and raise my glass. “No offense, Michelle.”

  “No offense, Michelle,” they echo and drink, too.

  We sip our Kate Mosses and watch the city waking up around us, the hot dog vendor setting up on the street corner, the stroller parades of the Upper West Side, the bike messengers banging on windows of careless Uber drivers. We’re quiet for a while, and it’s nice. I feel scaffolded by my friends.

  Then the sun peeks out from behind a cloud, making the 1.5-carat diamond glint.

  “What am I going to do about this ring?” I say, wanting to cry again.

  “Does he want it back?” Rufus asks.

  “Beats me, he won’t answer my calls or texts.”

  “Ryan is so the kind of guy who will not take back the ring,” Meg says. “He’ll see it as some magnanimous gesture. Very gauche for a politician to take back a ring.”

  I nod. “You’re right. It’s annoying.”

  “Pawn it?” Rufus says. “Like, classy-pawn. I know a guy.”

  “Of course you do,” Meg says.

  I shake my head. “That feels wrong. But so does letting it fester in my jewelry box at home.”

  “I hate to see platinum fester,” Meg says.

  “You know what I mean. It feels like this . . . sparkling emblem of my three-year-long self-delusion, of my embarrassing inability to navigate the best course for my life.”

  Rufus giggles. “You get so verbose when you are tipsy.” He tops off my prosecco glass. “Quick, what’s a four-syllable word for horny?”

  We all sit silently with that for a moment.

  “I’m stumped,” I say.

  “Drink more,” Rufus urges.

  “Lanie,” Meg says, “you’re a good navigator. I mean, look at you. You have this baller job, editing one of the most famous writers in the world.”

  “Who also happens to be your literary idol,” Rufus adds, while I nod and muster my cheeriest fake smile.

  “You have us, two of the dopest friends in all of New York,” Meg continues, “and you have this little thing called resilience. Don’t laugh, Rufus. I’m being sincere. I’ve seen it in you ever since you showed up at Peony at age baby-twenty-two. It means you’re not going to feel this way for long. It means you’ll bounce back stronger than ever. It means that, ultimately, you’ll get what you want. I can look at you and know you already know that. Tell me you know it?”

  I shrug. “I guess. Maybe.”

  “Someday soon, this ring is just going to be a ring, a piece of jewelry from a different era of your life. No more, no less.”

  It’s hard to imagine a time when seeing this ring won’t make me want to hibernate in a cave of regret, but I might as well make it a goal.

  As two servers appear to set down our bounty of brunch, I close the clamshell and put the ring into my purse, making room for better things, like thick-sliced, perfectly golden French toast topped with fried chicken.

  “Have you told BD?” Rufus asks, tucking into the French dip.

  Rufus and BD are g-chat friends; they first clicked years ago over their shared obsession with Apple events. It’s unfathomable to me how many rounds they can go debating whether the new generation of iPhone is worth the price increase.

  “Not yet,” I say. “I want to get my head on straight about it first.”

  “My nainai always loved it when I broke up with someone,” Meg says, a pickle in one hand, prosecco in the other. This is her natural state. “She called it ‘clearing the chaff.’ ”

  “Okay, your nainai sounds terrifying,” Rufus says, “and BD is not going to say that to Lanie.” He looks at me. “But she is probably going to want you to get back into the saddle soon.”

  I drown the thought of dating in more prosecco. “I don’t see how I can do that. Now that my Ninety-Nine Things list failed me, I have no idea where to start with someone new.”

  Meg snorts. Rufus puts a hand over his mouth.

  “What? What are you laughing at?” I say.

  “It’s called chemistry,” Rufus says. “You just get on board with it. It’s really not that hard.”

  “Says the man who has been patiently waiting for Brent from Pilates World to break up with his partner for . . . how many years now?” I ask.

  “Because we have chemistry!” Rufus says.

  Meg puts her hand over mine. “Listen, Lanie, I’m as type A as the next person at this table, but I think the message is to stop being type A about love. It’ll come, and when it does, you’ll know.”

  “Is that what happened with you and Tommy?” I ask. “You really just knew?”

  “Sure! And look at us now! We’re so close, we’re like brother and sister.” She cackles. “I’m ordering more Kate Mosses and nobody better stop me.”

  Rufus and I nod, because no complaints here.

  Minutes later, just as I’m about to shoot that inadvisable second shot of tequila, something in my periphery makes me stop. I tilt my head and feel my stomach rising to my throat, because I’m almost certain Noah Ross is walking south on Broadway. Right toward Maison Pickle.

  He’s alone, in dark sunglasses, jeans, and a pea coat. His hair is damp and he looks casual without looking sloppy. He’s holding some sort of box in one hand and is certainly coming this way. A bolt of something shoots through me. Is it that lightning thing again? No, this is panic. I have approximately ninety seconds to figure out how to disappear.

  A mental inventory takes place: my ratty college sweatshirt, bad hair, swollen eyes. Is it possible I look so terrible that he won’t recognize me? To be safe, I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt and grab Rufus’s sunglasses from his pile, making myself incognito.

  My friends’ heads snap toward me, quizzical looks on their tipsy faces.

  “Where’d you get these? They’re amazing,” I say, overdoing my enthusiasm.

  “Paul Smith,” Rufus says slowly. “Remember, you were there?”

  “Yes!” I lie, distracted by the advancing figure of Noah Ross. He’s walking much too quickly for a Sunday morning. “That was such a fun day. So fun.”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” Rufus says suspiciously. He tries to follow my gaze from behind his shades. “Who are you hiding from?”

  “No one!” I slink down in the patio chair until my nose is level with my empty prosecco glass. “I’m just . . . tired. I was up all night. You know, crying.” This is true, and yet I do a great job of making it sound like such a lie that now Meg is onto me, too. She spins around in her chair. She turns to look—I swear—right into Noah Ross’s eyes.

  But just when I’m sure I’m busted, Noah swivels to the right. He opens a door and disappears inside a storefront two doors down. I let out a gigantic sigh.

  Rufus snaps his fingers at me. “Begin to make sense,” he says. “Now.”

  I take off Rufus’s shades and lower my hood.

  “I thought I saw someone I didn’t want to see,” I say. “No big deal.”

  “Who?” Meg says, still peering around.

  “Uh, her.” I point randomly at the nearest woman in view. “I thought she was my old neighbor who got evicted for selling CBD out of her apartment last year.”

  “That seventy-year-old woman?” Rufus points at an elderly lady crossing the street with a wheeled grocery cart.

  “She kept harassing me to put in a good word for her about the security deposit, and . . . you know what? It’s boring, and it wasn’t even her—”

  “You’re being sketchy,” Meg says.

  “Hey, I wasn’t the one running a drug ring out of my apartment. Oh shit!” I gasp, because the door Noah disappeared into has now swung open.

  And he’s walking out.

  And coming this way.

  And I have wasted the past two minutes lying to my friends, instead of making a plan for his inevitable return to the street.

  I grab my phone and jump up from the table. “Rufus, you were right. I really should call BD. Be right back! Don’t anyone take my tequila!”

  “What is up with her?” I hear Meg say as I dash around the corner of the block. I pull my hood up again and sit on someone’s stoop with my phone to my ear, pretending to be on a call. Furtively I watch as Noah comes to stand on the corner of Eighty-Fourth and Broadway. It’s definitely him. Same pea coat. Same pomposity.

  Well, he’s ruined the rest of my life. He might as well ruin Emergency Brunch.

  He’s still holding that box, which I can now see is some sort of animal kennel. He opens the front of the crate and carefully pulls out . . . a fat black-and-white-spotted rabbit.

  He holds the creature up close to his face, both of them facing a redbrick apartment building on the south side of the street. He points at a window, as if he’s explaining something important about Upper West Side real estate to the bunny. I watch the rabbit nuzzle Noah’s cheek. I am paralyzed with a feeling of incredulity.

  Then Noah carefully puts the bunny back inside the crate, closes it up, and turns back the way he came, heading north on Broadway.

  Watching him go, I exhale about a month’s worth of oxygen. I slump against the stoop and shake my head. What is he doing away from his pristine Fifth Avenue orbit? Why is he spending his Sunday with a rabbit on the Upper West Side? More important, why isn’t he writing, or at least attempting to?

  And why did the sight of him alarm me so much that I had to literally run away?

  Okay, that one is obvious: Because I can’t let Meg and Rufus know about Noah. Because of my NDA. And also, if I’m honest, I would still like at least the façade of a professional relationship. I don’t know if Noah Ross could look at twelve-hours-post-breakup Lanie and trust me as his editor.

  I wish I didn’t feel the need to prove myself to him.

  Now, I’m working myself up again over Noah Ross, and I don’t want to. I want to go back to brunch and get drunk with my friends. I round the corner, return to my seat.

  “Sorry about that!” I chirp and make my tequila disappear.

  “So, what wisdom did BD impart?” Rufus asks, his tone leading.

  “Oh, she . . . wasn’t home. Got her voicemail.”

  “It was that guy with the bunny,” Meg announces suddenly.

  “What? No. What?” I laugh a very weird laugh.

  “I recognized him,” Meg says. “Took me a minute, but he’s that guy from the launch. Man of the Year. You were talking to him at the end of the night.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say, “I remember that guy. He was here?” I look around me. “I didn’t see him—”

  “Lanie, you’re so bad at lying!” Rufus says. “Dig yourself out! Not deeper into the hole!”

  “You sparked with that guy,” Meg says, eyes narrowed, finger pointing at me.

  “What is this, an Anna Kendrick movie? I did not spark with anyone.”

  The thought makes my fists clench, because Noah and I have done exactly the opposite of spark. But then, I see the commitment in Meg’s eyes. I realize that it’s going to be much easier to lean into her version of events than it would be to leave open any other possibility why seeing Noah Ross has got me so freaked out.

  “A little,” I say, holding my proverbial nose.

  “Ohhhh,” Rufus says, pursing his lips and giving me a knowing nod. “And you think you look like hell today, so you don’t want this mystery Man of the Year to see you?”

  “Yeah?” I try to go with all of this. At least, the last bit is partly true.

  “You know, you actually look really good when you’ve been crying,” Rufus says.

  “Really?” I bump his shoulder. “You’ve failed to mention that on several dozen previous occasions.”

  “Yeah, but I was always giving you the silent compliment,” he says. “It’s your eyes. They get super blue.”

  “Aw, thanks, Ruf.” His words remind me of my mother. Her eyes used to do the same thing.

  “So . . . go get his number,” Rufus singsongs, ushering me out of the chair.

  I wave him off. Noah is still just a block away. Too close. “I will do nothing of the kind!”

  “At least let us google-stalk him, then?” Meg says, picking up her phone.

  “Cease and desist, I beg you both,” I say. “I haven’t been single a full day yet. Can I get a grace period before I’m thrust back into the meat market?”

  “Fine,” Meg says, “but only if Ruf and I get to take you out for this inaugural thrusting.” She’s scrolling through her calendar on her phone. “Okay, Tommy has poker night next weekend, but the following Friday is Mama’s Night Out. Oh good, I’m getting my eyebrows threaded that day. Let’s not waste it.”

  “I already know the perfect place, and which overalls I’m going to wear,” Rufus says.

  They both turn expectantly to me. I’m glad the conversation has veered away from Noah Ross. And also that I have lucked into these generous, funny, nosy, well-accessorized, and occasionally drunk friends.

  Who knows, maybe two weeks from now, the thought of going out on the town as a single woman will feel less unthinkable.

  I raise my glass, and we all clink. “Kate Mosses, here we come.”

  Chapter Eleven

  On Friday afternoon, I’ve got eighteen browser windows open on my desktop. I am crafting a compendium for how to visit the Cloisters museum without a hitch. I need Noah to be inspired by the medieval gardens and Netherlandish triptychs, not distracted by the hunt for a bathroom, or annoyed by a closed snack bar at the moment he wants a coffee.

  I am finally reaching the state of preparedness where I feel nothing can go wrong. And that’s when fate slaps me in the face, in the form of a text from Ryan.

  Let me state for the record that I have messaged my ex-fiancé no less than ten times this week. Low-key checking-in texts. Here-if-you-want-to-talk texts. Hope-you’re-having-a-good-week-at-work texts. I’m not trying to harass Ryan, or get back together. But it’s weird that we were intimate for three years—and planning to spend the next threescore staying that way—and suddenly, it’s like we cut a cord, and we’re strangers. It seems to me there should be some sort of wind-down period, a lame-duck session of the relationship. A couple of texts, nothing crazy. But Ryan seems not to share my vision.

  Until today, when he actually writes back. Three times in a row.

  Mom was spring-cleaning my place and found some of your things. Mostly clothes, but that robe with all the colors is there. And some award of your mom’s. She’s hitting Goodwill tomorrow. Wanted to give you a heads-up, in case you want any of it.

  And then:

  I’m in Boston for work, or else I’d try to hold her off longer. Sorry.

  And then:

  Also, the ring is yours. I gave it to you. Please stop asking if I want it back.

  I read and reread the first text: In case I want any of it? BD’s Missoni robe? My mother’s framed and mounted Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award, basically the Oscar for epidemiologists? I’d brought it down to show Ryan’s father once, after we’d had what I thought was a breakthrough conversation about my family. By the time I showed it to Mr. Bosch at a Sunday lunch a couple weekends later, he barely remembered our discussion. I should never have left the plaque at Ryan’s.

  This means I have to go to D.C. Tonight.

  And cancel on Noah Ross tomorrow.

  I dial Terry, feeling very put upon. “Terry, this is Lanie Bloom.”

  “I have caller ID.”

  “Can I talk to Noah?”

  “Noa doesn’t do the phone. You know that. Be glad you got me.”

  “Listen, something’s come up, and I need to reschedule our meeting tomorrow. Do you have access to his calendar?”

  “I’ll pass along the message, and see if Noa would like to reschedule.”

  “It’s not an if, Terry—”

  “You’ll hear from me if Noa does.”

  I manage to wait until Terry hangs up to start cursing the phone.

  * * *

  An hour later, I’ve crammed my work for the weekend into three canvas totes. I’ve resurrected the old gym bag under my desk—leftover from an expensive lie I once told myself that I should join the spin studio across the street—and am amazed to find that spin-curious Lanie packed the bag with a change of clothes, clean underwear, deodorant, and a toothbrush. My Amtrak tickets and hotel are booked and now I can spend my remaining minutes in the office writing an email to Noah.

  Terry has not called me back.

  In my first draft of the email, I went on too long and was overly repentant. Then I deleted everything and went the never-apologize-never-explain route. People need to reschedule. It happens. Our agreement is not off because of one conflict. I keep telling myself this, but I’d feel better if Terry called. The email is still sitting in my drafts.

  “Alors,” Aude says, appearing in my doorway in herringbone pants so high-waisted I think all her ribs are inside. “You should leave if you don’t want to miss your train.”