“You’re right,” I say, shutting down my computer. “Merci.”

  “De rien.” She pauses. “How will you get into Ryan’s apartment?”

  I wave my keychain, which still holds a key to Ryan’s brownstone. I’ll leave it behind for him when this is done.

  “Lanie,” Aude says, “when you get there, allot yourself a very short time inside Ryan’s home. In and out—two minutes tops. I think it would be best.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do? Climb inside his hamper to breathe in his laundry?”

  Aude looks down. “I once slashed an ex’s mattress when I went to pick up my knife block after we broke up.”

  “See, that wasn’t even in my head before, but now . . .”

  “In and out,” Aude coaches.

  “In and out,” I say.

  She kisses my cheeks and hands me the printout of my tickets. I’m rounding the corner to the elevator when I almost collide with Meg.

  “Hot soup!” she shouts in warning.

  “And hello to you, too,” I say.

  “Oh good, it’s you. I was just coming up to bring you this.” She holds out a thermos, and when she cracks the lid, I recognize the aroma as her mother’s homemade egg drop wonton soup. My weakness. “I meant to bring it to you for lunch, but shit got crazy on the second floor. Are you leaving early?”

  “Ryan’s mom is going to ‘donate’ a bunch of my stuff if I don’t go get it. Tonight.” I give Meg a side-eye that bespeaks my annoyance. “So, you know, I’m taking a fun, spur-of-the-moment trip to D.C.”

  “Girl,” Meg says, her tone empathetic. “Want company? Wait, sorry, I forgot two small humans rely on me to meet their every need. You know I’ll be there in spirit. And . . . I wouldn’t spend too long on the inside if I were you.”

  “Did you slash an ex-boyfriend’s mattress, too?” I ask.

  “There may have been some defecation left in the saddle of a certain NordicTrack.”

  “Meg, no!”

  “Not proud of it,” Meg says with a shudder.

  “Well, I think we have a winner.” I laugh. “I’ve got to run. Thanks for the soup.”

  “It’s a classic combination,” Meg says, waving as I step into the elevator. “Amtrak and egg drop.”

  “Like tacos and Tuesdays.”

  * * *

  On track twelve at Penn Station, I climb the stairs toward my regular spot on the south end of the quiet car. I’ve taken this train so many times to visit Ryan. I know that at this hour on a Friday, it’s always crowded, but I spot a lucky open window seat at one of the four-top tables. There’s a jacket, a bottle of water, and a book about the Vietnam War on the rear-facing seat, but the forward-facing side looks open, so I slide in with my things.

  As the train pulls away, I settle in, opening my thermos and taking out my tablet. It’s loaded with five novel submissions I’m supposed to read by Monday. Usually, I can tell within five pages whether I need to read more, and usually the answer is no. But I already know there’s one in here that’s promising. A romantic satire by a debut author whose first page had made Aude laugh out loud when she started reading it this morning.

  I reread the first page three times before acknowledging that I have no idea what I’ve just read. I’m more upset than I want to acknowledge about having to clear my things out of Ryan’s place. It’s like, I know how we got here, but also—How the hell did we get here?

  I give up on work for now. At least the soup is good.

  From the bottom of my bag, I take out my old paperback copy of Ninety-Nine Things. I flip to the back of the book. How smug I’d felt three years ago, checking Ryan against my list. Look where it got me. Tears sting my eyes, and when I wipe them away, more come.

  “It’s meant to be a comedy,” a male voice says over my shoulder.

  I look up, then flinch at the sight of the very last person I want to see right now.

  Noah Ross wears a black sweater and a Mets cap tugged low. He’s drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. There’s a few days’ worth of dark stubble on his face, which makes him look rugged yet refined, like if you went camping, he’d cook a gourmet dinner on the fire.

  I snap the book closed, put it down like it’s a thousand degrees. It embarrasses me to be caught vulnerable by him, and I’m trying to think of a way to gracefully steer this conversation toward a how-funny-to-have-run-into-you-and-goodbye!—when he sits down across from me.

  I point at the jacket, the water bottle, the book. “I think someone’s sitting there.”

  “I’m sitting there, Lanie. It’s my stuff. I just went to get some coffee.” He waves the steaming cup.

  Of course he’s sitting here. Because this day was designed to destroy me. I surrender, Day. You win.

  “If you don’t want to be disturbed,” he says, “I’ll find another seat.”

  “No, please,” I have no choice but to say. “Unless . . . I’d be bothering you?” I gesture at his book. The thousand-page tome on Vietnam is not what I’d picture Noa Callaway reading in Noa Callaway’s spare time. Shakespeare’s sonnets, perhaps. Maybe Charlotte Brontë. Not some dense account of international stalemate.

  Please. Please. Please say you want to read your book.

  “Not at all,” he says, resting an elbow on the shared table between us. “This is . . . funny. Isn’t it? Running into you after you canceled on tomorrow? Terry gave me your message.”

  “Really? I wasn’t sure, since I never heard back.” I don’t try too hard to hide my annoyance.

  Noah smirks. “I’m sorry. She doesn’t like you.”

  “How can you tell?” I deadpan.

  “It’s nothing personal. She hated Alix,” he says. “Terry thinks my first drafts are perfect. She’s my godmother. It comes with the job.”

  The Terrier is his godmother? I try to find a place to slot this into my understanding of Noah Ross, but I feel ill-equipped. I realize that I know his preferred chess opening (the Sicilian Defense) and his go-to florist (Flowers of the World, West Fifty-Fifth Street), but nothing about his personal life, where he came from.

  “Look, I’m sorry to have canceled—” I say.

  He waves me off. “It happens. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” I manage, sounding like a robot powering down.

  I glance at my copy of Ninety-Nine Things between us on the table. Everything about this encounter feels tremendously embarrassing.

  “I’ve just had . . . you know . . . a . . .”

  “Bad day?” he says.

  I nod. I don’t want to get into my personal life with Noah Ross. He’s being slightly less noxious than the first two times we met, but still, everything could go wrong at any moment.

  He turns toward the window and lifts the jacket he’d slung over the second seat. Beneath it, I recognize the same animal crate I saw him carrying on Sunday on the Upper West Side. I lean forward, and there is the black-and-white rabbit, asleep inside.

  “You have a bunny,” I remark.

  “You have a tortoise,” he says, like this is the end of the conversation.

  “Wonder who’ll win the race,” I say, which actually makes him laugh. “Alice was my neighbor’s. Mrs. Park. She moved to Florida a few years ago and couldn’t have pets at her new place. She asked if I’d take Alice as a favor. I’m really glad she did,” I say, smiling at the pleasant thought of Alice. She’ll wonder where I am tonight, but she has enough food and water to last until I’m back tomorrow.

  I glance at Noah, because now it’s his turn to say something about his own unlikely companion.

  “This is Javier Bardem,” Noah says, looking at the bunny. “He used to be my mother’s.”

  “Your mom sounds like she has good taste in men.”

  There’s a silence intended for him to elaborate. He doesn’t. He points at my thermos.

  “Is that egg drop soup?”

  “It is,” I say, feeling my hackles rise. “It was a gift, and it’s my favorite, so don’t—”

  “I was merely going to say, it smells good . . . all throughout the car.”

  “My soup and I will be happy to reseat ourselves somewhere else,” I say. Though I wish he’d be the one to leave. I unwisely unpacked three tote bags’ worth of stuff onto the table.

  “No, stay,” he says. “I need you for cover.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Three words,” Noah says, reaching into a brown paper bag. “Tuna. With. Onions.” He takes out a paper-wrapped parcel and soon reveals a large and extremely fragrant sandwich. My eyes start watering, again. “They were out of falafel at my favorite deli, so . . . Maybe our aromas will cancel each other out?”

  Against my will, I laugh, and I’m shocked when Noah does, too. I raise my thermos and he holds up his sandwich. We lock eyes.

  “Cheers,” I say, “to enjoying odiferous food in confined public spaces.”

  I’m chewing a wonton and learning that I just can’t be in a bad mood while chewing a wonton. Noah’s chewing, too. The train comes out from underground, and we both look out the window awhile at the pink dusk of almost-spring. Would it be too much to ask for us to eat in silence the rest of the three-hour journey? We actually get along when we’re not talking.

  My phone buzzes. When I look down, I see that Aude has sent me a photo. Of a keychain. My keychain. The one with Ryan’s key on it.

  Please tell me this isn’t yours, she writes. I found it by the elevator bank.

  “Oh no.”

  “What’s wrong?” Noah asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure? Because you look like you’re about to faint.”

  “You have no idea what I look like when I’m about to faint.” But I do feel a little woozy. The image of Iris Bosch dumping my family heirlooms at Goodwill glows in my mind.

  “I’m going to D.C. because I need to pick something up,” I say. “I need my keys to do it. And Aude just told me I left them at the office.” I cup my face, retracing my steps. “I ran into my friend as I was leaving . . . she gave me this egg drop soup . . . and I must have dropped my keys.”

  “So, it’s actually key drop soup.”

  I look at him, blink. “Oh my god, you just made a joke.” It was corny beyond belief, but it was a joke nonetheless.

  Noah cocks an eyebrow, smiles. “I do it once a month on the full moon.”

  “This is a fine time to let me know you actually have a sense of humor in person.”

  “Business or residence?” Noah asks.

  “Huh?”

  “This place you need the keys to get into.”

  “Residence. Why?”

  “What kind of windows?”

  “I don’t know, ones with panes. They slide up? I think.”

  I watch Noah’s hands clasp together. I watch him lean back in his seat as his green eyes scan the ceiling. He’s thinking. This is what he looks like when he’s thinking. I picture him sitting like this at his desk in his beautiful Fifth Avenue penthouse, probing his mind for answers about characters I have loved.

  “I can get you in,” he says.

  “Uh, what?”

  “There’s a . . . ninety-eight-percent chance that I can get you in.”

  Noah must see the way I’m looking at him because for once, he’s quick to explain.

  “I was raised in a household of women. My mother and two of her friends. Very overprotective.”

  “What does any of this mean?” I ask.

  “I got good at sneaking out of the house.”

  “That’s different from sneaking in.”

  “What kind of alarm system?”

  “He never turns it on.”

  Noah smiles. “Then we’re golden.”

  I squint at his nonchalance. “So, you’re going to get off this train with me? And we’re going to this empty house? And you’re going to break me inside?”

  Noah nods. Smiles.

  “This is not the Friday night I had envisioned.”

  “Stick with me, kid,” Noah says. And then, he seems to hear his own words, the rapport that they suggest. His cheeks turn pink, and his manner shifts back to stiff. “If I’m going to agree to this, you need to tell me where we’re going, and why.”

  I was afraid of this. But I have no idea how to break into Ryan’s place other than a rock through his window, so if I want my heirlooms without a criminal report, Noah Ross might have to call a few shots.

  “It’s my ex-fiancé’s brownstone in Georgetown.”

  “The guy on the wall? I thought he wasn’t your ex-fiancé.”

  The train rattles around a bend in the tracks. It’s gotten dark outside. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with this man.

  “He wasn’t,” I say. “Until he was. Anyway, he has some of my stuff with sentimental value, and my ex-future-mother-in-law is going to get rid of it tomorrow.” I look at him. “Unless you break me in.”

  * * *

  “So,” Noah whispers in the dark side yard of Ryan’s brownstone at nine o’clock that night, “how did you two meet?”

  “Can we maybe wait until we’re not committing a felony to have this conversation?” I whisper back, standing on my toes to watch his work. He’s got the screwdriver tool of his Swiss Army knife extended and is slowly, carefully prying open the window that leads to Ryan’s laundry room.

  We’ve already quite literally cased the joint, jiggling every doorknob and window, even climbing the trellis in Ryan’s back alley hoping to find unlocked upstairs access. Now Noah is just “removing the beading” from the window, which he assures me he can set right on our way out.

  “Your call,” he says. “I just thought you were the one concerned with feeding me inspiration. I thought you and the ex might have had a meet-cute.”

  “Are you insane?” I whisper. “You don’t get to use my ex-meet-cute. Though, actually, it was a good one.”

  “Go on,” Noah says, grunting a little as he levers the pane up from the frame.

  In the quiet night, attempting criminal activities, I feel pressure to tell this story better than I ever have before. And so I do, in whispered segments, as the barred owl hoots in Ryan’s maple tree. Noah listens closely, cocking his head when I reach the part about Ryan getting a ticket for riding without his helmet, telling the cop it was worth every penny because look at the woman he’d had to loan it to. I’m up to the detail about the dropped jaws of the Peony marketing department, who all saw me get off Ryan’s bike at the doors of the convention center, when Noah frees the pane from the window, turns to me, and grins.

  He gestures inside with a wave of his arm. “After you.”

  If he were anyone else, I’d fling my arms around him in gratitude. Instead, I keep my enthusiasm inside as I climb through. Once I’m on top of Ryan’s washing machine, he passes me Javier Bardem in his kennel, and then we wait for Noah to climb in, too.

  It’s strange and thrilling to creep through Ryan’s empty brownstone. I know it well enough that I can navigate in the dark, but since Noah doesn’t, I put on my phone’s flashlight as we move through the kitchen, to the dining room, through the swinging door into the living room.

  “So then what happened?” Noah asks.

  “With Ryan?” I say, surprised. I’d ended the story where I usually end it. Most people assume that after Ryan dropped me off, we swapped numbers and started dating. But there was one more thing that happened that first day.

  “Well, I thanked him for the ride,” I say, pausing at the foot of Ryan’s staircase, memories flooding my mind. “And then he said, ‘I’m going to marry you.’ ”

  Noah is quiet. I can’t see his expression in the dark.

  “And I said, ‘You don’t even know me.’ And he said, ‘I can just tell we’ll be great together.’ And then he got down on one knee. I shut him up before he could actually propose. . . .” I trail off, remembering that feeling, how magical it all seemed, like the beginning of something amazing. Like this was the love story I’d been waiting for all my life.

  It’s hard to think about that now.

  Luckily, just then, the beam of my flashlight falls on a box near the front door.

  “There it is!” I drop to my knees. I see BD’s robe at the top. I feel my mother’s award. I’m so relieved.

  “Thank you, Noah,” I say, turning to look up him. “It was really generous and slightly crazy of you to help me.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  He’s standing very still, his hands clasped behind his back. He never looks comfortable, but in Ryan’s darkened foyer, he looks even more uncomfortable than usual. We should get out of here.

  “Hey,” I say, hefting the box into my arms. “Wanna celebrate?”

  * * *

  When Noah said he knew of a place nearby, I was not expecting a cash-only dive called Poe’s and two cold cans of Natty Boh. But it turns out, a snug booth at the back of this crowded bar is the perfect place for Noah, Javier Bardem, and me to revel in my reclaimed possessions.

  “You never told me what you’re doing in D.C.,” I say, still high on our achievement, and a little loose from the beer.

  “I’m visiting my mom.”

  “She lives here? I don’t know why I thought you grew up in New York.”

  “I did. I grew up on West Eighty-Fourth. My mom moved down here about ten years ago. I’ve been trying to get her back to New York but . . . it’s complicated.”

  “Oh,” I say, thinking back to the day I saw Noah showing Javier Bardem a building on the Upper West Side. Was that his old apartment? Also, why didn’t he mention he was visiting his mother earlier? Now I feel guilty I’ve taken too much of his time. And what does he mean, complicated?

  “Do you need to call her? Is she expecting you for dinner or anything tonight?”