In wedding-style metaphors, my speech is meant to take the reader through the full journey of our work on the book. From the dramatic way Noa delivers manuscripts—via hard copy, in a metal briefcase, delivered by Brinks messenger—which can feel akin to a blind date. To the courtship phase of the editorial process—the bumps along the way being the best parts. I’ll pause for a laugh when I share Noa’s top contender for this book’s title: Twelve Divorce Filings. I swear, I thought she was going to die on that hill.

  My phone buzzes.

  HAVE FUN TONIGHT!!! Ryan texts.

  I know he set an alarm reminder on his phone to write to me just when I’m about to take the stage, when my nerves are peaking and I can use encouragement. Then comes a follow-up: Can’t wait to see you after. And a third: Don’t be Bill Murray.

  I roll my eyes, but I’m laughing. This is his way of saying Stay on script. From all the D.C. cocktail parties he’s dragged me to, Ryan has observed that I am either exceptionally articulate . . . or a total bumbling disaster. He says that I’m a land of extremes, just coasts, no middle ground.

  Ready to rock, I text back, stepping out of the greenroom and into the candlelit party.

  The hall is filled with the sound of women loving the same thing. These are my people, this is my crowd. I take the stage and stand beneath the altar, proud of Meg and her team and the stunning party they’ve brought to life. Proud of Noa and this dazzling book. And damn it, proud of myself. I reach for the mic, adjust it. Emotion swells in my chest. I wish my mom could see me.

  I look out at these wonderful, passionate women, all two hundred and sixty-six of them, and am overcome by my new responsibility.

  Then the feeling veers toward panic—that Noa Callaway will never write another book, that the disaster is unfolding on my watch—and suddenly I can’t see. The guests are a sea of red. There’s a droning in my ears. The speech has vanished from my brain.

  I am either going to faint or throw up.

  I fumble for my phone. I’ll simply open up the speech. But the facial recognition isn’t working, and I can’t hold the mic and the phone and my effing cake balloon and type in my password all at once. I’m going to have to abandon it.

  And say what?

  I open my mouth and a squeak emerges. My eyes fall on Meg in the front row, who is gaping at me, ferociously mouthing the words good evening.

  “Good evening!” I belt out.

  Meg palms her forehead and gives me a thumbs-up. At least my voice seems to have returned.

  “I’m Lanie Bloom, and I’m Noa’s editor.”

  The whispers throw me, and I remember that the rest of the office doesn’t know about my promotion. There’s true shock on Meg’s face, which she masks with a wild grin when we lock eyes. The words sound normal to our guests. Still, I shiver saying them.

  Then, from the back of the room, I hear a single pair of hands clapping. The applause spreads forward, growing in volume. Aude whistles between her teeth. This buys me some time, and it refocuses my attention on who these readers are, on how much we have in common. I decide to speak from the heart.

  “I’m also a fan of Noa’s. In fact, Noa’s books are the reason I became an editor. I’ve never stopped feeling honored to work on them. When I look out at you tonight, I know I’m among friends. That’s the Noa Callaway effect.” Another cheer rises from the group, and my eyes follow the sound to a young woman I recognize from previous events. She’s with her whole crew, as usual, and more than a few of them have Noa Callaway quotes tattooed on some part of their bodies. This is a good sign.

  “Let’s give a round of applause to the Callababes from Providence”—I gesture toward them—“who met at Noa’s very first book launch ten years ago and have stayed friends ever since. Can you believe these ladies train down together for every Noa Callaway launch?”

  The room indulges me with applause, and I suspect the Callababes’ numbers will increase tonight, another Noa Callaway effect. Everyone’s invited to the fandom.

  “I want to thank the book clubs, the bloggers and bookstagrammers, and the amazing mother-daughter Facebook group having that competition tonight to see who can finish reading the novel first. Screw school, amiright?”

  A group of teenage girls back me up: “Hell yeah!”

  “I want to thank those of you who came solo. You may have arrived alone, but trust me, you’ll go home with new friends, whether you like it or not.” I scan the room as people laugh. My eyes land on a man’s silhouette near the back exit. For a second, I wonder if it’s Ryan, here to surprise me.

  But this man is taller than Ryan. He’s trimmer, too, less muscular. His thick, dark hair is longer, wavier. He’s standing with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s not our typical demographic, and I almost move on, but I don’t, because just then, he steps into the light, and I can see his face. There’s something playful in his eyes. He looks . . . intrigued. By me? By my groping improvisation? Does he see that I’m hanging on by a thread?

  Instead of simply absorbing this and moving on, I swerve into what Ryan calls the Carpool-Lanie; if I’m going down, I’m taking someone down with me.

  “I want to thank the lone guy at the back, for getting the signed book for his wife. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that she works nights, and you’re getting laid at sunrise when she finds her signed book on her pillow. Man of the Year, everybody.”

  The audience gives a few wolf whistles, and I glance back to see whether the man is laughing. But he’s moved from his spot. I lose sight of him in the crowd. I tell myself his wife would laugh if she were here.

  “I’ve been told not to improvise these speeches,” I say. “And look at me now, going full Bill Murray on you.” I take a breath. “I think what I’m trying to say is what a relief it is to feel connected instead of alone. That’s what we’re all hoping for when we pick up a novel. Isn’t it? Noa’s stories bond us with forty million other readers, all around the world, and yet, somehow, they feel as intimate as a conversation. When I read Noa’s stories, I feel that no one has ever understood me so well. She’s my friend. I know she’s your friend as well. Let’s raise a glass to Noa, and to the brilliant Two Hundred and Sixty-Six Vows.”

  At this moment, the very last line of my speech comes at me. It was one of Terry’s edits, and it’s perfect for this crowd. “Let us renew our vows as readers. Would you all please reach for your balloon, and find your pin?” I take my own balloon and hold the pin aloft. “Repeat after me: With this cake, I thee read.”

  “With this cake,” the crowd responds, “I thee read!”

  And then, around the room, comes the percussion of two hundred and sixty-six balloons being popped. Everyone cheers as the edible confetti rains down.

  After my speech, guests gather around Meg’s marvelous book cake to grab a signed copy. I mingle with some ladies from White Plains, then join Aude behind the table to pass out more books. It’s the time of night when people start dreading their commutes, and I know we need to move them out efficiently, back to their lives and obligations.

  I’m handing out swag—engraved champagne flutes and tote bags featuring the book cover—when I look up and see the man I’d called out in my toast.

  “Hey, Man of the Year.” I hand him a book. “Thanks for playing along.”

  Up close, his green eyes ambush me. “Glad to be of service.”

  His voice is lower than I expected.

  “I hope your wife thanks you sufficiently.”

  He opens his mouth then closes it.

  “Girlfriend?” I offer.

  “No. It’s not . . .”

  When he trails off, I feel bad, knowing I’ve overstepped. We sometimes get a few gay men at Noa’s events, but I’m definitely sensing straight here. Then it hits me. “Oh, I’m sorry, you must be press.”

  I’d forgotten that a journalist from New York magazine had RSVPed. Meg had been thrilled about the coverage, and now I’ve probably ruined his enthusiasm to write about our event.

  “Be sure to mention what a fool I made of myself?”

  He shakes his head. “You’d fly away with the story.”

  In my mind I see Noa’s GIF of the woman riding the balloons into the distance. “On a cake balloon.”

  “Speaking of, is this one spoken for? I didn’t get any.” Meg appears beside us, popping the very last balloon and snatching the cake like a pro. I wonder if Meg notices that the confetti seems to fall in slow motion around me and the man whose name I haven’t caught.

  “This is Meg, our publicist,” I tell him. “You probably spoke about the piece.”

  Meg looks at me, confused. She shakes her head. “Doris came from New York mag. She left already, but they got a good picture of you onstage.”

  “Oh,” I say and turn back to the mystery man. “I keep projecting mistaken identities onto you.”

  He’s still gazing at me as though we share a secret, and something about it is awkward, and something about it is spellbinding. Even though I’m aware we’re holding up the line, I extend my hand.

  “I’m Lanie,” I say.

  “I know,” he says, raising an eyebrow, which makes me rack my brain for a memory of meeting him sometime before. No. I’d remember him. He has the kind of face you don’t forget.

  “You introduced yourself onstage,” he says, and both of us laugh. Mine is nervous.

  “Ross,” he says, then puts his hand in mine.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m not so sure,” he replies. But his smile takes out the sting. It’s a good smile, nice teeth, smooth lips just barely parted.

  Holding his hand, a little spark shivers through me. I gulp, realizing I am attracted to this man.

  I pull my hand and gaze away from his.

  “Enjoy the book,” I say, watching him take my words as a cue to go.

  “Oh. Sure.” He waves, and begins to back away. “I will, thanks.”

  That’s when I realize he’s going home without a book.

  Chapter Five

  Some people use their commutes to catch up on group text chains or true crime podcasts. I am a secret M-train fantasizer. It’s not always sexual, but a solid sixty percent of what passes through my mind while hurtling underground between our office in Washington Square and my apartment in midtown east could get me arrested in certain states.

  Tonight it begins with Ryan on the couch, watching basketball and scrolling through The Economist app while he waits for me. Act Two has me entering the apartment, tossing off my trench coat—having shimmied out of my dress in the hallway, a trick my friend Lindsay taught me in college. I straddle Ryan wordlessly. Reunion sex ensues. Act Three opens on the chilled bottle of prosecco, consumed au naturel.

  Ryan and I met in traffic. I love this, and not just because it gives me a lifetime fast pass out of tedious small talk at parties. (No one wants to hear about your awful commute, but if traffic be the food of love, play on!) I love it because the way I met Ryan feels like the way two characters in an epic love story might meet.

  It was a steamy summer morning in Washington, D.C., about three years ago. I was in town for a conference. I’d left plenty of time to get from my Georgetown hotel to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, where I would speak on a panel about feminist romance. But a bus broke down on M Street, with my taxi directly behind it.

  Ryan’s first sight of me was a stream of curse words flowing from the window of my taxi. He was on a vintage Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, idling next to me.

  “In a hurry?” he said.

  Looking back, I liked his voice right away: steady with a hint of teasing.

  “I’m supposed to be at the convention center in negative five minutes.”

  “Then you’d better hop on.”

  I laughed, then really looked at him for the first time. I’ve always had a thing for bikers. It’s actually an item on my Ninety-Nine Things list. Not the greasy, aggressive kind. Think Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Ryan fell squarely into the latter category. He was wearing a nice suit and shoes that gleamed with fresh polish. He had clean fingernails, sexy hands. Then he lifted the visor and I saw his eyes. I was a goner. Even if I’d needed a lift to Louisville, Ryan’s brown eyes would have gotten me out of that cab.

  Check another item on my list.

  “You can wear my helmet,” he said, like he knew he had me.

  “I don’t normally do things like this,” I said, chucking a five at the cabbie and opening my door.

  “Maybe we should make a habit of it,” he said. “I’m Ryan.”

  “I’m Lanie.”

  I put the helmet on as cars honked all around us. If I’d been with Meg or Rufus we’d have flipped them off en masse, but I stood there patiently as Ryan fastened the helmet’s clasp, feeling his fingers at my chin.

  “Don’t worry about them,” he said close to my ear, nodding at the honkers. “In a few seconds they’ll all be in the rearview mirror.”

  * * *

  It’s ten-fifteen by the time I slip my key into the lock of my fifth-floor walk-up apartment. I’ve lived here for six years but have only had the place to myself for the past three, after my roommate moved to Boston, and I could finally (barely) cover the rent on my own. I hired a company to knock down the temporary wall in the living room that had served as my roommate’s old room, and restored the apartment to its one-bedroom glory.

  Tonight, when I open the door, a blast of heat engulfs me. I throw up my hands to ward off flames. I sniff for smoke, but all I get is Vito’s garlic knots.

  I step inside, and there is Ryan in my kitchen, shirtless and half-submerged in a heap of hoses and hardware, which looks like it used to be my dishwasher. At the sound of my boots, his head pops up, and he gives me the wide grin that makes my dry cleaner fan herself with her pad of receipts.

  Ryan played tennis at Princeton, so if you’ve seen Nadal change shirts after a match, the comparison would not be hyperbolic. His muscles are so defined they have etymologies.

  I’ve never been drawn to muscles before, but on Ryan, it’s part of the whole package. He’s solid inside and out. He’s the youngest LD on Capitol Hill, leader of his local Big Brothers program, captain of the intramural soccer team, and he happily offers to babysit his niece and nephew. He has never—not once in three years—not called me when he said he would, nor left me to wonder about his intentions. When he wants something, he gets it. In that way, we’re alike.

  Ryan has presidential aspirations. Legitimate ones. When he told me this on our fifth date, laying out the path for the next twenty years of his professional life as we sat at the ceviche bar on West Fourth, it startled me, but then I figured Michelle probably wasn’t troubleshooting how to be FLOTUS on her fifth date with Barack, so I might as well enjoy my scallops and take life as it came.

  “Hi, honey,” he says.

  “Don’t move a muscle.” I reach for my phone to document this. “How have we never done a Christmaskuh card showcasing your abs? ‘Give me a pec under the mistletoe’ in a brushed script font. Or, if you turned around, we could do ‘Lats of love this holiday season.’ ”

  “Awful.” Ryan laughs, his brown eyes crinkling, his Greek-statue triceps flexing as he twists my cheap wrench. He rises and comes to me, lifting me threshold-crossing style. We kiss. “But if it’s a holiday card, we’re supposed to be together.”

  “But then I’d block your twenty-four-pack.”

  “People would still know it’s there,” he says and kisses me again.

  I tap his chest. “By any chance, is there something besides your bod making it so ungodly hot in here?”

  Ryan sets me down, leans handsomely against the stove and tucks his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  “I always want bad news first,” I say, setting down my many tote bags. I leave the house with one and somehow manage to come home every day with four. “What kind of person can absorb good news knowing bad news lurks around the corner?”

  “All right,” he says. “The bad news is I broke your radiator while fixing your dishwasher. The good news is I fixed your dishwasher.” He tugs at my sleeve. “Take your coat off. Stay awhile.”

  I’d love to throw off my trench, but I am fully nude beneath it, and this hot flash is not the opening salvo I’d envisioned for our passionate tryst tonight. I lean around him to survey the disaster that is my kitchen. So much for my three-act fantasy.

  “Dishwasher sure looks fixed,” I joke. “While you’re lining up renovation projects, do you think you can fix my headboard tomorrow? I was hoping we could do some damage to it tonight.”

  “I mean,” he says, pointing at the hoses, “the rattle’s fixed. Or it will be by the time I put it back together. But that’s the easy part.”

  “Sure.” My dishwasher has rattled during the rinse cycle since before I moved in, and it’s never really bothered me. It’s one of the quirks of New York apartment living I feel one must come to love. If it’s acting up while I’m having a dinner party, two thwacks does the trick, but most of the time I run the dishwasher on my way to bed and sleep right through the cacophony.

  Ryan is a light sleeper. He finds the rattle uncharming. He finds most of my apartment’s quirks uncharming, and is working his way through their solutions.

  “Where’s Alice?” I glance over Ryan’s shoulder at the small dog bed where my tortoise usually hangs out. Alice is eighty-six years old and very opinionated, especially about climate. I inherited her from my neighbor across the hall, Mrs. Park, when she moved to Florida. Alice and Ryan do not get along.

  Ryan lifts a shoulder. “I think she went that way about an hour ago.” He gestures toward the bathroom.

  I find Alice under my sink, where the pipe drips. “Good thing he hasn’t fixed the drip yet,” I whisper.