“Tortoises like heat,” Ryan says as I carry her back into the kitchen. “They’re cold-blooded.”

  “Not Alice,” I say, adding ice to her water and setting out some cold cubes of orange from the fridge. “She’s sensitive. She thinks she’s a dog.”

  “Maybe our next pet could be an actual dog? My brother just got a goldendoodle and—”

  “Do not talk about Alice like she’s already gone. She could outlive you!”

  He laughs. “How was the Valentine’s dance?” Ryan is always ever so slightly mistaken about what’s going on at my work. But tonight, I don’t correct him. To split hairs over the fact that the party’s theme was Vows not Valentines would open the vault of Wedding Conversations.

  Namely ours. Ryan doesn’t understand why I start sweating when we talk venues. In his mind, we are two exceptionally capable decision makers, and, with the help of a professional planner, should be able to pull off this event with ease. He wishes—like everyone else wishes—that we could just set a date.

  I pull the bottle of prosecco from my bag. Ryan clocks the fancy label and raises an eyebrow, intrigued.

  “Now do you want the bad news or the good news first?” I ask.

  He’s at my mirrored bar cart, where I keep BD’s champagne flutes. “What kind of lunatic wants the bad news first when there’s prosecco losing its chill?”

  “You’ve got a point, pop that bottle, but still, I have to go in order. I’ll make it quick.” I duck as Ryan sends the cork ricocheting around my tiny kitchen. He splashes some foam into my glass.

  “The bad news is, Alix isn’t coming back from maternity leave.”

  “They fired her?” Ryan shakes his head. “She could file a discrimination—”

  “No, no,” I cut him off. “It was her choice. To stay with her baby.”

  “Makes sense,” Ryan says. “That’s what my sister-in-law did after the twins. A lot of women—”

  “Ryan,” I say, putting my glass down and resting both hands on his shoulders. “What would you say if I told you that you are looking at the brand-new editorial director of Peony Press?”

  Ryan blinks. It takes him a moment to realize that a response is in order. “I’d say, um, wow. That is unexpected . . . ly amazing. Are you serious?”

  “No, I’m fucking with you,” I deadpan. “Of course I’m serious!” I fling my arms around him, excited. “When Sue told me, I thought I was getting fired.”

  Ryan laughs. “You work your ass off for them. They had no choice but to promote you.” He pulls away from my embrace, clinks my glass, and takes a deep gulp.

  I don’t drink. I feel myself shaking my head. His logic doesn’t feel quite right.

  I do work hard, and that’s the side Ryan sees—the weekend afternoons when I’m editing, when it’s impossible to shake me out of storyland. But productivity isn’t what I want to be recognized for. I don’t put in long hours to edit more manuscripts at a faster rate than my colleagues. Manuscripts aren’t candy on a conveyor belt in I Love Lucy.

  Editing is intuitive, alchemical. When I dive into an author’s first draft, I’m diving for the story I think she always wanted to tell, for a future book that readers around the world can pick up and find magic in.

  “So, you accepted?” he says. “The promotion?”

  “In what world would I not accept this promotion?” I say. “This my dream job, and years sooner than I would have dreamed of getting it. I’m taking over Noa Callaway!”

  “Ah, the diva,” he says, turning his muscled back to me as he rebuilds my dishwasher.

  I clear my throat. “The astonishingly brilliant, reason-I’m-in-publishing, demander-of-non-disclosure-agreement, four-months-past-her-deadline diva. Yes.”

  “You’re obsessed with her,” is what Ryan says, and I can’t tell if he means this as an insult. He openly idolizes the senator he works for—so, is this simply, in Ryan’s mind, a statement of fact?

  When Ryan meets someone he admires on the Hill, he buys their biography and becomes a disciple of their history and habits. I’ve never needed to know who lay behind the curtain. It is enough for me to share the same planet as Noa Callaway’s fabulous heroines.

  Around our office there are competing theories about Noa Callaway’s true identity. Most imagine a fiftyish woman with teenage daughters, ergo worldliness with a youthful pulse. Aude said she heard from another assistant that the pseudonym comprised twin sisters who lived on either coast and swapped chapters by email. I have lunched with agents who said over Scandinavian gravlax they had credible intelligence that Noa is a forty-six-year-old gay man writing from a yacht off Fire Island, then begged me with their eyes to confirm that it was true.

  I think about Sue’s warning—to keep our working relationship email-only—and something inside me resists. It’s my job to get Noa to deliver. If she’s truly struggling, and all I can do is email her, am I being set up to fail?

  “Also,” I say to Ryan, “my promotion is provisional.”

  Now he looks at me. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean Sue said if I don’t get a number-one-New-York-Times-bestseller-worthy manuscript out of Noa in three months . . .”

  I glance at him, waiting for him to complete my sentence with a confident, You’ll do it. He doesn’t. He’s back to focusing on the dishwasher. That’s when I realize he hasn’t even said congratulations.

  “Hey,” I say, walking over to him, gently taking the wrench from his hands and tapping the side of his head. “What’s going on in there?”

  Ryan wipes his hands on his jeans. “I’m proud of you, Lanie.”

  He glances at my left hand, the empty finger where my ring will finally sit once its resizing is finished at the end of the month.

  “But?” I say, even though I think I know. I need to hear it from him.

  “We said after the holidays, we’d start planning the wedding,” he says. “Then, you got all swept up in that launch party. Now that’s over, and there’s this.”

  I sigh. Even though I think we’re moving at a perfectly reasonable pace—we only got engaged in October—it often feels like Ryan thinks we should be married and pregnant by now. There have been a few arguments—not big blowouts, but enough to leave me tired whenever I think about it.

  “Ryan,” I say softly.

  “I’m worried this promotion will drop us down to the bottom of your list of priorities,” he says. “Our wedding. And everything else.”

  Everything else. The words come quickly, quietly, almost spoken under his breath. Ryan and I have agreed that after the wedding I’ll join him in D.C. But the logistics of that move, and what they’ll mean for me and my career, have yet to crystallize. I can tell that Ryan’s thinking my promotion doesn’t do our plans to cohabitate any favors.

  Then there’s the religion question, whether I’ll convert to Christianity. It’s important to Ryan that whatever future kids we have share the same religion as both their parents. I’m not particularly religious, but neither have I managed to get on board with converting. It feels wrong to change myself so we can become some WASPy united front on a future campaign trail. What is this, 1956? Even more than that, I can’t imagine telling BD that I’m not a Jew anymore and neither will her great-grandchildren be.

  These are big questions, ones we’ve both gotten skilled at sweeping under the rug since our engagement. It never feels like a good time to tackle them. Tonight I’m too tired—and too elated—to even entertain possible answers. So I tell Ryan the thing that always makes me feel better when I worry about the hows of our future.

  “You’re my Ninety-Nine Things,” I say, taking his hands. The fact that Ryan is so indisputably perfect for me matters a lot in my book. But he doesn’t smile like he usually does.

  I turn to the prosecco for help. I put both our glasses back in both of our hands. I meet Ryan on his level, which is a practical, plan-making level. “What do you say the next time we’re in D.C., we go look at those wedding venues your mom wanted to show us?”

  “Really?” he says.

  I nod. “And in the meantime, tonight, can we please just drink to my good news? This is me begging you to drink excellent prosecco.”

  Ryan smiles his gorgeous politician smile, the one that says I’m on your side. He raises his glass. “Congratulations, baby. Tell me everything Sue said.”

  So I do, flopping on the couch with my prosecco while Ryan tinkers with my dishwasher. As I finish recounting my meeting with Sue and go on to tell him about the launch, I can’t help remembering that handshake with Ross at the end, the intensity of his eyes, the thrill that passed through me.

  * * *

  A glass of prosecco later, Ryan has not only restored my dishwasher, he’s nearly got the radiator valve sorted, too. We’re both in our underwear now and thoughts of Ross’s handshake are long gone. Ryan’s grunts and curses have decreased to once every three minutes, and I feel a space for conversation opening.

  “Shall we discuss plans for tomorrow?” I ask.

  Ryan doesn’t look up from his work. “Plan One is to enjoy our vastly improved quality of life, now that you have a working dishwasher. And a revamped radiator.”

  “That rattle was my lullaby. You’d better hope I’ll be able to sleep through the silence.”

  “I’m thinking you, me, that couch, pizza delivery, with jalapenos because I love you, and the new Scorsese. Is that a perfect Saturday, or what?”

  “It’s Valentine’s Day!” I cry, more fiercely than intended. I’ve always been pretty lackadaisical about the holiday, but maybe I’m a bit worked up because this is the first year that Valentine’s Day has fallen on a weekend, which means it’s the first one we’ve actually gotten to spend together.

  “I’m joking.” Ryan grins. “You should have seen your face when I said Scorsese.”

  I throw a pillow at him. “I hate Scorsese. It’s like, would it kill him to put a woman in a film before Act Two—”

  “Lanie,” he cuts me off, sensing a diatribe. “I’ve got a whole day planned, capped off by a very fine dinner at your favorite, Peter Luger. I made the reservation months ago.” He glances at me, and I know I haven’t reacted with the desired level of enthusiasm. “Lanie?”

  We’ve celebrated our last four special occasions at Peter Luger, but if I mention that, it’ll be: It’s an institution! or I thought you loved their creamed spinach, which I do, above all vegetables on earth, but I don’t feel like defending creamed spinach tonight. The routines we’ve fallen into sometimes make me feel restless and claustrophobic, like a windup toy stuck in a corner.

  “Do you ever worry that we act like old married people who are neither old nor married?” I ask.

  And I think he’s going to say: No, because there’s no one else I want to be old and married with, which is why I proposed to you.

  But Ryan surprises me, like he does sometimes. He picks me up, tosses me over his shoulder, and barrels toward the bedroom, making me yelp with delight.

  “You ever seen an old married guy do this?” He tosses me on the duvet, and I’m hungry to get my hands on him.

  * * *

  By dusk on Valentine’s Day, we’ve had brunch at our favorite spot, Parker & Quinn, which I love for their DIY mimosa bar (four kinds of juice!) and Ryan loves because he gets to watch the Wizards beat the Bulls. He’s taken me to a midtown tennis shop for a racquet so that his couples goal of playing doubles in D.C. can finally be reached. I, in turn, have dragged him to the Guggenheim because I can’t get enough of Helen Frankenthaler’s Canal.

  As we leave the museum we’ve still got an hour until dinner, so I suggest a walk back through the park.

  We approach the Gapstow Bridge at Sixty-Second Street, which has been a touchstone of my jogging route since before I got the job at Peony, back when I was lost and broke and alone, begging the universe to reveal my destiny. The stone bridge looks like it was torn out of a fantasy novel, slate gray and mossy, crossing the north edge of the Pond. Beyond it rises one of the most stunning views of the Manhattan skyline, glittering in the gloaming. It’s a place where I’ve never felt like I could ask for too much, so long as I was willing to work to make it happen.

  I stop at the center of the bridge, take Ryan’s hand to make sure he stops, too. “This might be my favorite place in all of New York.”

  “It’s beautiful,” he says, tugging my hand a little, glancing up at the sky. “Should we get going? Looks like it’s going to rain again.”

  “Wait. I was going to save this for tonight, but the moment feels right right now.” I open my purse and take out my small gift wrapped in tissue.

  As Ryan unwraps the gift, I feel a growing anticipation. I’m practically bouncing on my heels by the time he parts the wooden panels.

  “Your list,” he says. “From the book.”

  “Yeah. From the book.”

  “Doesn’t own clogs. Check. You do know I’m not a grocery list, right? I’m, like, a real guy?”

  “Don’t you think it’s amazing that I had this unreasonably long and meticulous plan for love—and I found a man who meets every single one of my requirements?”

  “Uh-uh, I found you,” he says and kisses me.

  I show him how to put his gift in his wallet, and I like the way it looks there. “Now even when we’re apart, you’ll know why I love you.” We’re stepping off the bridge when I stop. “Wait, it’s Saturday.”

  “All day long.”

  “They should be here.”

  “Who?”

  “Edward and Elizabeth.” I scan the grass below the bridge, as I did so many times on my Saturday evening jogs. But the couple I’m looking for is nowhere to be seen.

  Their names aren’t really Edward and Elizabeth. Or maybe they are—I’ve never actually met them. But I used to see them here each week. For as long as I’ve lived in New York, they have mattered to me.

  “The picnickers,” I tell Ryan, hoping he remembers. Early in our relationship, I told him how this couple walks to the same spot in Central Park every Saturday night and feasts on an elegant picnic at the water’s edge, on the north side of the Pond.

  “Is that them?” Ryan points at an elderly pair approaching on the path.

  I rise on my toes, follow his gaze, optimistic.

  “No.” I shake my head. Not even close.

  It’s been years since I’ve been in Central Park on a Saturday at dusk. Probably since I started dating Ryan. A cold feeling of futility settles over me as I consider that one or both parties of my couples crush might not still be alive.

  Ryan puts his arms around me. I think he can tell I’m disappointed. We’re about to kiss when thunder claps and the sky cracks open with rain. I want to linger, to ignore the storm and our dinner plans, to stay here kissing until Edward and Elizabeth appear. They never let the weather stop them. I’ve seen them picnic with a battery-powered heat lamp in a snowstorm.

  But Ryan takes off his coat and drapes it over my head. He tugs on my hand.

  “We’d better make a run for it or we’ll never get a cab,” he shouts over the downpour.

  He’s right, I know, but leaving like this, before I see Edward and Elizabeth, feels every kind of wrong.

  Chapter Six

  On my first day at Peony, I walked in on Alix smoking weed behind her desk.

  “I am so sorry!” I’d cried, backing away and vowing to knock louder next time, wondering if I should leave the cover materials I’d come to drop off—or abort the mission entirely.

  “Come in, come in,” she told me, coughing as she sprayed fig-scented diffuser. “I don’t usually do this, but I have a call with Callaway this morning.”

  Noa had just turned in the first draft of her third novel, Fifty Ways to Break Up Mom and Dad. I’d devoured the manuscript—and pored over Alix’s eighteen-page, single-spaced editorial letter like an archeologist examining the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  The book centers on a couple in their twenties who plan a romantic getaway to New York . . . only to have it crashed by his mom and her dad. Things get worse when the young couple discovers that not only did their parents used to date, both are single again. Much to their children’s despair, the old flame hasn’t gone out. So the younger couple hatches a plan to turn their parents off each other through a series of schemes masked as vacation adventures. A culinary competition, tickets to Broadway, kayaking on the Hudson, etc. But every moment of the young couple’s trip only brings their parents closer.

  The hang-gliding scene in the second half contains a line that’s long stayed with me. Just before they run off the cliff, the main character’s mother says:

  “Life’s greatest mystery is whether we shall die bravely.”

  I cried the first time I read that scene. Out of all the Noa Callaway aphorisms that have touched me over the years, that was the one I most wished I could have shared with my mom.

  I would have loved to know whether she felt brave at the end.

  In Alix’s editorial letter, she waged a scorched-earth campaign on the novel’s second act. I agreed with her suggestions, but if I had to account for all those cuts I was asking a bestselling author to make? I’d be getting high behind my desk, too.

  “It’s going to be a great book,” I said to Alix.

  “It better be, for what we paid for it,” she said, pinching out her joint with her fingers. “This draft is twenty thousand words longer than it needs to be, but if I know Noa, it’s going to be like I’m auctioning off the crown jewels when I suggest we lose one word.”

  I couldn’t make out the precise threats and accusations shouted through the walls that morning, but after two hours on the phone with Noa, Alix emerged on her way to a very long lunch. She asked me to email Noa’s assistant to arrange the messenger to deliver the edited manuscript in hard copy.