The Break(75)

I smile. I don’t have much else to say, but I like hearing about it.

“Ladies!” comes Harrison’s big voice, making us turn. He’s grinning, walking with Gabe. Gabe gets a sly look on his face, hands shoved into his pockets, walking a little slower than Harrison. He’s so handsome—they both are. It hits me like a slap that these are the people I’m going to dinner with, and in a way it makes me feel like I’ve already started to make it in this city: to be respected by other creative people, to be in the world of it, plus tomorrow is my first rehearsal for The Importance of Being Earnest, and it all feels sort of surreal.

I watch as Gabe and Harrison come closer. They’re placeholders for the real thing, I know that; I already sense I’m probably not going to have some serious thing with Harrison, but I like him, simple as that, and maybe I don’t need to overthink everything. They step onto the sidewalk, and Harrison comes close faster than I think he will, and then his arm is around my waist, his fingers curled against my side with more pressure than I’m ready for. We’ve only had one coffee together since our date to Gabe’s reading, nothing else that progressed us forward physically, so this feels quick as lightning and just as dangerous. It takes concentration not to flinch. “Hi,” I say, surprise in my voice.

“Hi,” Harrison says. He leans in to peck me on the cheek. “You look gorgeous,” he says into my ear. I swear I smell whiskey, but I could be wrong. He’s been sober three years, so it would be a big deal if he just had a drink somewhere. I look up at him questioningly, but I don’t know him well enough to read his face.

Rowan leans into Gabe. He wraps his arms around her and kisses her white-blond hair. “Hey,” he says, voice loose. Her head is pressed against his chest and there’s a small, content smile on her face. Gabe looks down at her like he’s genuinely happy to see her, and his arm is protective when it drops to her waist. It makes me think about how his babies are inside her, and how strange it all is and what it must mean for a relationship to go from just two people to a family of four.

“June, it’s good to see you,” Gabe says over Rowan’s head, and it’s almost like they’re only there with each other. Rowan looks up and searches Gabe’s face, and he looks down at her again and smiles.

“You too,” I say back to Gabe. I’m very conscious of Harrison’s hand pressing into me, and I’m liking it more the longer it’s there. There’s a coat of dark blond stubble on his face, and his big blue eyes are rimmed with dark lashes. His dimple puts me a little over the edge—it comes out only when his grin is this wide. “Hey,” I say when we lock eyes. He’s got my attention; I’ll give him that.

“Hey,” he says again, and it’s so flirty I squirm.

“Should we go in?” I ask.

Harrison nods and pushes open the door to Balthazar. He gives me a secret smile as I pass beneath his arm. Inside, Gabe talks to the hostess, who gets us to a table right away. I think about how when I’m with Kai we always have to wait at restaurants. Not tonight.

Rowan has her head down as we pass the raw bar marked with iridescent clams, and the real bar with a hundred glistening bottles of top-shelf alcohol and decadent wines. We curve between the tables, and people turn to look at her (and at me, too), but Rowan doesn’t seem to care. It must be so nice not to care. Rowan and I slide onto the banquette first, sitting opposite each other and closest to the wall, and already the drink lists are waiting. I watch as Rowan’s eyes glance over the laminated menu; she has this faraway quality to her, like she’s in this world and simultaneously inside another one. She’s got a cocktail ring on her index finger, and a small gold wedding band on her ring finger, and the dreamy half smile on her face I remember from Gabe’s reading. “I miss white wine,” she says to no one in particular.



Mirrors hang behind us. Big golden globes of light hover over the bar. The wooden ceiling is dramatic, and the whole thing is just so exquisitely beautiful it’s hard to even put it into words. “So what are you working on?” I ask Rowan. A part of me wonders whether her work is the cause of her distraction: Is she half-inside the world of her current novel?

Rowan looks up and studies me.

“You look distracted,” I say. “And it made me wonder if sometimes you’re thinking about the people in your books and what they’re doing in their world.”

Rowan lets out a laugh but it’s not at me, it’s almost like she’s surprised. “That’s exactly right,” she says as Gabe settles in beside her, Harrison beside me. The guys laugh about something one of them said, and jazz music plays behind us, making everything feel classy and old-fashioned. “Sometimes I even think I’ll see my characters out, even here, tonight,” Rowan says, gesturing at the scene around us. “Isn’t that nuts?” She smiles at me. She seems so much kinder than the night at the reading. “It’s like I see all these people, and I think one of my characters could turn up as a waiter tonight, or someone at a neighboring table,” Rowan says, and then she laughs at herself.

I almost tell her that happens to me with the scripts. But I’m not confident enough yet to say it out loud; she might think my experience pales in comparison to hers, and I’m sure it does: she’s working on the same characters and story for months at a time. For me it’s a quick immersion, a night or two of reading at most.