Page 28

“There’s a hook behind you for your coat,” I say, and then we fumble over who will hang it up.

“Espresso?” I say. I’m eager to leave the hallway and make it to my slightly more spacious kitchen. “I’m fresh out of two-percent milk, but I have whole, or almond, or... oatmeal, I think.” I glance at him. “That was a joke? Terry mentioned some issue with two-percent, oh never mind...”

He’s looking at me blankly.

“I can just make the espresso and—”

“No, thanks,” Noah says. He walks past my kitchen and into the living room. He sinks down on the couch and looks, for a moment, almost normal there. Then he ruins it with a snarky, “It’s not like this is going to take long, is it?”

“You’re in a charming mood,” I call from the kitchen, making myself a stupid espresso because I paid eleven dollars for it at Blue Bottle. Then I hear my words on playback and I wince. “What I mean is, no, I won’t waste your time.”

Espresso in hand, I meet him in the living room. As I reach for my notes, there comes a rustling from underneath the coffee table. Noah jumps about a foot off the couch.

“What was that?” he says.

“I have a tortoise. Alice. It was probably her,” I explain. “Do pets bother you?”

“No. It’s fine. I just ran into some aggressive dogs outside your apartment. Made me jumpy.”

I bite back a laugh. “That must have been scary.”

Noah’s peering under the coffee table as Alice pokes her head out. She appraises him discerningly, in the form of her trademark slow blink. An actual smile lights up his face.

“Hello, Alice,” he says, his voice exuding a friendliness apparently reserved for reptiles.

“It can take her a couple decades to warm up to new people,” I say, but then Alice blows my mind by taking one step and then another in Noah’s direction.

Unfortunately, her advance disrupts the equilibrium of allthe crap I’ve shoved under the coffee table. And out slides the framed picture of newly engaged Ryan and me. It clatters to my hardwood floor.

Noah picks up the frame, and I die a slow death watching him study it closely. He glances at me, then at the photo again. At last, he tilts his head to see under the coffee table.

“Is this where you keep all your ex-boyfriends?”

“He is not my ex-boyfriend—”

“Oh, right.” He points at my hand in the photograph. “The ring. Ex-fiancé?”

“Don’t worry about him!” I say and snatch the picture from his hands.

“Sorry,” Noah says. “Occupational hazard.”

I’m angry that he’s seen what I look like when I cry, guilty that I’d shoved Ryan under the coffee table for this asshole. I return the photo to its place on the wall.

Noah watches all of this with great interest, eyebrows annoyingly raised, and by the time I get back to my chair across the couch from him, Alice is sitting in his lap.

“We’ve bonded,” he announces, giving her a pat on the head in the one place she will accept affection.

I rub my temples, trying to focus. “Do you know why I asked you here today?”

“Because I didn’t turn in my homework on Saturday?” he says.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Because I know you don’t have a book.”

“I told you—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off. “Irons in the fire. Look,what I need is for you to have an actual idea that I can sell to Sue.”

He opens his mouth to argue. I’m not having it.