Chapter Five: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

"Aureole," Miles said, grinning, holding up his phone with the confirmation on the screen. "Seven o'clock. Your birthday."

"Miles. That place has a four-month waitlist."

"I pulled some strings." He kissed my forehead. "Nothing but the best for my girl."

We'd been together eight months. It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I'd bought a new dress for it: deep blue silk, more than I wanted to admit spending, the kind of dress that made me stand up straighter.

Valeria was home from Cambridge for the summer. I still hadn't met her.

"She's not ready," Miles had said, every time I suggested lunch, a coffee, anything. "She gets overwhelmed with new people. Give her time."

So I gave her time.

By six-thirty on my birthday, I was sitting on my couch in the blue silk dress, hair curled, makeup perfect, watching the clock. By six-forty-five, I was checking my phone. At six-forty-seven, it buzzed.

So sorry. Valeria had a panic attack. At the hospital with her. Will make it up to you, I promise.

I read it three times.

A panic attack was serious. Of course he had to be there. I typed carefully: Is she okay? Do you need me to come?

No answer.

At seven-fifteen, I called Aureole and canceled. The hostess informed me, very kindly, that there was a two-hundred-dollar f*e for same-day cancellation. I paid it.

At eight, I took off the blue dress and hung it in the back of the closet. I washed off the makeup and stood in front of the bathroom mirror in pajamas, trying to decide whether I was allowed to be hurt.

At eight-thirty, I opened my phone again, and Valeria's account came up first on my feed. I'd followed her months ago and she'd never followed me back.

It was a photo of a hospital room, taken from the bed. Miles sat in the chair beside it in his good suit, the suit he'd been planning to wear to Aureole, smiling at the camera and holding up a plastic spoon with a cup of chocolate pudding.

The caption said: My hero. Don't know what I'd do without him. 💙

Posted fourteen minutes ago.

She looked fine. Pale, maybe, but propped up and smiling, with her hair brushed and her lip gloss on.

I put the phone face-down on the counter and stood there in my kitchen while the refrigerator hummed.

At nine, the phone rang.

I grabbed it, thinking it was Miles. The screen said Alexander.

"Happy birthday, Lila."

His voice was warm and familiar, and it undid me. I pressed my hand over my mouth.

"Lila?" A pause. Then, carefully: "You're home."

"I'm home."

"It's your birthday, and you're home at nine o'clock on a Saturday." It wasn't a question. "Where's Miles?"

"At the hospital. Valeria had a panic attack." My voice wobbled. "She's fine. She's eating pudding. There's a photo."

He was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had gone very even, which was how I knew he was angry.

"Have you eaten?"

"No."

"Do you want to?"

I looked at my pajamas. My bare face. The blue dress hanging in the dark closet.

"I don't want to get dressed up again," I said.

"Then don't." I heard keys jingle. "Open your door."

"What?"

"I'm downstairs. I was going to leave your present with the doorman." Another pause. "Open your door, Lila."

---

He was standing in my hallway in dark jeans and a gray sweater, holding a bunch of pink peonies wrapped in brown paper.

"You remembered," I said. My throat was tight.

"You were nine. We went to the botanical garden on a field trip, and you stood in front of the peony bed for twenty minutes and told Mrs. Albright they were the most beautiful flowers in the world." He handed them to me. "She tried to make you get back on the bus. You told her you'd walk home."

"I did walk home."

"I know. I walked with you. We got in so much trouble."

I laughed, and it came out wet, and he looked at my face and didn't say anything about it.

He took me to a tiny Italian place in the Village with red leather booths and a candle in a wine bottle on every table. I went in my jeans and a sweater, and nobody looked at me twice. He told me about his trip to Singapore: a client dinner where everyone was served durian and pretended to like it, and the junior partner who threw up in a potted palm. I laughed until I cried, and then I cried a little for real, and he passed me a napkin and kept talking until I stopped.

He never asked why I'd been free on my birthday. He never said a word about Miles.

At midnight, outside my building, he took a small flat package out of his coat pocket.

"One more thing."

I unwrapped it under the streetlight. It was Pride and Prejudice, an old edition bound in blue leather, the gilt on the spine worn soft.

"Alex. This is too much."

"It's your birthday. You're my best friend." He shrugged, but his ears had gone red. "Nothing's too much."

I hugged him for a long time on the sidewalk. When I pulled back, he was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Goodnight, Lila."

"Goodnight."

I stood in the lobby with my flowers and my book and watched him walk to his car. He didn't look back.

---

Miles called at ten the next morning.

"Babe. I'm so sorry about last night."

"Is she okay?"

"She's fine now. She remembered something about the accident. Her mother screaming. She just spiraled." He sounded tired. "I couldn't leave her alone. You understand, right?"

I thought about the pudding. The lip gloss. My hero.

"I saw the photo," I said.

"What photo?"

"Valeria posted a picture of you two at the hospital. At eight-thirty."

There was a short silence. "She was trying to cheer herself up. She does that. It's a coping thing. Her therapist says it helps." His voice softened. "Lila. I know it was your birthday. I feel terrible. Let me make it up to you. This weekend. Anywhere you want."

I wanted to tell him he could have called the hospital and asked whether she needed him there all night. I wanted to tell him he could have sent me more than two sentences. I wanted to ask why, eight months in, I still hadn't met the person who kept canceling my life.

"Of course I understand," I heard myself say. "I'm glad she's okay."

He took me out that weekend, to a restaurant he chose. Valeria came up five times before dessert: how frightened he'd been, how fragile she was, how guilty he felt for not being there enough.

Driving me home, he reached across the console and squeezed my hand. "You're so understanding about Val. It means everything to me. Most women would be jealous. You get it. Family comes first."

I smiled and looked out the window at the passing streetlights.

Two weeks later, Valeria flew back to Cambridge. I still hadn't met her.

At dinner that night, Miles reached across the table and took both my hands, the way he did when he had something important to say.

"I've been thinking about something for a while," he said. "Come work with me."