He took a sip of his own martini, eyed me, sighed. “I shouldn’t have made reservations here. My ex and I used to come a lot. For anniversaries and birthdays, that kind of thing. I keep thinking she’ll pop up. Or one of her friends.” It was the first time he’d mentioned his ex so explicitly and I realized I didn’t even know if she still lived in this neighborhood, what her life was like.

“But who cares, right?” He chuckled at that, took a long, smooth sip of his martini. The olives looked like eyeballs at the bottom of a jar full of formaldehyde.

“She has her friends, you know. Who keep tabs.” He jerkily reached out his hand to me, grasped my fingers. “But let’s forget about that, okay? I want to focus on you.” I didn’t grasp his fingers back. Instead, I felt my gaze hover over all the other diners, trying to decide who had been the trigger, the one who had made him anxious.

The rest of the dinner went fine, if not a little stilted. We discussed work mostly, a recent acquisition he had made that I’d seen a headline about in the news. Dry stuff. We ordered steaks and they were dry, too. I watched him raise his voice at the waiter, imperiously ask him to serve us rarer meat. It made me sour seeing that; I cast my eyes to the ground, sat on my hands. He was right. It was cooler now that the sun was down.

We left the restaurant both visibly agitated. He tried to take my hand as we walked out, toward the promenade, and I didn’t oblige. We walked in silence, sidestepping dog walkers and late-night runners. On the grassy enclaves dotting the promenade, people sat and picnicked, even as it grew later. I was jealous of them, suddenly, laughing with their friends, cuddling their dogs, pouring wine into Solo cups. I rarely wanted to be with people my age, but at that moment I did, desperately.

And then his phone went off, shattering our silence. He looked at the caller ID and groaned, pocketed it. But as we continued south, it rang again and again and he didn’t silence it. Until eventually, I touched his elbow and said, “Please get that. For my own sanity.” And he did, walking away, leaving me stranded in the middle of the walkway. I wasn’t quite sure where we were headed, even. I just wanted to go home.