“Does what freak me out?” My face was glowing at this point, red with drink.

“That I have a kid. That I was married.”

I shook my head. “As long as you don’t have a second or third secret family, then we’re all good.”

He laughed. “You’re kind of dark, aren’t you?” I winked, nodded.

He asked me about my job, which was a win in his favor. A lot of men were quick to dismiss working in fashion, as if there wasn’t a whole complicated, intellectual, economic side of it. As if it didn’t take talent, drive, a discerning eye and business acumen to make it in such a competitive industry.

I was the director of sales at a small, but growing apparel company called Magdelena, named after the founder’s grandmother. I loved working there. I breathed it, burrowed myself in it; nothing I did had felt quite right until I landed that job, like I’d been waiting for my life to start. I loved the challenge of expanding the company to new retailers, new marketplaces, the rush of elation when I landed a new buyer. The puzzle solving of creating marketing strategies and watching them take off. The control I had, like I was a small god continuously molding this label into what I thought it could be. The twinge of superiority that came from knowing the company would be a household name in a few years. I loved Huda, the founder, who knew every Vogue cover from the magazine’s founding to the present day, who made the warmest ginger cookies and the strongest elderflower gin drinks. I loved the clothes, too. Comfortable and chic, forgiving shapes and material. Sophisticated color combinations, sensuous textures and completely seasonless. Things I actually wore in real life.

I had wanted to work there so badly that I found the other girl interviewing for the job, who had gotten as far along in the process as I had, someone whom I actually had met a couple of times through mutual friends. On the night before our final round, I texted her, asking to get a drink, to make a truce of sorts, to celebrate our mutual success thus far. As I knew it would, one drink turned to seven and the poor girl ghosted her 9:00 a.m. interview.

I don’t tell Tom this, of course.