“The editor?” BD gasped. “Go talk to her.”

“Hell no.”

“If you don’t, I will,” BD said. She was one large dirty martini in. “I’d hate to see you lose the job to me.”

I downed the cold rest of my coffee and stood up. “You’re right. That would suck.”

I moved toward the bar, heart suddenly pounding. “Miss De Rue?” I offered my hand. “I’m Lanie Bloom. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m a huge fan of Noa Callaway.”

“Me, too,” she said and smiled at me briefly before returning to her laptop.

I took a breath. “The editorial assistant position—”

“Has been filled.”

“Oh.” Even though I already sensed this, even though I’d never even gotten a form email back from HR, I felt my heart collapse like a detonated building.

“Did your new assistant do this?” BD asked, suddenly behind me, thrusting my copy of Ninety-Nine Things under Alix de Rue’s nose. It was opened to the back pages where I’d written out my list.

I could have sunk into a puddle of shame watching Alix de Rue read what I’d written about Scorpios in the sack. When I’d made this list, I’d felt free. Now I thought about my mother and wondered whether she would be embarrassed.

“I told Noa readers would fill this out,” Alix said, more softly now, touching the page with cuticle-bitten fingertips.

“This book changed my life,” I confessed as Alix handed it back. “I guess I don’t have much to show for it yet, unemployed and begging strangers for jobs at cafés with my drunk grandmother—”

“Tipsy,” BD corrected me.

“But someday . . .” I said to Alix, with a little laugh, attempting levity.

“My new assistant hates ‘love stories,’ ” Alix said. “He’s someone’s nephew from our parent company and I was asked to give him a trial period.”

“Is that so?” BD asked, giving me a vaudeville wink.

Alix narrowed her eyes and seemed to take all of me in at once: my atrociously heavy tote bag, my scuffed white tennis shoes, the eight pounds I’d lost that summer from worry and walking and late-night discounted bodega salad bars, my slightly greasy, too-long bangs, my college girl’s jean jacket, and my desperate, romantic hope that my dream might not actually be absurd.

“What I love about love stories is their bravery,” I said.

“What other writers do you love? Not only Noa Callaway?”

“Elin Hilderbrand. André Aciman. Zadie Smith. Sophie Kinsella. Madeline Miller. Christina Lauren—” They tumbled from me. I might never have stopped if Alix hadn’t waved me off.

“All right, all right.” She laughed. “Good.”

“But most deeply”—I held Noa Callaway’s book to my chest—“her.”