Noah squares off to face me, crosses his arms, and raises one eyebrow dramatically with an exaggerated tilt of his head. All he needs is a monocle to complete the look of total lunatic. I burst out laughing.

“I’m scared now,” I say.

“See?”

“Scared for you that you think that’s an intimidation tactic. You look like an Angry Bird.”

“Fine, but I am a better chess player in person. The game of kings needs human beings.”

“Well, if only you hadn’t pissed me off so much that day in Central Park,” I say, feigning a sigh. “We could have already put this argument to rest.”

“I’m afraid there’s only one solution,” he says.

“Are you challenging me to a game of chess?” I say, feeling my competitive spirit rise.

He nods. “And hoping you like sushi, because I’m starving, and Saturdays are for sushi.” Then he does the thing with the eyebrow again until I crack up and agree.

Noah tells the cab to stop at Ninety-Fifth and Broadway.

“What are we doing here?” I ask as he opens the door.

“This is where I live.” He leads us toward a black iron gate tucked into the center of a two-story Tudor-style apartment building. The place looks out of time, dwarfed by taller and more modern buildings on all sides.

I’ve been here before, I realize. This is the entrance to Pomander Walk, the pedestrian enclave of row houses Meg brought me to once for a party. It had been on my list of Fifty Ways to Break Up Noah and His Writer’s Block. He crossed it out.

“You don’t live here,” I say as Noah takes out a key and unlocks the gate. He leads me up a set of brick stairs, which open to a private garden the length of an avenue block. “You live in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park.”

“I write in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park,” he says. “I live in a studio, right there.” He points to a quaint brick façade halfway down the walk, with the sweetest little apple tree out front. “It’s tiny, and I rent, but”—he looks around at the garden, as if it’s still a wonderful surprise to him—“I’ll never give it up.”

Which explains why he was walking around the Upper West Side with his bunny while I was at Emergency Brunch.

Recalibrate, Lanie, I tell myself.

I was expecting a doorman, an elevator, expensive steel and glass. I was expecting to be annoyed by my envy of his wealth, which I assumed he spent in flashy, impersonal ways. But now . . . something about entering Noah’s garden-level studio apartment is disorienting. It’s so intimate. Maybe too intimate.

He’s unlocking his door. I need to decide whether to call this off right now.