“I thought it would be weird not to mention your kids,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “Because you’re a baby and have no manners. If I wanted a mature, concerned boyfriend, I’d get one.”

She had never spoken to him this way outside of the bedroom, and he wondered disconsolately whether this was the way she actually saw him. His only plausible weapon now was silence, so he ate his pasta and stared at a pile of books on the floor. On top was a collection of stories about “the West” that a friend of his had told him was “the worst book ever written.” As a result, Alex had never read it. There were a lot of books like that. He wished, sometimes, for a less mediated life.

When they finished eating (Kate had stared at a week-old copy of the Times Magazine for the second half of the meal), Alex collected their plates and took them to the sink.

“I’ve got some work I need to do tonight,” Kate said from somewhere behind him.

“How am I supposed to interpret that?”

“That I’m not going to fuck you,” Kate said. “And not in a fun making-you-wait way, either.”

“I guess I’ll leave, then,” Alex said. “I didn’t come here to wash dishes.”

“Good, you’re terrible at it.”

This had escalated fast. He’d been pretty sure he’d be able to work things back around to getting laid. Now it looked like this friendship, relationship, whatever, might be ending.

“I’m going home,” he said. “I’m sorry, I guess. Or not. I don’t know what I thought this was.”

She cocked her head, a mirrored pantomime of him thinking. He walked out of the kitchen and out the front door to his car. In the passenger seat was the clean shirt he’d brought to wear the next day. It was only just starting to get dark out.