“Thanks,” she said, her mouth next to his ear. She could feel his hair flutter against her cheek.

“I’m a therapist now,” she added, ending the hug, leaning back slightly. “I have a doctorate in psychology.”

“Dr. Queenie,” he said, with a smile. “I found a paper you wrote with some other people about—what was it? Social—”

“Social cognition in college students,” she supplied.

“Interesting focus.” He took a sip of coffee, looking at her over the rim of the mug.

She laughed. “I guess so.”

Emily cut her corn muffin in half and lightly buttered one side.

“Remember . . .” Rob said, and then let his voice trail off.

“Remember what?” Emily asked, picking up her corn muffin.

“Remember when we went to that clinic before . . .”

“Yeah,” Emily said. How could she forget?

Rob drank some of his juice while Emily realized how his brain had gone from her recent miscarriage to them, back in college, talking about pregnancy and babies. “There’s a clinic like that not far from where I live, and years ago I asked them to give me a call whenever protesters show up. If I’m around, I head over with my guitar and my amp and I play so damn loud that the women can’t hear what the protesters are saying. It doesn’t help the signs, but . . .” He shrugged.

In the shrug, in the story, Emily saw the man she loved thirteen years ago. And she realized that their shared experience affected him, too. Maybe not to the degree that it affected her, maybe not the same way, but it changed him, too. It changed how he thought. It changed how he acted.

“That’s the best story I’ve heard in a long time,” she told him.

They finished eating soon after that, and Emily took out her wallet.

“Please, let me,” he said, laying a twenty on the table. “You hardly ordered anything. Plus you inspired my hit single, so the least I can do is thank you with a corn muffin and a coffee.”

Emily was going to protest, but instead simply said, “Thank you.”

As the waiter came to pick up the cash, Rob said, “So can I invite you and your husband out tomorrow night? My guests? It’s a secret, but I’m going to show up at an open mic night at Tony’s bar in New Jersey.”

“Tony our old drummer?” Emily asked.

Rob nodded. “Yeah, he’s got a kick-ass bar in Hoboken. And he made me promise I’d come by once he heard I’d be in town. I told my manager I needed another day here, and he worked it all out.”

“Huh,” Emily said. She really had never wondered what those guys had gotten up to. A deplorable lack of curiosity on her part. Or perhaps a defense mechanism. A form of self-preservation.