“I understand,” I sneered at her.

“Good,” she said, nodding abruptly. She pivoted on her heel and marched off, without looking back even once. I watched her go, her strong runner’s calves bobbing from underneath the hem of her skirt suit. Aly was so severe. It was hard to imagine that I had once thought she was something special.

I paused and looked back at her building. Within a week after sending that impersonal message, Aly had changed the locks on her home. It had been performative; the lock she had installed wasn’t anything special. I could easily break the glass panel beside the door, snake my arm through the newly created hole, and let myself inside her apartment. I could smash the mason jars she used to serve drinks, an affectation that drove me mad; knock all the pretentious biographies and all the books of political analysis she said I didn’t understand off her flimsy IKEA shelves; burn those expensive candles that smelled like sugar until there was nothing left but crumbling wicks. I could wait in the shadows of that dark row house until she returned home and—

No.

That wouldn’t get me any closer to Audrey, and she was all that mattered. Everything else was just a distraction.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE CAT

Bill Hannover summoning me into his corner office on a Friday afternoon could mean only one thing: my weekend was about to be consumed with some research project or motion drafting. In the four years I had worked at the firm, I could count on my fingers the number of times I’d had a completely clear weekend. It wasn’t something that bothered me. I knew that sacrificing my weekends was a necessary step on my path to the partnership, and I was happy to hand them over. Since Audrey had parachuted back into my life, however, I’d started carving out more time to spend with her, checking out new restaurants, visiting the museums, and acting as her photographer so she could pose in front of interesting backdrops from the Lincoln Memorial to that house on Q Street that was painted to look like a watermelon.

That weekend, though, I was free to do all the work Bill might pile upon me. Audrey had a second date with Max Metcalf, and I’d felt both relieved and queasy since she announced it. Their relationship seemed like a catch-22. If things didn’t work out, would Max hold me accountable and make good on his “a person never forgets camp” threat? On the other hand, if they did, would Camp Blackwood come up in their conversation? Would Emily Snow? And once Audrey learned about that summer, what would she do with that knowledge? She’d never demonstrated discretion with other people’s secrets (for example, I knew exactly how many men our mutual friend Jasmine had slept with, even though Jasmine had never once revealed a partner to me), and she had a platform that could reach more than a million people in an instant. I couldn’t decide which scenario was worse.