“No worries,” he said. “It’s on the house.”

“You’re a doll,” Audrey said, spinning off the barstool. She collected her wine and a plastic bag of animal crackers from the bar.

I smiled and pointed to them. “I see your favorite snack hasn’t changed.”

“Guilty as charged,” she said brightly, holding the bag out to me. “Want some?”

I took a few and led her through the bar to where our team, the Fertile Octogenarians (a property law joke that had seemed hilarious when we were neck-deep in bar prep), traditionally gathered in a large, rounded booth. I quickly made introductions: my friend Priya from law school; Jessa, Priya’s coworker at Planned Parenthood; Lamar, Jessa’s boyfriend; Harry, a friend of Lamar’s from college; and Lon, who worked with Harry at the DOJ.

“Hi, everyone, thanks for letting me crash your trivia party,” Audrey said, smiling and sliding into the booth beside Harry. She tossed the bag of animal crackers in the middle of the table. “Help yourselves.”

Lon, who had a nasty habit of digging around in his ears with his fingers, immediately reached a hand into the bag, and I decided I’d had enough animal crackers.

Audrey pulled me into the booth beside her and raised her arm, her phone angled toward us, taking a selfie. I forced a smile onto my face, already knowing what the image would look like: Audrey grinning coquettishly, her eyes widened and her chin tilted just so, while I sat woodenly beside her, my face inevitably captured with one eye partially closed. I had hundreds of such pictures from our college years.

“Where’s Connor?” I asked, striving for casualness even as my throat closed over his name. I had walked past his office on my way out of work, but his door had been shut and I couldn’t tell whether he was inside or already gone.

“Right here.”

Connor had the kind of deep, authoritative voice that all lawyers dreamed of having, and the sound of it always made my heart contract. I turned to see him standing at the edge of the booth, smoothing his thick, sand-colored hair with a hand. He grinned and my heart squeezed again, dangerously tightly. I loved his smile in its imperfect perfection, the way it lifted slightly higher on the left and the way it displayed his chipped front tooth.

“Hey, Harrell,” he said, sliding into the booth beside me. “Who’s your friend?”

“Hi,” Audrey said brightly, leaning around me. “I’m Audrey.”

“Connor,” he said, directing his smile at her in a way that made me bereft. I intensely wished that Audrey were wearing something more substantial than a doily.

Feeling shamefully territorial, I leaned forward to interrupt their eye contact, saying, “Audrey, Connor went to law school with Priya and me, and he works at Barker & Liu with me now.”

“Ah,” she said, eyes twinkling mischievously. “So I should probably keep the lawyer jokes to myself?”

“No, I love a good lawyer joke,” Connor protested. “Here, what’s the difference between an accountant and a lawyer?”