My phone rang; finally, someone who could get me out of there. One of the lawyers. A telemarketer. Someone informing me I’d just won a cruise. I’d take any of them.

But no—it was Atlas. “Speak of the devil.” I showed her my screen.

“Please don’t tell him,” Ari said, covering my phone with her hand. “When I ask him to move in, I want it to be a surprise.”

I pressed decline. She could have her secret. But also: Atlas could have my silence. He hadn’t told me that Ari was coming to DC. Our friendship, I could only assume, wasn’t as mended as I’d thought.

“I know you and I haven’t known each other that long,” Ari said, earnest, “although it feels like it’s been years. Atlas talks about how close you are. He trusts you, so I trust you.”

But he hadn’t trusted me with this. And by this I meant her, her plans for a shared apartment, her agenda for her eggs.

“This is where I’m leasing,” she told me, pulling up a page on her phone. “Do you think he’ll like it? Or is the building too generic for him?” She had chosen a modern high-rise along the H Street corridor, once a thriving commercial part of town before succumbing to urban decay. People were saying now that it was “back,” which I understood to mean there were new vegan restaurants and apartment buildings with rooftop pools and cabanas. I scrolled through pictures of a marbled lobby complete with coffee shop and zoomed-in shots of cabinets and light fixtures. “Will Atlas like it?”

“As long as it gets Premier League on the television, he’ll be happy,” I said, stepping back onto the heel of someone behind me, needing some distance but finding none. As I corrected my position, I somehow wound up even closer to her. The truth: he’d hate the apartment. No cozy corners or exposed brick. He despised open floor plans. Why pay DC prices to live in a glass tower that could be anywhere? We were in complete agreement on the subject. At least, we used to be.

“I just wish he didn’t have to travel so much,” she said sadly. “I just got here, and he’s already going away. I’m rooting for him to get out of journalism.” Ari smiled, if you could call it that. Then the edges of her mouth dripped back down. “He’ll get paid a little,” she continued. “No retirement. No benefits. And the owner of the paper he’s freelancing for is a billionaire. I mean, come on.”

“Atlas is great at what he does.” I didn’t like the fact Atlas had, by omission, allowed her to ambush me. But the way she was talking about his work—flippant, eye-rolly—I really didn’t like. “We need more people like him.”