When the show was over, and after much back and forth between friends, a large group migrated to a bar a few blocks from the gallery. The bar was below street level, and candles flickered in wrought-iron holders. The low ceiling was decorated in a mosaic of broken glass and tile. The waiter, who knew most of them by name, pulled a few tables together and everyone made room.

Jen sat across the table from David and they got caught up in separate conversations. A few times she saw him trying to catch her eye but she pretended not to notice, and when he reached for her knee beneath the table, she lightly pushed him away. At one point David laughed loudly, and Jen looked over to see him engaged in an animated talk with their friend Dan. His eyes were narrowed and gleaming, his head shook in disbelief. She enjoyed seeing David laugh with people; he had such a gift for sympathy.

Later, Jen told the whole table the story about David’s mother soaking her matches in water. The music was too loud and everyone leaned in closer to hear her. David rolled his eyes boyishly and told some other stories about his mother, all involving her artful obsessive-compulsion. It was like a parting gift to him, she thought, a gentle touch in the presence of others.

Jen and David said good-bye to their friends around midnight, drowsy and muddled from all the talking and beer. Their clothes were filled with the smell of cigarettes and their eyes stung from the smoke. They put on their coats and exited quietly, with David trailing a step behind.

Out on the sidewalk, beside the window of a closed restaurant, David reached out for Jen and drew her close. He bent to kiss her on the mouth but she limply turned her face toward his chest.

“What’s the matter?” David asked. He seemed to think he could cheer her up with his own good mood. His face hovered in an expression of jokey distraction.

Jen hesitated briefly and looked down at the ground. She had been practicing what she should say to him for a week.

“Are you okay?” he asked, dutifully concerned.

She raised her face to look at David directly. “I’m not in love,” she said. She stared straight into his eyes, leaving off the object of her sentence in a last-moment pang of guilt. As if her love existed apart from any real person or thing, like a math equation, or the echo of an echo. I’m not in love. “With you” was implied. She watched his face cloud over and darken.

David stood there silently and released her from his long arms. He stepped away and stopped expressing anything, but just closed down and appeared to think.