I wave a hand. It’s ridiculous that I’m so embarrassed, but I am. I rushed over here as though he needed rescuing, so eager to see him again. “It’s like I said, I was—”

“No,” he says, and he has to lean in so that I can hear him. He went swimming today; I can tell. I let my eyes close for a beat longer than a blink, relishing that now-familiar smell, but open them when he speaks again. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. That I didn’t answer your calls.”

I send up a silent plea of exasperation—to Lachelle, to Gretchen, to the fates—for giving me the most complex practice problem for my first try at fighting with Reid. Should I let him keep going? Should I interrupt to tell him how sorry I am, how it was my fault, how I never meant to hurt him? Should I tell him again that this isn’t the time, that he’s been drinking, that it’s too loud and annoying in here? Or will that make it worse; will that make me seem rude, dismissive, distant?

“I thought of calling,” he says, taking advantage of my quiet, anxious indecision. He reaches up and rubs a hand through his hair, messily enough that it sticks up on the right side. “Every day, I thought of it. But then I’d think about what you said. About people trying to protect themselves.”

“I was wrong,” I blurt, even though it’s going to be no use right now explaining to him what I learned tonight—about myself, about other people.

But it doesn’t matter, because he keeps going. Gretchen brings back Reid’s card and receipt, but he doesn’t even seem to notice; he keeps his blue eyes so focused on me. When there’s a new round of shouts from somewhere in the rear of this swine-filled bar, he leans even closer.

“I don’t do that. Protect myself. I’m”—he swallows—“honest to a fault, that’s what Avery used to say. To my own detriment. To the detriment of people around me.”

I tense at this mention of Avery, of the past between me and Reid she brings up, of a shared criticism we’ve both, apparently, leveled at him. I feel a new spike of guilt, a desperate urge to run from this pain I caused him.

But I stay.

“Then I went out walking today,” Reid says. “I walked across the Bridge. I walked all around Brooklyn. And I realized something.”

No, wait, I want to say. Wait, I realized something, too. But God, it is so loud in here, and Reid is so close, and his voice sounds so good....

“I realized I’m not always honest with you.”