Caitlin quirks up her eyebrows. “Jesus. You make it sound all exciting.” She leans over the table. “Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least five men at ANBC who would happily bump you off your Saturday night prime time throne and present a show that is named after them.”

“Don’t I know it.” Traditionally, female newscasters are preferred to brighten up breakfast shows or present the news, not do the type of interviewing I do on television. The fact that I’ve been doing it for ten years straight doesn’t sit right with quite a few men who still believe a woman’s place is elsewhere. “But I just want the season to be over. I always get tired as July approaches, but this year, it’s different. It’s not just fatigue. I’ve always loved this job, every aspect of it, but lately it has been feeling more like a burden. Like a cage around my freedom. Look at you, Caitlin. You could pick up your life and decide to spend six months in another country at the drop of a hat. You even did it. You lived in the US for so long, decided to come back and did so, because you could. If you wanted to, you could reinvent yourself in another place all over again.”

“You’re in love. It’s normal for your priorities to shift.” She glances at her coffee. “I feel like we should have had this conversation in a bar rather than a coffee shop.”

“I just miss her. And it sounds stupid, but really, it’s the thought that occupies my mind the most. I just miss her. And it makes me feel all sorts of inadequate but at the same time, the thought of her also fills me with hope and love. I don’t want to sit here feeling sorry for myself, because look at me? I have it all. But when you look a little closer, I don’t really. And everything just feels so screwed up in my head.”

“You’ve been through a lot. First your break-up from Rebecca and all that put you through. All the while needing your focus on a demanding job. Then having to say goodbye to Camille. It’s okay to feel the way you do. You can express as much self-pity to me as you like.”

I wave her off. “Nobody wants to listen to their friends complain all the time.”

“Well, I’m telling you that I don’t mind listening to you.” She shoots me a warm smile.

“Thanks.” I stare out of the window for a second. “It’s only twenty-one days now and it’s already so hard. Say everything goes well in Paris. I stay with Camille for two months and we fall deeper in love. Then I have to come home and I can’t go back for another nine or ten months.”