“What do you mean, an emotional past? And even if what you are saying is true”—and of course, as he’d said it, I knew in my bones that it was, we were never going to be a forever kind of thing—“that means you get to punish me for it? To publicly humiliate me?”

“Why do you think I always wanted to hear your stories from when you were a kid? I had—have—no idea what it is like to belong to a family like that. When I say I live in a world of ideas, I mean I only have ideas. How could I live up to you, emotionally, in a relationship? I know things got messed up when your dad died, with your mom and all. But still, I never would have been able to give you that kind of depth. I wouldn’t be able to belong to a family like that and not screw it up one way or another. I wish I could but I can’t.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Maybe some part of me doing that show was about wanting you to see that. Maybe, deep down, I thought you would leave eventually, no matter what I did. I wasn’t trying to punish you, but maybe I was trying to save face, and somehow it ended up that way. But you’re right. You didn’t deserve it.”

What had I been doing with Matthew, anyway? I thought of the other night, with Clara, the closest I had come to saying that I was with him because I couldn’t have with him the same kind of relationship my parents had with each other. Matthew was sex and money and fun and glamour. He was arguments in the back seats of black cars and making up in his private elevator, gourmet coffee that cost $30 a pound, getting champagne drunk on Tuesday afternoons at someone’s SoHo loft. He was moody and self-centered. He was a distraction. He was a way out of thinking about my father, about the family I had once and didn’t have anymore.

We sat in silence for a moment, watched the bartender shake a drink, pour it into a tall glass, and shove a wedge of pineapple onto the rim. “Something’s been bothering me. Can I ask what the deal is—with you and Ramona? Why you are pretending that you’re still together? I mean, Matthew, she doesn’t even like you.”

He stared at me. I looked away but still felt his eyes on my lips. “You’ve gotten a little mean, Lily. It’s kind of fun.”

“I wouldn’t say mean. I’d say frank. We don’t really have to tiptoe around each other anymore.”