“But what about Stevie’s dinner?”

“What about it?” I asked, turning to him, surprised by the question. “I mean, I don’t think she’s going to be there. Before we got separated, she said she was going home.”

Beckett shook his head. “She wouldn’t have left you there. Something must have happened.”

For the first time, I let myself consider this possibility, and all its ramifications. “I waited for her,” I said, but with less conviction now. “I waited for a really long time.…”

“She wouldn’t have just left you behind,” Beckett insisted. He stopped walking and I stopped too. “This is Stevie we’re talking about.”

“But…” I tried to get my head around this. What if something had happened and she had gone back and found that I wasn’t there? It was all a lot to try and process, at the very moment I had no time to process it. “I’m supposed to go see this play,” I said faintly.

“You know she might be waiting for you at Josephine’s. She might be sitting there all alone,” Beckett said, his eyebrows furrowing.

I swallowed hard at the thought of it. But I’d come too far and gone through too much to back down now. And if this could do it—if I could guarantee I’d get Cordelia—I had to do it.

Didn’t I?

For just a moment, I thought about it—about changing direction, going down to the Village instead, being there at Josephine’s for Stevie. And we could have dinner together after all, and…

I shook my head, trying to stop this fantasy scene from playing out. The probability was, even if she hadn’t gone right away, by now she was probably back in Stanwich. And then I’d just be alone at a restaurant I couldn’t afford, having missed my chance to impress Mr. Campbell. And then all of this would have been for nothing.

“I have to go,” I said again, trying to sound sure about this but utterly failing.

“Okay,” he said. He nodded down to his pizzas. “I should go too.”

I gave him a small smile. I hoped that maybe—when we were both back in our regular lives—things might be a little better between us now. “I’ll see you back home?”

He gave me a half smile. “See you there.”

I turned my back on him and started walking fast down Fifty-First Street, my thoughts in a jumble. Had I totally messed up everything tonight? Wrecked it like I’d wrecked my friendship with Beckett? I tried to see tonight from Stevie’s perspective. I break her phone—and don’t even apologize—and then when she comes back, I’m gone. Was that what had happened? Or was it something else, some other possibility I wasn’t considering?