The problem with doormen was that they completely ruined the element of surprise. After we’d attacked the appetizers—and Beckett and I realized that the way to get truly great service was to almost cause the establishment to lose their liquor license—I’d headed out. Beckett had offered to go with me for moral support. But I knew that this conversation with my dad was long in coming. And I had to do it myself.

I did find myself wishing, though, as I collected my puffer from the coat check, that I could talk to Kat about all this. Not only because I needed, finally, to tell her the truth. But also because she was always there when important things happened. I always talked them through with her. I wasn’t mad anymore; now I was just wishing she was with me, and feeling that something was very off because she was not.

I’d taken a cab to the Upper West Side—Beckett had lent me twenty dollars. I’d promised to Venmo him as soon as I could, but he just gestured to the truffle mac and cheese incredulously and told me we were even.

My dad and Joy lived at Mayfair Towers, an apartment building on Central Park West, right next to the famed Dakota. The doorman on duty had called up to my dad, and from what I could tell of the one-sided conversation, my dad was surprised to hear that I was there, but he must have agreed to let me up, because the doorman put the phone down and nodded at me.

“Twenty-four C,” he said, and I wanted to tell him that I knew—that I’d been there before, that this was my dad—but instead, I just thanked him and walked to the elevators with my heart hammering.

I stepped off the elevator on the twenty-fourth floor and paused for a moment in the hallway—carpet, light fixtures every few feet, a table with a mirror right in front of the elevator. Was I really going to be able to do this?

There was a piece of me that was still telling me not to rock the boat. I didn’t have to, after all. Not tonight. I could just tell my dad I was in the neighborhood, that I wanted to stop by and tell him hello, and leave it at that.…

But I didn’t want to. Standing there in the hallway, I was aware that this was what I always did. I made things easier for people. I smoothed things over. I kept everything inside until I felt like I was going to explode. And where had it gotten me?

I was just tired of this—of not even letting myself feel what I was feeling, needing to push everything away.