Perhaps it was the intensity of the last few days that emboldened me to walk right up and say hello. As I might’ve predicted, her eyes sparkled and widened as she greeted me, like a special effect. She gulped the egg with mock embarrassment, then got up and embraced me with one arm, the lid of the salad box swinging in her hand.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Waiting for my sister. She’s coming in from Omaha. How about you?”

I told her I’d been on a reporting trip in California.

“That’s exciting,” she said. “What’s the scoop?”

“I can’t really talk about it.”

The appearance of delight rippled through her.

“I like that. Top secret, very sexy.”

“Not really.”

“I can’t wait to see the results. We’re long overdue, aren’t we? We should really get together. I’ll be busy entertaining my sister for the next little while, but drinks sometime soon?”

I glanced at my suitcase, which I’d set between us, then looked up and said, “I don’t think so.”

A line I’d never seen before appeared between her brows. “Sorry?”

“Well,” I laughed, “you don’t really mean it, do you? You’ve said the same thing a few times now, and when I follow up, you always make some excuse. Even now, you sort of tucked an excuse right into the invitation. Call me crazy, but if I invited you out in a week or so, wouldn’t you say you’re still busy with your sister, or if she’s gone, that you’re still tired from hosting her? And then more weeks would pass, and nothing.”

Annette was considering me seriously, her fork upright in the salad’s drizzled hunk of cucumber.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” I added.

“You’re not,” she said. “It’s true, what you’re saying. You’re not imagining things.”

It felt like a breakthrough, the first glimmer of intimacy.

“Then why?” I implored. “Why is it like this all the time?”

“I don’t know,” she said, giving me a look of such contempt that I felt it in my eyes a long time after. “It’s just something in you, something—I don’t know—blank.”

“Blank?” I said, a harsh laugh escaping.

“Look, you asked, okay? I don’t want to be saying any of this. I mean, you’re funny, and interesting, and devoted to your work. But you’re not right with people—you’re always holding something back.”

Only men had ever said something similar—that wall they hit with me—and I felt about to well up in front of this woman I’d really tried opening myself to, someone I would’ve, after getting closer, told anything, or almost anything.

“Just because I don’t gush,” I said, “or blurt out every last stupid thing that’s on my mind?”