This is when Bailey came back to the table. She sat down and dug into her pasta, a delicious southern Italian rendition of Cacio e Pepe. It was a decadent mix of cheese and spicy pepper and salty olive oil.

Owen leaned in and took a huge bite, right off her plate.

“Dad!” She laughed.

“Sharing is caring,” he said, his mouth full. “Wanna hear something cool?”

“Sure,” she said. And she smiled at him.

“Hannah got us all tickets to see the revival of Barefoot in the Park tomorrow night at the Geffen,” he said. “Neil Simon is one of her favorites too. Doesn’t that sound great?”

“We’re seeing Hannah again tomorrow?” she said. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

“Bailey…” Owen shook his head.

Then he gave me an apologetic look: I’m sorry she’s being like this.

I shrugged: It’s really okay, however she wants to be.

I meant it. It was okay with me. She was a teenager who hadn’t had a mother for most of her life. All she had was her father. I didn’t expect her to be good with the prospect of sharing him with someone else. I didn’t think anyone else should expect that of her either.

She looked down, embarrassed. “Sorry I just… have a lot of homework to do,” she said.

“No, please, it’s fine,” I said. “I have a ton of work to do too. Why don’t you two go to the play? Just you and your dad. And maybe we’ll meet up back at the hotel, if you end up getting your work done?”

She looked at me, waiting for the catch. There was none. I wanted her to understand that. Regardless of what I was going to do right in terms of her, and what I was going to do wrong (and based on how things were starting, I knew I was going to do a lot that she considered wrong), there was never going to be a catch. That was a promise I could make her. As far as I was concerned, she didn’t have to be nice. She didn’t have to pretend. She only had to be herself.

“Honestly, Bailey. No pressure either way…” I said.

Owen reached over and took my hand. “I’d really like us to all go together,” he said.

“Next time,” I said. “We’ll do it next time.”

Bailey looked up. And I saw it there before she could hide it. I saw it in her eyes, like a secret she didn’t mean to let me in on—her gratitude that I had understood her. I saw how much she needed someone to understand her, someone besides her father. How she thought it for just a second—that just maybe that someone might turn out to be me.

“Yeah,” she said. “Next time.”