“Meems, it’s not silly. I have to go. It’s for work.”

“Work?” Her face folded in confusion. “But you came out here with me.” She looked around. “And we’re the example. We’re Project Zero. These people need to know that the questionnaires are the real deal!”

Ezra sighed. He’d told her about the dinner but hadn’t stressed its importance. He hadn’t told her about the job offer because he didn’t know if she, who had come to think of herself as a New Yorker, would want to move, and maybe more honestly, he didn’t know if he’d break something fragile between them. But also, at these events, he was starting to feel like an animal in a zoo: always on display.

“No,” he said. “I mean, yes. I’m here as your plus-one. But I do have some work.”

“But this is my thing!” He knew that it mattered to her; he knew that she wanted to impress her bosses. She’d recently been told that she’d get a bonus for every person who signed up for the site from her events. “I wanted you here to do my thing with me.”

Ezra nodded. He really, really did not want to fight. He really, really did not want to skip this dinner, if only because it was in thirty minutes and canceling now would be rude. But Mimi’s arms were crossed and she was staring at him with a quiet fury.

“Mimi,” he started, but she cut him off, which was just as well because he didn’t know what, or how, he was going to decide.

“I’m sorry, Ezra,” she said, though she didn’t sound sorry at all. “By all means, go to dinner. You know, this doesn’t exactly come easy to me. But, fine, whatever, ok. Go.”

Ezra didn’t even know what this meant, because the last thing he’d done was come to any of this easily either. He, like Mimi, had grown up without any of the perks of his new world order—having not much more than just what they needed, living mostly month to month with maybe a little savings if the sky fell down—and walked away from the law job to live off ramen and pizza slices for a year while he waited for one of his gaming ideas to break and pay him a salary. He’d buried his mom. He’d lost touch with most of his old friends. He’d managed to forge a bigger life than he’d planned, but it hadn’t in any way come easily, and besides, he no longer knew if he wanted it now that it was his. He’d fallen into the work in tech, which was filled with bros who talked about expensive tire rims and twenty-thousand-dollar Rolexes, so far from his Philadelphia roots and values. He hadn’t said any of that out loud, of course.

Mimi approached tears, so he conceded and rescheduled his dinner to brunch the next day, which was just as well because the Google guys were stuck at the office and running late, so no one really minded. Well, Ezra had minded being made to feel as if he were an unsupportive boyfriend. He needed Mimi as much as she needed him. He resolved that maybe they just needed to get married so she knew, really knew, that she was as necessary to him as air.