I was incapable of thinking past my five-year plan. A plan that involved Graham. I’d live here at least until that happened. After that felt like another life. One I couldn’t conceptualize quite yet. I’d be a different person in five years; just as I was a different person now than I was five years ago. That Elizabeth doesn’t exist anymore. And this Eliza won’t exist then.

A woman in a suit named Zena stopped at our table and took our drink orders with the attitude of someone very happy to be here, but slightly pissed that she wasn’t serving the big celebrity tippers at the table over. I ordered a second glass of wine so quickly I was afraid she didn’t hear me properly. I was too nervous to be completely sober. When she turned to Graham he ordered a club soda.

“I don’t drink...” he said, as she marched off.

I immediately felt like a deplorable alcoholic. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I should have waited.” I turned to get Zena’s attention. “Let me see if I can order something else—”

“No, no, no.” He reached across the table for my arm, touching it so gently he might as well not have been holding it at all. It was electrifying. “Have all the wine you want. Seriously.” When I turned back, he was looking at me like an earnest child, afraid he’d offended me in the same way I feared I’d offended him. How, in all my research, did I not learn he was sober? I knew his fucking social security number—I couldn’t have somehow put together that in all his recent social media pictures he’s the only one of his friends not holding a beer?

It made me nervous for what else I could have possibly missed.

“I’m not an alcoholic or anything,” he clarified, pulling his hand back to his side of the table. “I stopped drinking in college. Had one really bad night, you know...”

I knew.

“Everyone’s got that one night,” I said, brushing it off. “So you were a partier in college, I gather?”

His eyebrows rose and fell with a laugh. “I was stupid in college,” he corrected. “I thought keg stands and body shots would impress girls.”

“Did it?”

“Maybe if I knew how to do it right,” he said. “I was more like the one varsity athlete in my frat who could only drink during off-season and overcompensated.”

“Wow.” I laughed as Zena dropped off my wine and his seltzer. I found myself blushing even though I didn’t want to. I blamed it on the wine. “That was one subtle flex you did just there.”