Page 12 of Trusting Mr. Sterling
He left.
She watched him through the window until he turned the corner onto Sixth Avenue. The coffee in her cup had gone lukewarm at some point during the cat story. She wrapped her hands around it anyway and sat for another minute, because the chair felt different now.
She closed the laptop, shouldered her bag, and stepped out into the warm June morning. She walked toward the subway with the coffee she had decided to abandon halfway down the block.
A man sat on the corner near the subway entrance with a cardboard sign propped against his knee, and a worn jacket too heavy for June hanging loose on his frame.
She didn’t break stride. She reached into her bag for the granola bar, and the water bottle she always carried.
“Here.” She set them beside him. “Have a good morning.”
“God bless you.”
She raised a hand and descended into the subway.
Nobody should be hungry. Ever. That was the promise she had made when she was thirteen, watching her mother choose between groceries and medication. The promise that had shaped her career, her company, every spreadsheet and every donation pickup and every granola bar in every bag she had ever carried.
Her phone rang as the train pulled out of the station. Lucy’s name glowed on the screen like a lifeline.
“Morning, Luce.”
“Hey. Quick question about the Berkowitz bar mitzvah next weekend. You wanted three dozen chocolate babka and two dozen lemon poppyseed, right?”
“That’s right. Can you handle it?”
“Already on it. I’m also testing a new honey almond tart. Want me to throw in a dozen for the dessert station? No charge. I need feedback.”
“You’re going to make me fat.”
“That’s the plan.” A pause. Lucy had a gift for pauses. “You sound off. Talk.”
Tessa watched the tunnel lights flash past. “You know your friend Devney? The one who just married Ronan Wilder last week?”
“The cake was a triumph. Yes.”
“One of his partners was my high school boyfriend. He walked into the coffee shop this morning and sat down at my table.”
Lucy went silent. Then: “Wait. Hold on. You went to your stupid coffee shop that isn’t my shop and you ran into him, and you let me sit here asking about babka? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Tessa. Which one is he?”
“Gabriel.”
“The buttoned-up one?”
“That’s the one.”
“And?”
“And he asked me where I was in my life. In words. Like a person.”
“Tessa, that’s not nothing.”
“I know.”
“Are you okay?”
