Page 32 of His Good Girl

When the waitress left, Jules lowered her voice. “Did you look?”

“At what?”

“At the situation.”

“I am leaving.”

“You are not leaving. You have not eaten your croissant.”

“I did not look.”

“Avery.”

“I didn’t lookdirectly.”

Jules shut her eyes, overcome. “There it is.”

“I noticed his posture.”

“His posture.”

“He stayed behind the desk.”

“Men stay behind desks for many reasons. Power. Ergonomics. Concealment.”

“Stop.”

“Was there concealment, Avery?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know enough.”

I pressed my chilled hands against my flaming cheeks. “I hate this.”

“No, you don’t. You hate that you don’t hate it.”

That was far too accurate, so I was rude and took the last piece of croissant before she could.

For a little while, we stopped making the conversation behave and let it run wherever it wanted. Jules asked whether the office had a couch. I said yes, but it was on the far side of the room and looked too expensive to sit on unless one had recently completed a merger. She asked whether Callum wore a watch. I said yes, dark leather strap, silver face, understated, which was the exact moment she screamed, “You cataloged the watch,” so loudly a man with headphones at the counter turned around. I asked whether she wanted me to die in public. She said she wanted me to live authentically, which somehow seemed worse.

Then, because we were adults with no impulse control and a pending moral crisis, we looked him up. Not in a stalker way. In a public-information way. In a his-company-literally-has-a-media-page way. In a two-women-at-a-corner-table-sharing-one-phone-over-iced-coffee way that history would likely judge but not fully understand. Jules typed his name with theatrical slowness.

“Callum Rowe,” she said, reading as she searched. “Founder and CEO of Rowe Structural Group. Visionary. Builder. Widower?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Divorced. I think. Years ago.”

“You think?”

“I know he was married when I was younger. Her name was Claudia. She was very elegant and once told me my bangs had courage, which I understood, even at thirteen, was not a compliment. They divorced before my parents died.”

“Any children?”

“No.”

“Excellent. Fewer Christmas complications.”

“Jules.”