Page 28 of That's Not a Thing

I hear a knock on the open door of my office and look up from my computer screen to see Ian standing in the doorway, coat in hand.

“Hey. I was just going to head down to Wolfgang’s for a steak lunch. Join?”

“Haven’t given up on Atkins yet, I see.” His brief but ardent enthusiasm for each new fad he adopts makes me smile. “My best friend is in town from LA, and I’m about to meet her at The Smith. Pretty sure they have steak there, too, if you want to come.”

“Nah.” He smirks as he shakes his head slightly and shrugs into his wool coat. “I know better than to intrude on a reunion with one of your college girls. As much as I might like to hear you reminisce about the trouble you caused on some wild spring breaks or whatever else you crazy coeds did, I’ll leave you to it.” He puts his hand out for a fist bump, which I return, before he goes on his way.

From the desk behind me, I hear Nicola scoff. “Is that serious?” she demands, and I turn to see an expression of utter outrage on her round face.

“What?” Nicola is always annoyed. I don’t have the patience to massage her indignation today.

“That was, like, total and complete sexual harassment, sexualizing the behavior of college girls like that. You could get him fired.”

“No, he’s just joking.” Sure, if a seventy-year-old partner said the same thing to me, it would be inappropriate, but Ian and I have a long-standing and comfortable friendship and we can rib each other without concern. I stand and start collecting my things so I can go meet Daphne.

“It’s completely unacceptable conduct,” Nicola continues to complain, her lip curling up so far that it becomes indistinguishable from her nose.

I don’t answer as I retrieve my phone and the backup battery that it’s been plugged into all morning.

“You should think really seriously about how you’re going to handle it,” Nicola drones on. There is a timbre to her voice that I don’t like, an undercurrent that sounds an awful lot like a threat. I have no idea whether her menace would be directed at me or at Ian, but I just want to get out of here, to see Daphne and finally have an honest conversation with someone.

“Okay, yeah,” I say over my shoulder as I head out. “I’ll do that.”

Man, I hate this place.

AS DAPHNE ANDI sit at lunch, dipping handcrafted potato chips into Roquefort fondue, savoring the fat grams that we’ll both regret later, she fills me in on what’s been happening with her job search out in LA. She’s finishing up a PhD program in psychology at UCLA and trying to determine what she will do after she receives her degree in May. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t speak or text at least once or twice, but Daphne moves in her own orbit, and sometimes it’s a struggle to keep up. She’s also going through fertility treatments because she and her husband, Ethan, have been trying to make a baby for two years, with no luck.

“It sucks balls,” she says, popping another chip into her mouth, “getting shot up with this hormone that you know is going to fuck with your head, and then you have to go home and have sex on demand. My kid better be one cute motherfucker after all the shit we are going through to get her.”

“Or him,” I point out.

“Or him,” she repeats, her copper curls dancing around her face. “I hear baby boys pee all over the place, though. My friend Joni’s son pissed straight into her eye like five times in the first week of his life. Yeesh. Fingers crossed for a girl if that shit’s for real.”

I laugh then, my first happy laugh since I learned about Wesley’s diagnosis. I take solace in Daphne’s wide-open face, her nearly translucent alabaster skin. Daphne has always been able to dilute my moments of gloom, to drag me out from under whatever is assailing me. Ever since we were kids complaining about who knows what —our parents, the mean girls in the grade above, my pushy older brother—she could always light me back up with her absurd behavior and her oversize emotions.

“Okay, now you.” She has pulled the straw out from her glass of mineral water and is pointing it at me. “What’s the latest with your hot hunk of doctor meat?”

“It’s been a weird week,” I say. My eyes scan the other tables at the restaurant. I’m not looking for anyone in particular among the sea of faces, the groups of twos and threes lunching at small, square tables, bodies settled into trendy bistro chairs. I’m just preparing myself, stalling for a few more seconds, because once I open the levee, I’m not sure what emotions will come surging out.

“Tell me,” she says, suddenly focused. My hesitation has betrayed me, alerted her that I’ve got something real, something bulky, on my mind. Our waiter appears and deftly pushes our platter of chips and fondue to the side before placing matching chopped salads on the table in front of us.

“I saw Wesley again, at the soup kitchen,” I confess as soon as the waiter turns away.

She flinches slightly. Blinks. “Wait, hold up. What?” She puts up a hand as if to push away what I’ve said, or at least to block herself from the fallout. She never forgave Wesley for the way he disappeared, or for how she had to nurse me through my broken heart. She almost moved back from California to take care of me at one point, and I know she’s still more than a little pissed off. She made that perfectly clear when I called her after I bumped into him at Thunder Chicken. She spent a good twenty minutes lecturing me about not letting Wesley’s presence in the States have any impact on my relationship with Aaron, on the new life that I’ve worked so hard to build.

I tell her all about the work training program that Wesley started at Community Kitchen, and she seems genuinely intrigued, as if the socially conscious nature of the program has allowed her to forget all about who’s behind its creation.

“Well, a pocket full of aces to him,” she says. “Maybe he’s trying to reclaim some good karma after the world of pain he caused you a few years ago.”

“Or he’s trying to do something of merit with his life before he dies,” I say seriously. “He just found out he has ALS.”

She pauses, her fork halfway to her mouth, and then lowers it. “What do you mean, ALS?”

“You know.” I try to keep my voice from breaking. “Lou Gehrig’s disease. Like Stephen Hawking ...” I can’t find additional words.

“Shit,” she says, just like Aaron did.

Oh, crap—Aaron. He was conducting an experimental surgery on a preemie with sagittal craniosynostosis today. He and his team spent so many days preparing to help this child, and I just realized that I forgot to call and wish him luck this morning—I’ve been too preoccupied thinking about Wesley. I glance at my watch. Aaron said it would be a ten-hour surgery. There’s no point in calling now.