Where The Heart Stayed

IF A RESTAURANT COULD ROMANCE, I'd be a goner. Nancy, Dave, and I sat at a small table in the Olive Branch, a Michelin-starred spot in SoHo Dave had begged to try. I wasn't usually one for long lunches, but it was a Friday in summer, and I owed Nancy a favor after bailing on a play she'd wanted to see. As an editor always chasing fresh talent, Nancy had dragged us to the strangest concerts and events-no small feat considering I'd visited forty-three countries with my aunt, who had a knack for weirdness.

This, however, was very-very-nice.

"This is officially the fanciest lunch I've ever been to," Nancy announced, popping another bacon-wrapped date into her mouth. It was the only thing we'd ordered so far that she could eat-the rare wagyu slices were out of the question for a person seven months pregnant. Nancy was tall and waifish, with dyed-periwinkle hair and pale white skin. She had dark freckles across her cheeks and always wore kitschy earrings she found at flea markets on the weekends. Today's flavor was metal snakes with signs in their mouths that read FUCK OFF. She was Strauss & Adder's best in-house designer.

Beside her sat Dave, a newly minted senior editor at Strauss & Adder, speared another wagyu slice. With his short curly hair, warm brown skin, and signature 1910s-explorer look, tan trousers, white button-down, suspenders - he was unmistakable. Next to him, I felt underdressed in my free Everything Café T-shirt, old light-wash jeans, and duct-taped red flats from college. Three days without washing my hair, dry shampoo could only do so much - but I'd been late to work and hadn't had time to care.

I was a senior publicist at Strauss & Adder, a perpetual planner, and somehow I had not planned for this outing in the slightest. To be fair, it was a Summer Friday, and I hadn't expected anyone to be in the office today.

"It is really fancy here," I agreed. "It's much better than that poetry reading in the Village."

Nancy nodded. "Though I did enjoy how all of their drinks were named after dead poets."

I made a face. "Emily Dickinson gave me the worst hangover."

Dave looked incredibly proud of himself. "Isn't this place just so nice? You know that article I sent you? The one in Eater? The author, Alfred Chado, is the head chef here. The article is a few years old, but it's still a great read."

"And you want him to do a book with us?" Nancy asked. "For-what-a cookbook?".

Dave seemed genuinely hurt. "What do you take me for, a plebeian? Absolutely not. A cookbook would be wasted on someone who is such a wizard with words."

Nancy and I exchanged a knowing look. Dave had said the same about the play I dodged last week while moving into my late aunt's Upper East Side apartment. On Saturday, as I hauled a record player into the elevator, Nancy confessed she'd never swim in the ocean again. Still, Dave had a gift - he could see what someone could write, not just what they had. He thrived on possibility. That's what made him different. He always took in the underdogs and helped them bloom.

"What's that look for?" Dave asked, looking pointedly between the two of us. "My instincts were right about that musician we saw on Governors Island last month."

"Sweetheart," Nancy replied patiently, "I'm still getting over the play I saw last week about a man who had an affair with a dolphin."

Dave winced. "That was...a mistake. But the musician wasn't! And neither was that TikToker who wrote that amusement park thriller. It's going to be phenomenal. And this chef . . . I know this chef is special. I want to hear more about that summer when he turned twenty-six-he alluded to it in Eater, but not enough."

"You think there's a story there?" Nancy asked.

"I'm sure there is. Right, Lola?"

Then they looked at me expectantly.

"I... haven't read it, actually," I admitted, and Nancy tsked in that way of hers that will end up making their future child incredibly contrite. I ducked my head in embarrassment.

"Well, you should!" Dave replied. "He's been all around the world, just like you. The way he relates food to friendship and memories-I want him." He turned his hungry gaze toward the kitchen. "I want him so badly". And whenever he had that kind of look in his eyes, there was no stopping him.

I took another sip of too-dry wine and scanned the dessert menu. We usually lunched together - a perk of working in the same building - but mostly stuck to Midtown, where options were limited. I'd eaten more food truck sandwiches and lobster mac and cheese than I cared to admit. In summer, with tourists everywhere, finding a decent spot without a reservation was nearly impossible.

"Well, when you get him, I have a question about this dessert menu," I said, pointing to the first item there. "What the hell is a manicured Apple pie?"

"Ooh, that one is the chef's specialty," Dave informed us as Nancy snatched the menu from me to read about it. "I definitely want to try it."

"If it's just a slice of Apple sprinkled with some granular sugar on a graham cracker," Nancy said, "I'm going to laugh."

I checked my phone for the time. "Whatever it is, we should probably order it and head back. I told Monique I'd be back by one."

"It's Friday!" Nancy argued, waving the dessert menu at me. "No one works on Fridays in the summer. Especially not in publishing."

"Well, I do," I replied. Monique Adder was my boss, the director of marketing and publicity, and co publisher. She was one of the most successful women in the business. If there was a bestseller to be had in a book, she knew exactly how to squeeze it out, and that was a talent in and of itself. Speaking of talent, just so Nancy and Dave knew the situation, I added, "I have three authors on tour right now-and something is bound to go wrong."

Dave nodded in agreement. "Murphy's Law of Publishing."

"Murphy's Law," I echoed. "And Juliette cried herself sick this morning because of her boyfriend, so I'm trying to lighten her load today."

"Fuck Romeo-Rob," Dave intoned.

"Fuck Romeo-Rob," I agreed.

"Speaking of dating." Nancy sat up a little straighter, and put her elbows on the table. Oh, I knew that look, and I inwardly suppressed a groan. She leaned in to look at me, arching her eyebrows.

"How're you and Fredy doing?"

Suddenly, the wineglass looked very interesting, but the longer she stared at me waiting for an answer, the less resolve I had, until I finally sighed and said, "We broke up last month."

Nancy gasped like she'd been personally insulted. "Last month? Before or after you moved?"

"While I was moving. The night you all went to the play."

"And you didn't tell us?" Dave added, more curious than his distraught wife.

"You didn't tell us!" Nancy echoed in a cry. "That's important! And it's been over a month? You've been single for a month and we didn't know?"

"It really wasn't that big of a deal." I shrugged. "It was over text messages. I think he's already dating somebody he met on Hinge."

My friends looked at me with utter pity, but I waved it off. "Really, it's fine. We weren't that compatible anyway." Which was true, but I didn't include the fight we had before the texts. Fight was a strong word for it, though. It felt more like a shrug and a white flag tossed onto an already-abandoned battlefield.

"Again? You have to work late again?" he'd asked. "You know this is my big night. I want you here with me."

To be fair, I had forgotten that it was the opening night of a gallery with his work. He was an artist-a metalworker, actually-and this was a big thing for him.

"I'm sorry, Fredy. This is important." And it was, I was sure of it, even though I couldn't remember what the emergency had been to make me stay late. He was quiet for a long moment, and then he asked, "Is this how it's going to be? I don't want to be second to your job,Lola."

"You're not!"

He was. I kept him at arm's length so he wouldn't see how broken I was. I could keep lying, keep pretending I was fine-because I had to be. People had enough to worry about without adding me to the list. That was the whole appeal of Lola Figmud: she always figured it out. Fredy sighed, heavy and deep. "Lola, I think you need to be honest." And just like that, the nail hit the coffin.

"You're so closed off. You hide behind work. I don't think I even know you anymore. You won't open up, won't be vulnerable. What happened to the girl with watercolor under her fingernails?"