Page 179 - In Five Years

Chapter Thirty-Four

I arrive at the restaurant—a corner one, tiny and candlelit, with old-fashioned
red-checkered tablecloths—and David is already there, bent over his phone. He
has on a blue sweater and jeans. The hedge fund is a less dressy environment

than the bank he worked at before, and he can get away with jeans much of the
time.
“Hi,” I say.

He looks up and smiles. “Hey. Traffic was a nightmare, right? I’m trying to
figure out why they closed down Seventh Avenue. We haven’t been here in a
long time. Since we first started dating,” he says.

David and I were introduced through my old colleague, Adam. We both
worked as clerks at the same time in the DA’s office. The hours were long and
the pay was shitty and neither one of us was particularly suited for that kind of

environment.
For about six months, I remember having a crush on Adam. He was from

New Jersey, liked sitcoms from the seventies, and knew how to get the
temperamental coffee maker to deliver a cappuccino. We spent a lot of time
together at work, bent over our desks eating five-dollar ramen from the food
truck downstairs. He threw a party for his birthday at this bar I’d never been to—

Ten Bells on the Lower East Side. It was dark and candlelit. With wood tables
and barstools. We ate cheese and drank wine and split bills we could not afford

on credit cards we hoped we could one day pay off.
David was there—cute and a little bit quiet—and he asked to buy me a drink.
He worked at a bank, and had gone to school with Adam. They had even been
roommates their first year in New York.