Page 47 - In Five Years

“I have something to tell you,” she says. She reaches across the table and
takes my hand.
Instantly, I’m flooded with a familiar sensation of pulling, like there’s a tiny
string inside of me that only she can find and thread. She’s going to tell me she

met someone. She’s falling in love. I know the drill so well I wish we could go
through all the steps right here at this table, with our coffee. Intrigue. Obsession.

Distaste. Desperation. Apathy.
“What’s his name?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she says. “Am I that transparent?”
“Only to me.”

She takes a sip of her sparkling water. “His name is Greg.” She lands hard on
the one syllable. “He’s an architect. We met on Bumble.”

I nearly drop my coffee. “You have Bumble?”
“Yes. I know you think I can meet someone buying milk at the deli, but, I
don’t know, lately I’ve been wanting something different and nothing has been

that interesting in a while.”
I think about Bella’s love life over the last few months. There was the
photographer, Steven Mills, but that was last summer, almost a year ago.

“Except Annabelle and Mario,” I say. The collectors she had a brief fling
with. A couple.
She bats her eyes at me. “Naturally,” she says.

“So what’s the deal?” I ask.
“It has been like three weeks,” she says. “But Dannie, he’s wonderful. Really
wonderful. He’s really nice and smart and—I think you’re really going to like

him.”
“Nice and smart,” I repeat. “Greg?”
She nods, and just then our food appears in a cloud of smoke. There are eggs

and caviar on crispy French bread, avocado toast, and a plate of delicate crepes
dusted with powdered sugar. My mouth waters.
“More coffee?” Our waiter asks.

I nod.
“Yum,” I say. “This is perfect.” I immediately cut into the avocado toast. The
poached egg on top oozes out yolk, and I scoop a segment onto my plate. I make

a vaguely pornographic noise through a mouthful.