Anya gets an iced tea. “How long do you think this will take?” she asks.

“Dinner, or taking your company public?” Aldridge does not look up from his menu.

“I’ve been a big fan of yours for a while now,” I say. “I think what you’ve done with the space is brilliant.”

“Thank—” Jordi starts, but Anya cuts her off.

“We didn’t do anything with existing space. We created a new one,” she says. She eyes Jordi as if to say—lock it up.

“I’m curious, though,” I say. I aim my question at the both of them, equally. “Why now?”

At this, Aldridge looks up from his menu and grabs a passing waiter. “We’d like the calamari immediately please.” Aldridge winks at me.

Jordi looks to Anya, as if unsure how to answer, and I feel a question answered before it has been raised. I swallow it back down. Not now.

“We’re at the point where we don’t want to work as hard as we have been on the same thing,” Jordi says. “We’d like the revenue to be able to turn our attentions to new ventures.”

I feel the familiarity in her speak. The measured, calculated words. Maybe it’s all true, but none of it feels authentic. So I push.

“Why give away control of something you own when you don’t have to?”

At this, Jordi busies herself with her water glass. Anya’s eyes narrow. I can feel Aldridge shift next to me. I have no idea why I’m doing this. I know exactly why I’m doing this.

“Are you trying to talk us out of this?” Anya asks. She directs her question to Aldridge. “Because I was under the impression this was a kick-off dinner.”

I look at Aldridge, who stays silent. He is, I realize, not going to answer for me.

“No,” I say. “I just like to understand motivation. It helps me do my job.”

Anya likes this answer, I can tell. Her shoulders drop perceptively. “The truth is, I’m not sure. We’ve spoken a lot about this. Jordi knows I’m on the fence.”

“We’ve been at Yahtzee for almost ten years,” Jordi says, repeating what is no doubt a familiar line. “It’s time for something else.”

“I don’t know why we have to give up control in order to have that,” Anya says.

The champagne arrives in a flourish of glasses and bubbles. Aldridge pours.

“To Yahtzee,” he says. “A smooth IPO process and a lot of money.”

Jordi clinks his glass, but Anya and I keep our eyes on each other. I see her searching me, asking the question that will never be spoken at this table: What would you do?

Chapter Thirty

An hour later, I’m at the bar upstairs at the hotel. I should sleep, but I can’t. Every time I try I think about Bella, about what a terrible friend I am to be this far away, and my eyes shoot back open. I’m leaning over my second dirty martini when Aldridge comes in. I squint. I’m too drunk for this.

“Dannie,” he says. “May I?” He doesn’t wait for my response but takes the seat next to me.

“Tonight was good,” I say, trying for steady. I think I’m slurring my words.

“You were very engaged,” he says. “Must have felt good.”

“Sure,” I deadpan. “Wonderful.”

Aldridge’s eyes flit down to my martini glass and back to me. “Danielle,” he says. “Are you alright?”

I’m suddenly aware that if I speak I will cry, and I have never cried in front of a boss, not once, not even at the DA’s office where morale was so bad that we had a designated room for hysterical outbursts. I pick up my water glass. I sip. I set it back down.

“No,” I say.

He gestures to the waiter. “I’ll have a Ketel on the rocks, two lemons,” he says. The waiter turns, but Aldridge calls him back. “No, actually, I’ll have a scotch. Neat.”

He takes off his suit jacket, drapes it over the empty stool next to him, and then goes about rolling back his sleeves. Neither of us speaks during this interval, and by the time the ritual is complete, his drink is in front of him and I no longer feel as if I’m going to cry.

“So,” he says. “You can begin or I can do my ankle cuffs next.”

I laugh. The alcohol has made everything loose. I feel the emotions there, right on the surface, not tucked and tidy where I normally keep them.

“I’m not sure I’m a good person,” I say. I didn’t know that’s what was inside my head, but once I say it, I know it’s true.

“Interesting,” he says. “A good person.”

“My best friend is very sick.”

“Yes,” Aldridge says. “I know that.”

“And we’re in a fight.”

He takes a sip of scotch. “What happened?”

“She thinks I’m controlling,” I say, repeating the truth.

At this, Aldridge laughs, just like Dr. Shaw. It’s a hearty belly laugh.

“Why does everyone think that’s so funny?” I ask.

“Because you are,” he says. “You were quite controlling tonight, for example.”

“Was that bad?”

Aldridge shrugs. “I guess we’ll see. How did it feel?”

“That’s the problem,” I say. “It felt great. I loved it. My best friend is — she’s sick, and tonight I’m in California, happy about some clients at dinner. What kind of a person does that make me?”

Aldridge nods, like he understands it, now. Gets what this is about. “You are upset because you think you need to quit your life and be by her side.”

“No, she won’t let me. I just shouldn’t be happy doing this.”

“Ah. Right. Happiness. The enemy of all suffering.”

He takes another sip. We drink in silence for a moment.

“Did I ever tell you what I originally wanted to be?”

I stare at him. We’re not exactly braiding-each-other’s-hair besties. How would I know?

“I’m assuming this is a trick question and that you’re going to say lawyer.”

Aldridge laughs. “No, no. I was going to be a shrink. My father was a psychiatrist, so is my brother. It’s a strange career choice, for a teen, but it always seemed the right one.”

I blink at him. “Shrink?”

“I would have been terrible at it. All that listening, I don’t have it in me.”

I can feel the alcohol weaving its way through my system. Making everything hazy and rosy and faded. “What happened?”

“I went to Yale, and my first day there I had a philosophy course. First-Order Logic. A discussion of metatheory. It was for my major, but the professor was a lawyer, and I just thought — why diagnose when you can determine?”

He stares at me for a long time. Finally, he puts a hand on my shoulder.

“You are not wrong for loving what you do,” he says. “You are lucky. Life doesn’t hand everyone a passion in their profession; you and I won that round.”

“It doesn’t feel like winning,” I say.

“No,” Aldridge says. “It often doesn’t. That dinner, over there?” He points outside, past the lobby and the palm tree prints. “We didn’t cement that. You loved it because, for you, the win is the game. That’s how you know you’re meant for it.”

He takes his hand off my shoulder. He downs the rest of his drink in a neat sip.

“You’re a great lawyer, Dannie. You’re also a good friend and a good person. Don’t let your own bias throw the case.”

The next morning, I take a car up to Montana Avenue. It’s overcast, the fog of the morning won’t burn off until noon, but by then we’ll already be up in the air. I stop at Peet’s Coffee, and take a stroll down the little shopping street — even though everything is still closed. A few Lycra-clad mothers wheel their distracted toddlers while they talk. The morning bike crew passes by on their way out to Malibu.

I used to think I could never live in Los Angeles. It was for people who couldn’t make it in New York. The easy way out. Moving would mean admitting that you had been wrong. That everything you’d said about New York: that there was nowhere else in the world to live, that the winters didn’t bother you, that carrying four grocery bags back home in the pouring rain or hailing snow wasn’t an inconvenience. That being your own car was, in fact, your dream. That life wasn’t, isn’t, hard.

But there is so much space out here. It feels like there is room — to not have to store every single piece of off-season clothing under your bed. Maybe even to make a mistake.

I take my coffee back to the hotel. I walk across the concrete bike path, into the sand, and down to the ocean. Far to the left, I can see some surfers, zigzagging through the waves, around one another, like their movements are choreographed. A big, oceanic ballet. Moving continuously toward the shore.

I snap a picture.

I love you, I write. What else is there to say?

Chapter Thirty-One

“It’s really a question of eggshell or white,” the woman says.

I am standing in the middle of Mark Ingram, a bridal salon on the Upper East Side, an untouched flute of champagne on a glass coffee table, alone.

My mother was supposed to come in, but the University called a last-minute staff meeting to discuss a confidential matter, re: donations for next year, and she’s stuck in Philadelphia. I’m supposed to send her pictures.