“So you have my noodles?”

“I’ve got everything you need.” His tone is matter-of-fact despite the innuendo-laden words.

It breaks my heart a little to tell him I can’t open the door. “I tried to open the door and I think it’s going to happen soon, but maybe not tonight. How’re we going to do this?”

“I’m going to sit on your balcony,” he says, as if having dinner with a glass door and closed curtain between two people is an everyday occurrence.

“How?” Do I take a pill and run into the bedroom and wait for him to walk through?

“Your neighbor is letting me look at his balcony. I have to tell you that the security in this building bites.”

“That’s not making me feel better,” I say, and then the full import of his words hits me. Is he going to leap from my neighbor’s balcony onto mine? I rush over to my French doors and peer out. From inside, it’s hard to judge the distance but it appears to be over six feet. I have trouble jumping over a puddle. “How do you know my neighbor?”

“It’s my business to know.” I hear the sound of a car door closing and then the throaty purr of an expensive engine. “The good thing is that before we eat, I’m installing proximity sensors to make your place safer.”

“Won’t you need a power source?” I try to figure out how all of this is going to work. I’ve learned that if I have control over my environment, then I feel safer—unfamiliar things can cause more anxiety. Inside this apartment, I feel safe, but now Jake is introducing new things and new fears.

He doesn’t seem to mind the questions, though, and explains, “It uses a mix of solar energy and a permanent wired source. For now they will run on battery power. If the battery power is turned off by someone, there is enough energy stored from the solar panel to send a signal to our base. That alert will send someone over to check out the intruder right away.”

“I like that.”

“Good. It’s not perfect, but it will be a start.”

“What would be perfect?”

It’s a throwaway question, but his response is not.

“My home is more secure than a bank.”

My heart skips two beats. “I—I—” I stutter because I don’t have a response to that.

“Yeah, so let’s just table it for now. Call your doorman and have him let me up.”

His suggestion shocks me so much I’m only able to mumble, “Okay.”

I hang up and obediently call Chris in a slight daze. “Chris, I’m having a visitor at six. His name is Jake Tanner. He’s six foot three and two-sixty.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Did Jake just invite me to move in? I know that it’s for my safety as much as anything, and yet here is an opportunity, not just to get out of my home, but to be with someone who is genuinely into me.

When my phone rings, I answer it immediately. “Hi,” I say slightly breathless, thinking it’s Jake.

“Are you running on your treadmill? I hope you are running on your treadmill and that you’ve been working hard on your chapter all day.”

Definitely not Jake.

I open my mouth to tell Daphne about Jake, but for some reason I stop. Which is strange, because I’ve always told Daphne everything. She is my closest confidante since the attack, and we’ve only grown closer over the years. But this thing with Jake is so new and different and strange that I don’t want to jinx by talking about it with anyone.

“I’m running on my treadmill and working hard on my chapters.”

In the background I hear papers shuffling. I’ve never seen Daphne’s office, but she admits to being rather disorganized. I envision her sitting under a towering pile of manuscripts going through each with a ruthless red pen. “I’m going to pretend that you aren’t completely lying to me.”

“House Hunters International was in the Bahamas last night and I couldn’t stop watching.” That technically wasn’t a lie, because before I pulled my vibrator out of the nightstand and settled down for a long fantasy session with imaginary Jake, I did watch television. The Bahamas looked gorgeous. I have never been, although my former coworkers and I’d joked that if Saturnalia became successful, we’d take our money and run for the border. I know that three of them bought a boat together and went on a sailing trip. I wasn’t sure about the rest of them. I cut them all off after the subway attack. I don’t want to lose Daphne; I can’t.

She releases a long, exasperated breath. “What am I going to do with you? You know that your deadline is looming. I’m not saying this to pressure you, but I’m worried. We don’t want to disappoint your fans.”

“I don’t want to disappoint anyone either,” I say with earnestness. “And haven’t I met every deadline I ever had?”

“To be fair, honey, when I signed you, you already had one book done and the second one nearly complete. The third one you knocked out before the series started to take off. You haven’t written a book in a year. You need to strike while the iron is hot.”

“I know. I know. I just was focused on other things.” Like overcoming my anxiety. Getting outside. Doing stuff.

“I want you to get better as much as you do,” Daphne continues, barreling over my protests. “But the truth is, you are more productive when you’re not focused on going to the subway and counting how many seconds you can stand in one place. It takes so much of your mental energy to just open the door and leave your apartment, sometimes I wonder if you’re not just better off staying home.”

That hurts. My throat tightens for a moment. I’ve never heard her say that she thought I was better off being a shut-in with no life. No friends beyond her and Oliver. No dinners out. No boyfriend. No lover. No children. A long, lonely life alone in this apartment. Quietly, but fiercely, I tell her, “I would rather never write again if, in exchange, I could leave the house. I don’t want this anxiety to be constantly paralyzing me and preventing me from living a full life.”

She huffs as if offended by my tone or maybe my words. I don’t know. “Before you had the attack in the subway, before you closeted yourself up in the apartment, you didn’t live any differently. You sat in your apartment over in Brooklyn and you worked day after day, hour after hour on your computer program. You lived out your life on gaming boards, forums, Twitter, Reddit. That’s how you and I met—online. That’s how you met all of your friends. They were all online. You never left! I had to beg and plead to get you out of Brooklyn, because coming over the bridge was like taking a trek up Mount Everest!”

I swallow hard at this accusation. I didn’t go out much before the attack due to the shyness of being a new person in a new town. But not to the extent that I could not meet new people, or go to the movies, or check out that new restaurant that just opened in Midtown. I had choices and options, and none of those choices and options exist for me now. I feel that just when the world is expanding, what with Jake coming into my life, Daphne is trying to zip me back into the bubble of supposed safety. “I’m sorry,” I say for lack of anything else in my head at the moment.

“Look,” she says, “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just want what’s best for you. And what’s best for you is to finish this book. You’re almost done. You have maybe eight chapters left. You’re over the hump.”

I answer in the only way that I know is acceptable, both to her and me. “I’m going to finish on time. I will meet the deadline.”

The phone beeps to inform me I have a new call. “I have to go.”

“Is that Oliver?”

“Yeah, Oliver,” I lie.

“Tell him I said hello.” Her voice switches from business to flirtation with no hesitation. “If he’s single these days, tell him I’m available.”

“Someday I am going to tell him that and then he’ll take you up on your offer.” I know she’s just joking. Other than these teasing asides, she never shows any interest in Oliver beyond that he’s the quarterback for the Cobras, which is good because Oliver doesn’t really have any interest in her either. “I’ll have pages for you tomorrow.”