I matched my expression to hers. “That’s fantastic news.”

LoLo wiggled her darks nails at me. “Ciao.”

It felt like a good omen.

Through the Dionysian fog of the bar, Mr. Larson’s Clydesdale back appeared as if a mirage. I wove through the happy hour release of Theory pencil skirts and bankers with wedding rings in their pockets, heels sounding a chant, “Be real. Be real. Be real.”

I tapped his shoulder. He either had removed his tie or hadn’t worn one that day, and his shirt opened in a little V right at his throat, the small sliver of skin there as shocking as the first time I saw him in jeans. A reminder of all the ways I still didn’t know him. “Sorry!” I lifted one side of my mouth in a contrite smile. “I got stuck at work.” I blew a strand of hair out of my mouth to prove how frazzled I was. I’m so busy but I made time for you.

This was not true, of course. I’d started getting ready in The Women’s Magazine bathroom at approximately 7:20. I’d put on deodorant, brushed my teeth, held mouthwash in my cheeks for so long my eyes watered. Then it was on to the makeup, the pains I took to appear as though I wasn’t wearing much at all. It was 7:41 when I left the office. One minute behind schedule, the schedule I’d determined would place me at the bar in Flatiron at 8:07. “The perfect late to show he doesn’t hang the moon for you,” Nell says.

Mr. Larson’s lips hovered at the edge of his tumbler. “I should make you run laps.” He took a little sip, and I noticed how low his scotch was, realized he was already warm.

The idea of Mr. Larson telling me what to do now, screaming at me to run faster, pick up the pace, don’t phone this in, TifAni, prickled the skin at the nape of my neck. I busied myself settling into the stool next to him. I couldn’t let him see me prickled. Not yet.

I tucked a panel of hair behind my ear. “You know I still do your hill workout at least once a week?”

Mr. Larson sniffed out a little laugh, and even though the skin bunched around his eyes, his face had remained boyish, unfazed by the gray hair at his temples. “Where? The one thing about this city—it’s so flat.”

“I know, nothing can hold a candle to the hill on Mill Creek. I’m in Tribeca, so I have to make do with the Brooklyn Bridge.” I sighed, glibly. We both knew that living in a sleek one-bedroom by the Brooklyn Bridge was superior to living in some threadbare mansion in Bryn Mawr.

The bartender took notice of me and asked me what I wanted with a nod. “Vodka martini,” I said. “Straight up.” That was my glossy editor drink. I don’t crave martinis the way I do, say, an economy-size bag of chocolate-covered pretzels, but when I need a warm blur to descend on me, and fast, it’s my elixir of choice. Sometimes it even tricks me into thinking I’m the kind of tired that will lead to sleep.

“Look at you.” Mr. Larson leaned away to take in everything I’d put together for him. The wicked leather dress, the bar of black diamonds in the ear I had purposely exposed to him. I caught a spark, amusement and approval fusing together in his eyes. It was only a slap shot of a moment, but it was unbearable in a way, like touching a hot stove by accident. The response in your body overwhelming all systems. “I always knew this is who you would be.”

I could have burst, but I clung to deadpan. “A lush?”

“No, this.” He sliced his hands sideways at me. “You’re one of those women that people look at on the street and wonder who they are. What they do.”

My drink slid in front of me and I took a blazing sip. I needed it in case I didn’t stick the landing of what I was going to say next. “What I do is write a lot of blow job tips.”

Mr. Larson looked away. “Come on, Tif.”

The sound of my old name, the disappointment in Mr. Larson’s voice, it was like Dean’s hand across my face all over again. I took another big sip that left my lips slippery with vodka and tried to recover. “Too much from your old student?”

Mr. Larson rolled his glass between his palms. “I hate hearing you cut yourself down like that.”

I dug my elbow into the bar, swiveling on the stool so I could face him and he could see I was entertained by the whole thing. “Oh, I’m not. If I can’t have my journalistic integrity, then at least I can have a sense of humor about it. Believe me, I’m fine.”

Mr. Larson turned his eyes on me, and I could hardly stand the knowing there. “You certainly seem fine. I guess I’m just trying to figure out if you really are.”

The martini hadn’t taken hold yet, and I wasn’t quite ready to get into this. I thought we’d start out slow, a few sexually charged, self-deprecating jokes from me about my job, Mr. Larson seeing through my aw-shucks routine to the ambition, the savvy that I had and his wife lacked. Did I feel that Luke was lacking in some way too? I do, I do, I would say, sadly, maybe spring a few tears to my eyes. He just doesn’t understand. So few people do. A pointed look at Mr. Larson—assuring him he was one of the few.

“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “This documentary thing, it has me out of my mind.”

Mr. Larson matched me with his laugh and I was relieved. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m wary of it,” I said. “But I’m still dying to do it.”

Mr. Larson didn’t appear to understand. “Why would you be wary?”

“Because I don’t know what the bent is. I know what the editing process can do.” I dropped my voice and leaned in closer, like I don’t admit the next thing to very many people, but for Mr. Larson I would make an exception. “I mean, I manipulate the hell out of what I write. I know exactly how I want something to turn out before I even do the research and call up Dr. Hack from the Today show. If what he tells me doesn’t fit, I just ask the question a different way. Or”—I tilted my head, remembering the other option—“I try Dr. Hack from Good Morning America and get him to give me something that will fit.”

“So that’s how that works.” Mr. Larson’s eyes tapered in at the corners, carefully, like he was squinting through the peephole in my entire facade. That direct line he had, it was the spider crack that would eventually make the windshield cave in.

I smirked at myself. “I’m just saying. I can’t hang all my hopes on this.”

Mr. Larson’s shoulder sloped down lower, right by mine. His breath was on fire with Lagavulin. “No, you can’t. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I think they’re interested in the story no one’s heard, which is yours. That said”—he leaned away, taking all his peaty heat with him, and it was like I waded into a cool pocket in the ocean—“nothing’s a guarantee. You have to know that no matter what they say about you, all that matters is what you know about yourself here.” He covered his chest with his hand. It was such an earnest, after-school-special thing to say I would have mocked it had it come from anyone else. But it had come from Mr Larson, and I would remember it fondly, repeat it whenever I questioned if I’d made the right decision, for many years to come.

I fiddled with the wet corner of a cocktail napkin. “Mr. Larson, there isn’t much to comfort me there.”

Mr. Larson sighed, like he had just received some really bad news. “Tif, my God. That wrecks me.”

I was furious with myself for the way my face puckered up, wrinkled and hideous. I slapped my hand to my forehead, shielding the carnage.

Mr. Larson hunched down low, got underneath the visor of my hand. “Hey,” he said, “come on. I didn’t mean to upset you.” And then there was the perfect pressure of his hand on my back, a little lower than it needed to be, that feeling between my legs, so desperate I craved a swift end, so delicious I would miss it when it was gone.

I gave him a wobbly smile. Everyone loves a trouper. “I swear I’m not a mess.”