After the doorman called up to announce my arrival, a man who looked exactly like Ben would in thirty years emerged from the elevator.
“Ben’s not here,” he said. “If you want to leave your number, I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
The doorman gave me a piece of paper and a pen and I jotted down my information. Then I realized Ben might not remember me out of the procession of women in Dr. Shields’s study.
I was Subject 52, I wrote, then folded the paper in half.
That was more than an hour ago, and I still haven’t heard from him. I lift my arms over my head to stretch my back, listening as Mariah Carey’s voice singing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” drifts over from Wollman Rink. I came here a lot when I first moved to New York, but I haven’t skated yet this year.
Just as I stand up to throw my coffee cup in the trash can, my phone rings.
I snatch it up, then see Noah’s name.
After everything that’s happened this weekend, I almost forgot we were supposed to meet for dinner tonight.
“Italian or Mexican,” he says when I answer. “Either of those sound good?”
I hesitate as another unwelcome image of Thomas in bed, tangled in the sheets, springs into my mind.
I shouldn’t feel guilty; I’ve only seen Noah twice. And yet I do.
“I’d love to see you, but could we do something low-key?” I ask. “I’ve had a really stressful day.”
He takes it in stride. “Why don’t we just stay in, then? I can open a bottle of wine and order in Chinese. Or I could come to your place?”
I can’t go on a date and make normal conversation right now. But I don’t want to cancel on this guy.
A deep voice comes over the PA system for the ice rink: “We’re going to take a ten-minute break to Zamboni the ice. Go grab some hot chocolate and we’ll see you soon!”
“I have an idea,” I say to Noah.
I grew up skating on the frozen lake near my parents’ house, so I’m pretty good. But Noah unpacks his own skates from a backpack he’d brought to the rink and explains, “I still play club hockey on the weekends.”
After we do a few laps, he spins around to skate backward. Then he reaches out to hold my hands.
“Keep up with me, slowpoke,” he jokes, and I dig in to the ice, feeling my thigh muscles burn.
This was just what I needed, the lightly falling snow, the physical movement, the loud music, the pink-cheeked children all around us.
So is the silver flask full of peppermint schnapps that Noah offers me when we lean back against the boards to take a break.
I take a sip, then another quick one.
I hand it back to him, then push off the boards. “Try to catch me now,” I say over my shoulder as I gain speed.
I whip toward the bend of the oval rink, feeling the cold burn my face and a laugh well up in my chest.
A solid form rams into me. The collision nearly knocks me down.
My feet stutter and I instinctively throw out my hands as I try to gain purchase on the ice.
“Watch yourself,” a man’s deep voice says in my ear.
I grab for the side rail and my fingers close around it just in time to break my fall.
I’m breathing hard when Noah swoops in a second later.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod, but I don’t look at him. I’m trying to pick the man who bumped me out of the crowd, but it’s impossible to find him in the swirl of swinging scarves and heavy coats and feet kicking up silver blades.
“Yeah,” I finally say to Noah, but I’m still breathing hard.
“Want to take a break?” he suggests. He reaches for my hand and leads me off the ice. My legs shake and my ankles feel like they might give way.
We find a bench away from the throngs of people and Noah offers to get us hot chocolate.
Although my phone is in my pocket and set to vibrate, I’m worried I’ve missed a message from Ben. So I nod and thank him. The minute he’s out of sight, I check it. But the screen is blank.
It had to have been an accident when the man knocked into me. It’s just that he used the exact same words as Thomas: Watch yourself.
The happiness I experienced when I was on the ice, feeling Noah’s hands close over mine, is gone.
I smile at Noah when he returns to the bench with two foam cups, but it’s almost like he can feel the shift in my energy.
“That guy came out of nowhere, he says. “You didn’t get hurt, right?”
I look into his warm brown eyes. His presence feels like the only solid thing around me right now. I wonder again how I could have slept with Thomas on Friday night.
I didn’t realize then how much that impulsive dalliance could have cost me, and how much it could still.
It suddenly occurs to me that Noah is the only one in my universe that Dr. Shields doesn’t know about. I described my first night with Noah during one of those early computer sessions, but I never mentioned his name. And I haven’t revealed that we were still in touch.
Some part of me must have wanted to hold that back, to have one piece of my life be mine alone.
Dr. Shields has heard all about Becky, and my parents, and Lizzie. I’ve provided her with the name of my employer, home address, and birthday. She is privy to my deepest insecurities and my most intimate thoughts.
Whatever she is doing with all of this information, I know Noah isn’t involved in it.
I make a split-second decision.
“I didn’t get hurt, but I guess there’s something on my mind,” I begin. I take a sip of hot chocolate before I continue. “There’s the situation at work, and it’s complicated, but . . .”
I fumble for how to put it in words, but Noah sits there, not rushing me.
“How do you know if you can really trust someone?” I finally ask.
Noah raises his eyebrows and takes a sip of his drink.
Then he looks into my eyes again and the expression in his is so earnest I feel like he’s answering from a deeply personal place.
“If you need to ask that question, then you probably already know the answer,” he says.
Two hours later, after Noah and I grabbed slices of hot gooey pizza and he walked me back to my apartment, I’m curled up in bed. Just as I’m about to drift off to sleep, my phone buzzes.
My bedroom is dark and the thin blue light on my nightstand is all I can see.
I’m wide awake.
I reach for it.
Why haven’t you replied? Thomas has written. We need to meet.
Beneath his text is a wedding photo. In it, Dr. Shields wears a lacy ivory gown and beams at the camera. I’ve never seen her look happy before now, I realize as I stare at the slightly grainy image. She appears to be about five or ten years younger than she is today, but I don’t need that detail to confirm what Thomas has told me about them being wed seven years ago.
The groom beside her, his arm wrapped protectively around her, isn’t the dark-haired man in the photograph in her dining room.
It’s Thomas.
CHAPTER
FORTY
Monday, December 17
Are you being honest, Jessica?
You keep assuring me that Thomas has not responded to your invitation.
This strains credulity. Thomas has an almost Pavlovian response to the ding of an incoming message. He might have rebuffed your invitation. Or he might have accepted it. But it seems highly unlikely that he would simply ignore it.