David extends his hand. I’m just standing there, my mouth hanging open, neglecting to introduce him.
“This is David,” I sputter. David in the blue shirt shakes Aaron in the white shirt’s hand. Bella smiles. I feel as if all the air on the sidewalk has been sucked back into the sky. We’re going to suffocate out here.
“Shall we?”
I follow Greg/Aaron up the steps and into the crowded restaurant. “Aaron Gregory,” he says to the hostess. Aaron Gregory. I flash on his license in my hand. Of course.
“Aaron?”
“Oh, yeah. My last name is Gregory. Greg just kind of stuck.” He gives me a small smile. It feels too familiar. I don’t like it.
I feel like I’m sinking. Like I’m falling through the floor, or maybe the floor is falling, too, except no one else is moving. It’s just me, catapulting through space.
Time.
“Aaron.”
He looks at me. Dead on. I hear David behind us laugh at something Bella has said. I smell her perfume — French rose. The kind you can only buy at the drugstores in Paris. “I’m not one of the bad ones,” he tells me. “Just because I know you think I am.”
I exhale. I feel dizzy. “I do?”
“You do,” he says. We start following the hostess. We snake around the bar, in between the two-top tables with couples bent together over pizza and deep glasses of red. “I can tell by the way you’re looking at me. And what Bella has said.”
“What has she said?”
We pass through an archway and Aaron hangs back, holding his arm out to let me pass. My shoulder brushes his hand. This isn’t happening.
“That she has dated some guys who maybe didn’t treat her right, and that you’re an amazing friend, and you’re always there to pick up the pieces. And that I should be warned you’ll probably hate me at first.”
We’ve arrived at the table. It’s in the back room, pushed up against the left-hand wall. David and Bella are upon us.
“I’ll slide in the corner,” Bella says. She shoves herself in first and pulls me down next to her. David and Aaron sit across from us.
“What’s good here?” Aaron asks. He gives Bella a wide smile and reaches across the table for her hand. He strokes her knuckles.
I don’t need to look at the menu, but I do anyway. The arugula pizza and Rubirosa salad are what we always get.
“Everything,” Bella says. She squeezes and releases his hand and shimmies her torso. She’s wearing a short black ruffled dress with roses on it that I bought with her on a shopping trip to The Kooples. She has neon green suede heels tucked under her, and dangly green plastic earrings clank against her cheeks.
I need to avoid Aaron’s face. His entire person — him — seated twelve inches across the table from me.
“Bella tells us you’re an architect,” David says, and my heart squeezes with affection for him. He always knows the things you’re supposed to ask — how you’re supposed to behave. He always remembers the protocol.
“Indeed,” Aaron says.
“I thought architects didn’t really exist,” I say. I’m keeping my eyes on the menu.
Aaron laughs. I glance up at him. He points to his chest. “Real. Pretty sure.”
“She’s talking about this article Mindy Kaling wrote like a million years ago. She says that architects only exist in romantic comedies.” Bella rolls her eyes at me.
“She does?” Aaron points to me.
“No, Mindy,” Bella says. “Mindy says that.”
I think it was in the Times. Titled something like: “Types of Women In Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real.” The architect thing was anecdotal. Incidentally, Mindy also said that a workaholic and an ethereal dream girl were not believable stereotypes, either, yet here we are.
“No handsome architects,” I say. “To clarify.”
Bella laughs. She leans across the table and touches Aaron’s hand. “That’s about as close to a compliment as you’re going to get, so enjoy it.”
“Well then, thank you.”
“My dad is an architect,” David says, but no one responds. We’re now busying ourselves with the menu.
“Do you guys want red or white?” Bella asks.
“Red,” David and I say at the same time. We never drink white. Rose, occasionally, in the summer, which it isn’t yet.
When the waiter comes over, Bella orders a Barolo. When we were in high school, we all took shots of Smirnoff while Bella poured Cabernet into a decanter.
I’ve never been a big drinker. In school it affected my ability to get up early and study or run before class, and now it does the same for work — only worse. Since I turned thirty, even a glass of wine makes me groggy. And after the accident no one was allowed a drink in our house, not even a thimbleful of wine. Completely dry. My parents still are, to this day.
“I’m in the mood for some meat,” David says. We’ve never ordered anything other than the arugula or classic pizza here. Meat?
“I’d split a sausage with you,” Aaron says.
David smiles and looks at me. “I never get sausage. I like this guy.”
I’ve been preoccupied, possessed, since I saw him on the sidewalk. For the first time, I consider the reality that this man is Bella’s boyfriend. Not the guy from the premonition — but the one sitting across from her now. For one thing, he seems good and solid. Funny and accommodating. It’s usually like pulling teeth to get one of her boyfriend’s to make eye contact.
If he were anyone else, I might be thrilled for her. But he isn’t.
“Where do you live?” I ask Aaron.
I see flashes of the apartment. Those big, open walls. The bed that overlooked the city skyline.
“Midtown,” he says.
“Midtown?”
He shrugs. “It’s close to my office.”
“Excuse me,” I say.
I get up from the table and wind my way to the bathroom, which exits off a little hallway.
“What’s going on?” It’s David on my heels. “That was weird. Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “I don’t feel well.”
“What happened?”
I look at him. His face is studying me with concern and… something else. Surprise? It’s close cousins with annoyance. But this is unusual behavior for me, and so I’m not sure.
“Yeah, it just hit me. Can we go?”
He glances back into the restaurant, as if his gaze will reach the table where Bella and Aaron sit, no doubt just as baffled.
“Are you going to throw up?”
“Maybe.”
This does it. He springs into action, placing a hand on my lower back. “I’ll let them know. Meet me outside; I’ll call a car.”
I nod. I head outside. The temperature has dropped markedly since we arrived. I should have brought a jacket.
David comes out with my bag, and Bella.
“You hate him,” she says. She crosses her arms in front of her chest.
“What? No. I don’t feel well.”
“It was pretty spontaneous. I know you. You once muscled through the full-blown flu to fly to Tokyo.”
“That was work,” I say. I’m clutching my stomach. I’m actually going to vomit. It’s all going to come out on her green suede shoes.
“I like him,” David says. He looks to me. “Dannie does, too. She had a fever earlier. We just didn’t want to cancel.”
I feel a wave of affection for him, for this lie.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I tell her. “Go enjoy your dinner.”
Bella doesn’t budge from her place on the sidewalk, but our car comes and David holds the door open for me. I dive inside. He walks around and then we’re off down Mulberry, Bella disappearing behind us.
“Do you think it’s food poisoning? What did you eat?” David asks.