Page 23 of The Perfect Rom-Com

“You think you’d have remembered not to stand me up.” I set the spoon back on my napkin.

“I forgot to come out here to Timbuktu—”

“—thirty-two minutes by train—”

“—for dinner two years ago—”

“You didn’t forget.” I smile as I snap open the menu and scroll over the options. “You knew perfectly well you were supposed to meet me here to go over Amelia’s notes and conveniently forgot when that new acquisitions editor said, ‘Oh golly gee, Mr. Sterling, I’m new to the city and have absolutely no idea how to walk into a restaurant and order food in this great big place all alone. It’s just soooo different from Orlando.’”

“I liked you better when you were in awe of me. Where’s the simpering, leechy Bryony who loved me? Can we bring her back?”

“Ship’s long sailed.”

A ref blows a whistle across one of the many screens, and a unanimous moan runs through the room.

Silence hovers between us.

“So.” I flick up the menu and let my eyes drift over it. “How’s Claire?”

“Fine,” he says promptly, scanning his own menu. “How’s Parker?”

“Fine.”

There. We got that little bit of courtesy out of the way.

Every time we end up at dinner together, I approach the subject, just to clarify our terms. We are agent and client. Friend and friend. And look here! We’ve established that openly, again, just to make it absolutely, perfectly clear should it come up in conversation with our significant others.

I finish spinning the little gold band on the ring finger of my right hand. The ring Parker gave me just before he left for Auckland, Russia. The one he told me belonged to his mother at one time. It didn’t signify that we were engaged obviously (I mean, we had only been dating four blissful months before he left to teach ESL across the globe), but in his words, “I’m leaving something priceless behind, and I promise I will return for it.”

I exhale, recalling distantly the moment precisely twenty-seven months ago.

At the time it was supposed to be twelve, and that twelve turned into sixteen, which turned into eighteen, and now here we are, twenty-seven months later.

I’m not actually sure how significant things are with Claire. In fact, I’m not even totally sure that’s her name. But I don’t care, really. The point is, in case Parker brings it up, it’s been written down and recorded. At precisely 7:12 p.m., I brought Parker up at a work date with my agent and friend. See? You can pull it up on the (very likely broken) camera perched in the upper corner of this restaurant if you like.

Not that Parker has ever brought it up.

No, for the last few months in particular, our troubles seem to lie elsewhere. For us it’s more of a challenge of figuring out how to simply connect when our time zones are quite literally polar opposite.

“Is that her name?” I say, glancing up.

“Who?” Jack says.

“Claire.”

“Oh.” Jack pauses. His brows screw up like he’s thinking hard. “No,” he says finally. “I think it’s Chloe.”

“Huh,” I say mildly.

“Mmm,” he returns, and gazes at the menu.

A few minutes later Serghei returns, arms loaded down with dinner plates alongside a platter of his famous round braided bread.

“And for the Teacher?” Serghei pauses at our table.

“I think I’ll go with chiftele cu piure again.”

“Good choice,” he says. “Fresh delivery of pork today.”