Where The Heart Stayed

IF A RESTAURANT COULD ROMANCE, I'd be a goner. Nancy, Dave, and I sat at a small table in the Olive Branch, a Michelin-starred spot in SoHo Dave had begged to try. I wasn't usually one for long lunches, but it was a Friday in summer, and I owed Nancy a favor after bailing on a play she'd wanted to see. As an editor always chasing fresh talent, Nancy had dragged us to the strangest concerts and events-no small feat considering I'd visited forty-three countries with my aunt, who had a knack for weirdness.

This, however, was very-very-nice.

"This is officially the fanciest lunch I've ever been to," Nancy announced, popping another bacon-wrapped date into her mouth. It was the only thing we'd ordered so far that she could eat-the rare wagyu slices were out of the question for a person seven months pregnant. Nancy was tall and waifish, with dyed-periwinkle hair and pale white skin. She had dark freckles across her cheeks and always wore kitschy earrings she found at flea markets on the weekends. Today's flavor was metal snakes with signs in their mouths that read FUCK OFF. She was Strauss & Adder's best in-house designer.

Beside her sat Dave, a newly minted senior editor at Strauss & Adder, speared another wagyu slice. With his short curly hair, warm brown skin, and signature 1910s-explorer look, tan trousers, white button-down, suspenders - he was unmistakable. Next to him, I felt underdressed in my free Everything Café T-shirt, old light-wash jeans, and duct-taped red flats from college. Three days without washing my hair, dry shampoo could only do so much - but I'd been late to work and hadn't had time to care.

I was a senior publicist at Strauss & Adder, a perpetual planner, and somehow I had not planned for this outing in the slightest. To be fair, it was a Summer Friday, and I hadn't expected anyone to be in the office today.

"It is really fancy here," I agreed. "It's much better than that poetry reading in the Village."

Nancy nodded. "Though I did enjoy how all of their drinks were named after dead poets."

I made a face. "Emily Dickinson gave me the worst hangover."

Dave looked incredibly proud of himself. "Isn't this place just so nice? You know that article I sent you? The one in Eater? The author, Alfred Chado, is the head chef here. The article is a few years old, but it's still a great read."

"And you want him to do a book with us?" Nancy asked. "For-what-a cookbook?".

Dave seemed genuinely hurt. "What do you take me for, a plebeian? Absolutely not. A cookbook would be wasted on someone who is such a wizard with words."

Nancy and I exchanged a knowing look. Dave had said the same about the play I dodged last week while moving into my late aunt's Upper East Side apartment. On Saturday, as I hauled a record player into the elevator, Nancy confessed she'd never swim in the ocean again. Still, Dave had a gift - he could see what someone could write, not just what they had. He thrived on possibility. That's what made him different. He always took in the underdogs and helped them bloom.

"What's that look for?" Dave asked, looking pointedly between the two of us. "My instincts were right about that musician we saw on Governors Island last month."

"Sweetheart," Nancy replied patiently, "I'm still getting over the play I saw last week about a man who had an affair with a dolphin."

Dave winced. "That was...a mistake. But the musician wasn't! And neither was that TikToker who wrote that amusement park thriller. It's going to be phenomenal. And this chef . . . I know this chef is special. I want to hear more about that summer when he turned twenty-six-he alluded to it in Eater, but not enough."

"You think there's a story there?" Nancy asked.

"I'm sure there is. Right, Lola?"

Then they looked at me expectantly.

"I... haven't read it, actually," I admitted, and Nancy tsked in that way of hers that will end up making their future child incredibly contrite. I ducked my head in embarrassment.

"Well, you should!" Dave replied. "He's been all around the world, just like you. The way he relates food to friendship and memories-I want him." He turned his hungry gaze toward the kitchen. "I want him so badly". And whenever he had that kind of look in his eyes, there was no stopping him.

I took another sip of too-dry wine and scanned the dessert menu. We usually lunched together - a perk of working in the same building - but mostly stuck to Midtown, where options were limited. I'd eaten more food truck sandwiches and lobster mac and cheese than I cared to admit. In summer, with tourists everywhere, finding a decent spot without a reservation was nearly impossible.

"Well, when you get him, I have a question about this dessert menu," I said, pointing to the first item there. "What the hell is a manicured Apple pie?"

"Ooh, that one is the chef's specialty," Dave informed us as Nancy snatched the menu from me to read about it. "I definitely want to try it."

"If it's just a slice of Apple sprinkled with some granular sugar on a graham cracker," Nancy said, "I'm going to laugh."

I checked my phone for the time. "Whatever it is, we should probably order it and head back. I told Monique I'd be back by one."

"It's Friday!" Nancy argued, waving the dessert menu at me. "No one works on Fridays in the summer. Especially not in publishing."

"Well, I do," I replied. Monique Adder was my boss, the director of marketing and publicity, and co publisher. She was one of the most successful women in the business. If there was a bestseller to be had in a book, she knew exactly how to squeeze it out, and that was a talent in and of itself. Speaking of talent, just so Nancy and Dave knew the situation, I added, "I have three authors on tour right now-and something is bound to go wrong."

Dave nodded in agreement. "Murphy's Law of Publishing."

"Murphy's Law," I echoed. "And Juliette cried herself sick this morning because of her boyfriend, so I'm trying to lighten her load today."

"Fuck Romeo-Rob," Dave intoned.

"Fuck Romeo-Rob," I agreed.

"Speaking of dating." Nancy sat up a little straighter, and put her elbows on the table. Oh, I knew that look, and I inwardly suppressed a groan. She leaned in to look at me, arching her eyebrows.

"How're you and Fredy doing?"

Suddenly, the wineglass looked very interesting, but the longer she stared at me waiting for an answer, the less resolve I had, until I finally sighed and said, "We broke up last month."

Nancy gasped like she'd been personally insulted. "Last month? Before or after you moved?"

"While I was moving. The night you all went to the play."

"And you didn't tell us?" Dave added, more curious than his distraught wife.

"You didn't tell us!" Nancy echoed in a cry. "That's important! And it's been over a month? You've been single for a month and we didn't know?"

"It really wasn't that big of a deal." I shrugged. "It was over text messages. I think he's already dating somebody he met on Hinge."

My friends looked at me with utter pity, but I waved it off. "Really, it's fine. We weren't that compatible anyway." Which was true, but I didn't include the fight we had before the texts. Fight was a strong word for it, though. It felt more like a shrug and a white flag tossed onto an already-abandoned battlefield.

"Again? You have to work late again?" he'd asked. "You know this is my big night. I want you here with me."

To be fair, I had forgotten that it was the opening night of a gallery with his work. He was an artist-a metalworker, actually-and this was a big thing for him.

"I'm sorry, Fredy. This is important." And it was, I was sure of it, even though I couldn't remember what the emergency had been to make me stay late. He was quiet for a long moment, and then he asked, "Is this how it's going to be? I don't want to be second to your job,Lola."

"You're not!"

He was. I kept him at arm's length so he wouldn't see how broken I was. I could keep lying, keep pretending I was fine-because I had to be. People had enough to worry about without adding me to the list. That was the whole appeal of Lola Figmud: she always figured it out. Fredy sighed, heavy and deep. "Lola, I think you need to be honest." And just like that, the nail hit the coffin.

"You're so closed off. You hide behind work. I don't think I even know you anymore. You won't open up, won't be vulnerable. What happened to the girl with watercolor under her fingernails?"

She was gone, but that much he already knew. He met me after she was already gone. I think that might have been why he didn't just dump me after I canceled plans on him the first time, because he kept trying to find that girl with watercolors under her fingernails that he saw once in a photo in my old apartment. The girl from before.

"Do you even love me?" he went on. "I can't remember you saying it once.

"We've only dated for three months. It's a little early, don't you think?"

"When you know, you know."

I pursed my lips. "Then I guess I don't know".

And that was it. I was at the end of this relationship. Before I said anything I'd regret, I hung up the phone, then texted him that it was over. I'd mail his toothbrush back to him. God knows I wasn't going to take a trip to Williamsburg if I didn't have to.

"Besides," I added, grabbing the too-expensive bottle of wine to top off my glass, "I don't really think I want to be in a relationship right now. I want to concentrate on my career-I don't have time to mess with guys I might end up dumping in a text message three months later. The sex wasn't even that good." I took a large gulp of wine to wash down that horrid truth.

Dave watched me in awe, shaking his head. "Look at that, not even a tear."

"I've never seen her cry over any guy," Nancy said to her husband.

I tried to argue that no, I actually had, but then closed my mouth again because... she was right. I seldom cried, anyway, and over some guy? Absolutely not. Nancy always said it was because all my relationships had boiled down to calling them some guy-a person not even worthy of a name in my memory.

"Because you've never been in love," she once said, and maybe that was true.

"When you know, you know," Fredy had said. I didn't even know what love was supposed to feel like.

Nancy waved her hand. "Well, whatever to him, then! He didn't deserve a financially stable girlfriend who is kicking ass at work and owns an apartment on the Upper East Side," she went on, and then that seemed to remind her of the other thing I really didn't want to talk about. "How is it? The apartment?"

The apartment. She and Dave had stopped calling it my aunt's apartment back in January, but I still couldn't kick the habit. I shrugged. I could tell them the truth-that every time I walked through the door, I expected to see my aunt there in her wingback chair the color of robin's eggs, but the chair was gone. So was it's owner.

"It's great," I decided.

Nancy and Dave both gave each other the same glance, as if they didn't believe me. Fair enough; I wasn't a very good liar.

"It's great," I repeated. "And why are we talking about me? Let's find this famous chef of yours and woo him to the dark side." I reached over to the table for the last date and ate it.

"Sure, sure, we just need to flag down our server..." Dave muttered, looking around to see if he could catch anyone's eye, but he was much too polite and too meek to do anything more than give them a meaningful look.

"Do I just raise my hand or-what do you do at expensive restaurants?" Dave asked. He'd been a lot more proactive lately about building his author list, but sometimes I wondered if these outings; the concert on Governors Island, the opera, the gallery exhibit with the body-painting artist, were really for me. To distract me. To pull me out of my grief.

It had been almost six months. I was fine now. Really. But it's hard to convince someone after they've seen you blackout drunk, sobbing on your bathroom floor at two in the morning, the night of your aunt's funeral.

They'd seen the rawest parts of me and they still stuck around. I wasn't the easiest person to love, and their loyalty meant more than I could ever admit. These "field trips" had been oddly refreshing. The least I could do was flag down a server.

"I got it," I sighed, raising my hand to catch the server's attention just as she turned from another table. I wasn't sure if that's how you were supposed to do it at a fancy restaurant, but she came right over. "Could we have the, uh-" I glanced at the dessert menu.

Nancy piped in, "The manicured apple whatever!"

"That," I said, "and also could we perhaps talk with the head chef?"

Dave quickly pulled a business card out of his wallet to hand to the server as I added, "Please tell him we're from Strauss and Adder Publishers, here about a business opportunity-a book, actually."

The server didn't seem surprised at all by the request, as she took the business card and tucked it into the front of her black apron. She said she'd see what she could do and quickly left to put in the dessert order. Dave clapped quietly to himself once the server had gone. "Here we go! Ooh, do you feel that thrill? It never gets old." His excitement was infectious, even though I felt very little about this chef. "Never," I said, and suddenly my phone began to vibrate in my purse. I took it out and glanced at the email notification. Why was one of my authors emailing me?

Nancy leaned over to her husband. "Ooh, how about we set Lola up with that new guy who moved into the apartment next to us?"

"He's cute," Dave agreed.

"No, thanks." I opened my email. "I'm not ready to jump into another relationship after Fredy."

"You said you were over him! And it's been over a month"

"There's still a mourning period-oh, shit," I added as I finished skimming the message, and popped up out of my chair. "I'm sorry, I have to run."

Nancy asked, worriedly, "Is something wrong? We haven't even gotten our dessert yet."

I took my wallet out of my knockoff Kate Spade bag and set down the company credit card since this was, technically, a work lunch. "One of my authors on tour just got stranded in Denver, and Juliette's not answering her emails. Put lunch on that and I'll see you at work?" I said apologetically as Dave took the card. He looked stricken. "Wait-what?" he darted his eyes to the kitchen, and back to me.

"You got this," I said as my author sent another panicked email. I hugged them both and stole one last fried goat cheese ball, chased it with the rest of the wine, and turned to leave-

"Watch out!" Dave cried. Nancy gasped.

Too late. I collided with a server behind me. The dessert he held went one way, and he went to the other. I shot my hand out to grab it as he went to grab me, and pulled me back upright. I stumbled and he steadied me, his grip strong on my arm.

"Nice save," he said warmly.

"Thanks, I-" And that was when I realized my other hand was on his very solid chest. "Oh!" I quickly handed him back the dessert and stepped away. "I am so sorry!" A blush rose too quickly on my cheeks. I couldn't look at the guy. I had definitely just put my hand on a stranger for longer than necessary.

"...In a rush I guess?" the man asked.

"Yes, sorry, sorry, that's our dessert, but I have to go," I replied in a hurry. My face felt as red as a cherry. I quickly dodged around him, mouthing to my friends, "Good luck," as I left the restaurant. Two calls to Southwest Airlines and four city blocks later, I had the author on the next flight to their final tour stop. I descended into the subway to make my way back to Midtown and to work-and tried to get the feeling of that man's strong grip, the solidness of his chest, the way he bent toward me... he did bend toward me, didn't he? Like he knew me? I wasn't

imagining things?-out of my head.

The first time I walked through the stone archway on Thirty-Fourth Street and rode the chrome elevator to the seventh floor, I knew Strauss & Adder Publishers was special. The doors opened into a small, white-shelved lobby lined with books - both their own and beloved others - with weathered leather chairs inviting you to sink in, open a novel, and lose yourself in the words.

Strauss & Adder was a small but powerful New York publisher, specializing in adult fiction, memoirs, and lifestyle nonfiction. Think self-help, cookbooks, and how-tos, but they were best known for their travel guides. If you wanted to find the best restaurants tucked away in distant cities, you looked for the little mallet hammer logo.

I could've done publicity anywhere and probably for more money, but no tech firm or PR hellscape could offer the magic of free travel books or the smell of aged paper in the halls lined with guides to Rome, Bangkok, and Antarctica. I didn't want to write books myself, but I loved the idea of some long-forgotten guide waxing poetic about old cathedrals and lost gods, and how words could make you ache for places you'd never been.

The office was an open floor plan, bright and white, framed by floor-to-ceiling shelves. Everyone had half-walled cubicles filled with colorful odds and ends. Mine was closest to my boss's glass-doored office - supposedly private, but no less public than hearing Juliette sob about her Romeo-Rob in the next cubicle over. (Fuck Romeo-Rob.)

At least even in their tidy glass offices you could see them dissociating at 2:00 p.m. on a Monday with the rest of us. And yet here we all were, because if we all loved one thing, it was books. I managed to send out a few interview queries by the time Nancy came back to the office.

"The dessert was really fantastic," she said, walking over to return my credit card. She, like the rest of design, was banished to the glum, cobweb-filled corner of the floor where CEOs were wont to stick their mushroom-growing artsy people. At least three of the designers had to start taking vitamin D supplements, it was so dark back there. "So was the chef."

"Hate that I missed it," I replied.

Nancy shrugged and handed me back my card. "You kind of ran right into him, actually."

I paused. The man with the strong grip. The warm, solid chest. "That... was him?"

"Absolutely. He's a gem. Really sweet-oh, say, did you end up saving your author from airport hell?"

"Of course," I replied, pulling myself out of my thoughts. "Was there ever any doubt?"

Nancy shook her head. "I envy you."

That made me pause. "Why?"

"Whenever you need to do something, you just go for it. Straight line. No hesitation. I think that's why Dave likes you so much," she added, a bit quieter. "You're an Excel spreadsheet to my chaos."

"I just like things the way I like things," I replied, and Nancy proceeded to tell me about what I'd missed at the restaurant-apparently, someone from Faux had come to the chef about a book (Parker Daniels, Dave guessed), as had Simon & Schuster and two imprints at HarperCollins and one at Macmillan. There would probably be more.

I gave a low whistle. "Dave's got steep competition."

"I know. I can't wait until this is all he starts talking about," Nancy deadpanned. She checked her smart watch on her wrist and groaned. "I should probably return to the cave. Movie tonight? I think that rom-com with the two assassins who fall in love is out?"

"Can I take a rain check? I'm still unpacking," I said, and Nancy handed me the receipt from lunch before disappearing into the darker part of the floor. I slipped into Monique's office to drop it off - but she wasn't there.

Most higher-ups, including Reginald Strauss, decorated their offices with family photos and travel memories. Monique's walls, though, were filled with pictures of her posing with celebrities at book launches and red carpets, her shelves stacked with awards where most people kept gifts from grandchildren. Every time I stepped inside, I pictured myself in her orange chair, living a life like that.

Suddenly, the glass door slid open, and Monique Adder - glamorous as ever - swept into the room. "Ah, Lola! Happy Friday, as always," she said, sharp in a black pantsuit, floral heels, and her blunt-cut gray bob clipped neatly back.

When Monique entered the room, she owned it. Conversations stopped. Heads turned.

As brilliant as she was magnetic, Monique had started in a lowly SoHo PR firm, fielding telemarketer calls and clipping tabloid rumors. Now she was co publisher and director of marketing and publicity, running campaigns for some of the biggest names in publishing. She was an icon. The person everyone in the business wanted to be. The person I wanted to be - someone with a plan, with goals, and the tools to make them happen.

"Happy Friday, Monique. I'm sorry I took a long lunch," I quickly said.

She waved her hand. "It's perfectly all right. I saw you handled Adair Lynn's little airport snafu."

"She's really having the worst luck on this tour."

"We'll have to send her some flowers once she gets home." She opened a drawer and pulled out a bag of chocolate-covered almonds.

"Will do. I put a lunch expense on the account," I added, setting the receipt and credit card down on the desk. She took a look at both of them and curled an eyebrow. "Dave's after an author for a nonfiction project."

"Ah. Almonds?" She offered me the bag.

"Thank you." I took one out, sat down in the creaky chair opposite of her, and updated her on the afternoon's happenings-the booked podcast interviews, the revised itineraries, the newly confirmed bookstore events. Monique and I worked like a well-oiled machine. There was a reason everyone said I was her second-in-command-and I hoped to be her successor someday. Everyone figured I would be.