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I looked down at my plate, at the lasagna cooling under a glossy layer of cheese, and wished for one of the safe answers I’d been raised to give. The sort that sounded considerate without costing anything.

“My parents like you,” I said. “Your parents don’t seem opposed to me. We get along. We come from the same world.”

“That’s very romantic.”

I looked up as I caught the edge in her voice.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know.”

That was worse than if she hadn’t.

“Cleveland,” she said.

“Eventually.”

“Eventually. There’s that word again.”

I reached for my wine, then didn’t drink it. “I thought eventually sounded patient.”

“It sounds decided.”

I didn’t have a good answer for that, which was becoming a theme of the evening.

“What if I wanted to keep working?” she asked.

“At Side A?”

She nodded.

I should’ve said yes quickly. A better man might’ve managed it. A smarter one, at least. Instead I hesitated.

“You don’t think I’m serious about it,” she said.

“I think you like being there.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Outside the front window, a group of students passed by laughing, one of them carrying a record under his arm as if he’d just been handed something important.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I understood that you might be serious about it.”

She sat back. “Now you do.”

At the table behind me, the baby dropped his spoon. I leaned down, picked it up before the waiter reached us, and handed it to his father, who thanked me with the tired gratitude of a man who hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a while.

“When I picture next year,” I said as Lorrie waited.

“When I picture things,” I tried again, “you’re there.”

Her face changed, but not in the way I’d hoped.

“Where exactly am I?” she asked.

I opened my mouth, and for one terrible second all I could see was Cleveland. A good apartment. My father’s firm. Dinners with my parents. Lorrie beside me, beautiful and clever and slightly too bright for every room I’d put her in.

I had meant to tell her she mattered. Instead I’d shown both of us that I hadn’t thought enough about where she belonged.