I looked at him, not sure how to respond.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Bad joke.”
But I wasn’t sure if he really was joking. And, actually, I kind of hoped he wasn’t.
If I married him, I could always be the person he saw me as. I could always look at myself through his eyes. I could be the helper, not the one who needed help.
The idea made me feel strong. And I wanted to feel that way forever.
39
Emily and Priya and Rob stayed while Tony closed up the bar. There had been so many people there, and it took Tony a few announcements of “final call” and “closing time!” before he could get them all to leave.
“I feel like I should give you a cut,” he said to Rob, after he locked the door.
Rob shook his head. “My pleasure, man. It was fun.”
Tony took the cash out of the register and put it in a lockbox. “When I first opened this place, last call was at two a.m., and I always had to deal with some drunk or other who didn’t want to leave, and I got home at nearly four. It messed up my whole schedule. So I decided a year or so in that last call would be midnight. It made everything so much saner.” He locked the box with a key from the ring attached to his belt loop. “And honestly, the till wasn’t that different, once you factored in the staff I needed to pay to keep this place open. We do much better at happy hour, pre-dinner stuff.”
“Plus now you can go out after your night ends,” Rob said.
Tony shook his head. “Not anymore. I’ve got my dogs to walk in the morning, and then a personal training session at nine.”
Rob looked shocked. “You serious?” he asked.
Tony nodded. “Same reason I stopped drinking. I decided I hate feeling like shit in the morning.”
Rob nodded. “Respect,” he said, finally.
Then he looked over at Emily and Priya, who were talking quietly a little farther down the bar and pitched his voice so they could hear. “Can I interest you two ladies in a post-performance celebration? Because, to be honest—”
“You’re starving,” Emily said.
Rob laughed. “And predictable, it seems.”
Priya looked at her phone. “I can stay for maybe another twenty minutes,” she said. “But then I should get home. I promised Neel I’d spend tomorrow morning with Anika so he could go on a bike ride with some friends. And that girl gets up with the sun.”
“Queenie?” Rob asked.
Emily nodded. “I’ll go back with Priya, so you’ve got yourself twenty minutes of eating.”
“There’s a late-night pizza place down the street,” Tony said. “It’s on the way to my car. I can walk you.”
So the four of them left the bar, locking the door of the Snare behind them. A few Austin Roberts superfans had stuck around and Rob took selfies with them before setting off down the block.
“Are you used to that yet?” Tony asked Rob.
He shook his head. “Does anyone really get used to that?”
* * *
—
Priya and Emily were walking just behind Rob and Tony. “So are you considering it?” Priya said quietly, continuing the conversation they’d started in the bar about Rob’s invitation to tour with him.
Emily shrugged. “Not really,” she said. “A piece of me would love to be on the road, performing every night, but my life is here. At NYU, with Ezra. I made my choices, you know? Years ago, I chose this path.”
Priya looked at her critically.
“It’s okay, I haven’t paid you for a session,” Emily said, laughing, recognizing in Priya the same struggle that she had sometimes when talking to friends.
Priya laughed, too. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I’ll stop. But . . . choices are made all the time,” she said. “One choice doesn’t have to define a life.”
Emily grabbed her friend’s hand and squeezed it. “I know,” she said.
She thought about her mom’s belief that we all made the choices we were supposed to make, we just didn’t know what they were supposed to be until we made them. She was supposed to be here tonight. She was supposed to see Rob again. But what was she supposed to do after that?
* * *
—
“You ladies ready for some pizza?” Rob called back, as they neared the restaurant.
Eat pizza. The next thing she was supposed to do was eat pizza.
xxix
Ezra and I were dating for three months when he asked if I wanted to meet his parents. We were at his place, making breakfast together after a lazy morning in bed where we’d twined ourselves around each other, holding each other close, both before and after sex. I think we needed those moments of physical contact.