Baby proof

'I don't love him,' I say. 'I'm never going to care about him in that way… I would have thought that was okay. But I end up feeling a little bit empty around him.'

My dad puts down his burger and says, 'Don't you wish we could pick the people we love?'

'Yeah,' I say. 'Or just make the people we love want the same things we want.'

'Yeah,' he says. 'That would be pretty good, too.'

Jess calls me back that afternoon and says, 'Let's go out tonight.' 'I can't,' I say. 'I have to go to the gym and run a couple of nine-minute miles, thank you very much.'

'You're not going to the gym tonight.'

'I've heard exercise makes you feel better,' I say, thinking that I've never really found that to be the case. More often, I find it to be frustrating when several consecutive workouts yield no visible results.

Jess says, 'You need a few drinks.'

I am tempted, but a few drinks with Jess almost never means a few drinks. Especially when one of us is dealing with any sort of upsetting professional, personal, or familial episode. It usually means a few drinks and then a long dinner and then a few more drinks. And then, if the tragedy is great enough, there is dancing at the cheesiest bridge-and-tunnel club Jess can dig up for us. It actually can be very therapeutic so I'm tempted to cave, but I consider the hangover that I will have tomorrow and make the thirty-five-year-old determination that it's not worth it.

I say, 'I wish I could… But I'm too far behind in my reading. I accomplished almost nothing in Italy.'

'Oh, c'mon. You're always behind in your reading,' Jess says.

'Yes, but I'm perilously behind now,' I say.

She says, 'Tough. We're going out. Meet me at Temple Bar at seven sharp.'

Then she hangs up before I can respond.

Temple Bar was one of the first bars Jess and I ever went to upon our move to New York. We got the recommendation from one of Jess's family friends, a girl named Caroline who had been living in the city for several years by the time we arrived. She gave Jess a list entitled 'Cool Places to Be Seen in Manhattan,' which we consulted before going out at night, putting asterisks next to our favorite spots. Temple Bar earned two asterisks. Even though the drinks were out of our usual happy-hour price range and we had to take an expensive cab ride to get to NoHo, it was always worth it. We felt cool when we were there-like we were making it in Manhattan.

One day, Jess's new boyfriend, a funny lawyer named Stu, came across the list in our kitchen. He and Jess had one of those relationships marked by merciless teasing; it was almost as if neither had evolved past the playground, hair-pulling stage. In any event, he took great pleasure in the find.

'Cool places to be seen?' Stu said, waving the list in the air, as she chased him around the apartment. 'This thing is too queer for words. Who wrote this?'

Jess played dumb and said, 'Oh, that ol' thing? Some friend of the family came up with that… Our dads work together. I barely know her. Tell him, Claudia.'

'We barely know her,' I echoed.

'Well, the only thing more queer than writing such a list is anyone who would actually save it,' he said, cracking up as he made the L-sign for loser on his forehead. 'And then make check marks and notes all over it!'

Jess's face reddened as she said, 'Well, you're the loser who has accompanied me to half of those places!'

She promptly crumpled up the paper and tossed the list in the trash, but by that point Temple Bar had been firmly established as our favorite hangout.

A lot has changed since then. As a thirty-five-year-old senior editor and a nearly-as-old managing director at a top Wall Street firm, Jess and I no longer hang out much in that Village-NoHo area. Nor do we enjoy lounges like we once did, vastly preferring restaurants where people will dare to be seen in a color other than black. But, like a song that is inextricably tied to a certain time in your life, Temple Bar evokes much nostalgia from our early twenties.

So whenever I see that lizard sign adorning the entrance on Lafayette Street and then step into the romantically lit, red-velvet, deco interior, I have a wave of being twenty-three and so poor I had to nurse one drink all night (I made nineteen thousand a year when I started out at Elgin). I also remember the way I felt-both wildly intimidated and impressed by the city, both filled with a sense of doom and full of hope. Most of all, I recall our many twenty-something mishaps, almost always caused by a member of the opposite sex.

That much is actually still true, I think, as I find Jess in a corner table with a cosmopolitan. She hardly ever drinks cosmopolitans anymore, but the beverage remains part of the Temple Bar ritual (a ritual she established way before Sex and the City ever aired). She hands me my personal Temple Bar favorite, a martini with a kiss of vermouth, and says, 'How are you?'

'I'm okay,' I say.

'Really?'

I nod, but then say, 'No. Not really.'

'Okay. Look. I was thinking. This marathon thing is just not your style anyway,' Jess says.

I think, If that's the best you came up with all day, I'm really in big trouble, but I say, 'I've always wanted to run a marathon.'

'Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You say that,' Jess says. 'You say that in the same way I fancy myself the sort of girl who would enjoy snow-boarding and bungee jumping and white-water rafting. I wish I liked adventure sports. But you know what? I don't. They're scary. They're not fun. So no, thanks… And you might think you want to run a marathon, but c'mon, do you really want to run twenty-six-plus miles? Do you really want to get up at the butt crack of dawn and train? No. You don't. So let the dream die, already.'

'I guess so,' I say. 'I don't know… I know that this shouldn't bother me as much as it does. Nothing has really changed since I went to Italy with Richard… or talked to Ben… or saw those Internet results. I'm in the exact same place I always was-or have been since I got a divorce. So I'm really not sure why I feel so much worse now…'

'Well, suspecting that Ben is in a relationship was one thing. Confirmation is another. It's hard. I get that.'

'I know. But I really thought I was moving on,' I say, recalling my dad's pep talk at lunch. 'Richard or no Richard, I thought I was okay with my decision.'

'You are okay, Claudia. You did make the right decision,' she says. 'It's just that moving on sometimes consists of some minor setbacks along the way. You had to have your rebound guy in Richard. You had to worry about Ben's rebound girl. Which is probably all Tucker is in the long run. But regardless of whether she is or isn't, you are moving on.'

'Just like you're moving on and forgetting Trey?' I say hopefully.

'Exactly!' she says, grinning. 'He's actually coming into town next week. He left me a message. But I haven't called him back.'

I shoot her a dubious look.

'I swear I haven't. And I'm not going to. I'm done with him. You need to be done with Ben, too.'

I nod and say okay.

'So here's to fresh starts,' she says, raising her glass.

'To fresh starts,' I say, thinking that this time I almost, very nearly, mean it.

We then proceed to get really drunk together, and it feels just like old times, when a few cocktails at a trendy lounge could fix just about anything.

I don't mention Ben and Tucker for another few days, until one of my authors, Ethan Ainsley, stops by to say hello. Ethan recently moved from London to New York which made me happy because he is one of my few authors who has a perfect score on my four-point checklist, namely: (1) I like him; (2) I like his writ-ing; (3) his books sell; and (4) he's reliable. More typically, I like the author and the writing but the books aren't as commercially