The drive to Santa Monica takes forty minutes. Marcus navigates Interstate 10 while Poppy sits beside me in the back seat, maintaining a careful distance.
“Tell me about Preston,” I say.
She tenses up. “Uh, what about him?”
“He obviously messed up, so what did he do that I should avoid? What did he do that I should do better?”
She’s quiet for a moment. Streetlights slide across her face as we cross the bridge.
“Well, first off, he cheated on me.”
“I would never do that to you.” It came out before I could stop myself.
“That would be hard to do since we’re not really together.”
“Yes, but I know I would not do that.”
“But it was more than that,” she says. “I just didn’t realize it until after it was over, you know?”
I nod my head in acknowledgment, and she continues.
“He was distracted. Always half-present. Like he was waiting for something better to come along.”
“I’m never distracted.”
“He forgot details. Important ones.”
“I remember everything.” This is not an exaggeration. The curse of an endless memory—every moment preserved, every hurt archived.
“He made me feel like I was too much.” Her voice goes flat. “Too loud. Too online. Too me.”
My jaw tightens. “Then he was a fool.”
She looks at me. In the dim light of the car, her eyes are searching.
“You’re good at this,” she says. “The compliments. You sound like you mean them.”
“I do mean them.”
“But it’s not real.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s not real.”
The words taste like ash.
The restaurant is quiet and intimate. White tablecloths. Candles. The kind of place where waiters appear exactly when needed and vanish exactly when they are not.
Poppy orders the salmon. I order the steak, rare. I won’t eat much of it, but appearances matter.
“We need a story,” she says, once the sommelier has poured our wine and retreated. “How did we meet?”
“Art gallery,” I say. The idea forms as I speak. “Three months ago. You were there for work—an influencer event. I was there because I collect.”
“You collect art?”
“Among other things.” Centuries of acquisitions. Paintings that outlived their artists by generations. “You were standing in front of a piece, and you said to your friend, ‘The artist must have painted it during a breakup because the colors were too sad to be anything else.’”
She stares at me. “That’s oddly specific.”
