They stayed at the bar for two drinks.

Not because two drinks was the plan — there was no plan, that was the point — but because two drinks was where the conversation arrived at a natural pause and they both felt it and she looked at him and he looked at her and neither of them suggested a third.

They had talked the way people talked when they were both paying attention — not performing, not filling silence, just actually talking. She found out he had known Daniel since they were eleven, that he was a structural engineer which surprised her and then didn't, that he had been to...