Just because Sarah had been thinking she might run into Richard didn’t mean she’d made it happen. Manhattan was a small town if you bought your gesso at Pearl Paint or had a fondness for the pignoli
cookies at Rocco’s Pastry Shop, or if next week, once your nearly perfect boyfriend had squared the sublet, you’d be living in spitting distance of your old flame. Or whatever he was to her—never acting on their attraction having only elevated it to an even purer form of romanticized drivel. An obsessive yearning it had taken her years, and meeting Evan, to put aside. Still. Coming up from the subway at Christopher Street that afternoon, she’d literally crossed his path. Richard had grinned, linked arms with her, and swept her along down Seventh Avenue. Now here they were at the White Horse Tavern having a beer, and Sarah couldn’t dispel the feeling that she’d conjured him up.
