And so there we were on a Tuesday night in Chris’s apartment. I sat like a grand poobah on Chris’s big chair, a glass of wine on the arm, a small plate of Parrana cheese Chris had sliced for me.

I was content and calm and in love when, about a half hour later, Chris called me into the kitchen. There was a small table in the corner, where we usually sat, but the kitchen was drastically different. There was the scent of something nutty and warm in the air, mixing with a hint of pungent garlic, but that wasn’t it. The kitchen was lit up with honey-white lights, making me think of snowy Lincoln Park at Christmas. Chris had strung lights around the two tall windows and over the top of the cabinets. White candles flickered from every surface-the counters, the stove, the windowsills. Dinner was set at the table, his grandmother’s silver candelabra in the center.

“Chris?” I said, turning to him.

He was wearing a blue oxford that night, which made his eyes appear the color of the Caribbean Sea. He smiled big. It was his nervous grin. “Billy,” he said formally. He gestured to the table. I saw his hand tremble a bit.

“What’s all this?”

Chris was always doing the sweetest things for me. I reveled in his pampering, and I tried to treat him equally as well-shopping for him during my lunch hour, sending him e-mail cards and leaving little notes in his briefcase.

“It’s a special dinner. Sit.”

At the table, Chris brought me a pastry baked golden brown and stuffed with porcini mushrooms.

“Mmm,” I said, practically moaning with the first bite. “This is amazing.”

“I can’t wait,” Chris said. And suddenly, he was on his knees next to my chair.

“What are you-” I started to say.

“Shh.” He put a gentle finger to my lips. “Do you know what you are to me?”

I laughed nervously. Suddenly, the moment carried a weight of something life-altering. “I’m your girlfriend?”

“Yes. Thank God.” He laughed. “But you’re also…” His words died off. He looked down. He took a deep breath. He let it out and raised his eyes to me again. “You, Billy Tremont, are my most treasured and favorite person in the world.”

I blinked back tears that had quickly formed. His words repeated themselves in my ears-favorite person. No one had ever said such a thing to me before, not my mother, certainly not my father, not my sisters or a friend.

“You, too,” I said. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”

“I had a speech planned,” Chris said, “but I don’t think I can do it.”

He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out a box, which was covered with black taffeta. He opened it, and there it was-a dainty platinum band studded with diamonds, with a round, sparkling diamond that sat above the others like a queen.

“Will you marry me?” Chris said. “Billy, will you be my favorite person for the rest of my life?”

I did start crying then. Hard, fast tears that choked me, filled my chest with a crushing force. “Yes!” I screamed. “Yes, yes, yes.” I tackled him with a hug. Chris fell to the floor.

We never ate dinner that night.

This was the scene that looped in my mind as I lay in bed in the quiet of my mother’s house. The memory of our engagement reminded me of how I had utterly failed Chris. How would it feel to have the most important person in your life, your favorite person, disregard their duties and betray you, casually, quickly, as if those titles meant nothing? This ripped me apart because his words had meant something that night. His proclamation that I was his favorite person had carried more significance than a ring or a wedding.

I rolled over and buried my face in the sheets, realizing that I was no longer anyone’s favorite person.

“Lizbeth, it’s Billy.”

“Morning. You on your way in?”

“Not exactly.” I was, exactly, still in my pajamas, standing at my mother’s taupe-tiled kitchen counter, nursing a cup of green tea, hoping that the antioxidants claimed on the box would rid me of the pollution in my world. Despite the charge of motivation I’d gotten from Odette last night, I had few ideas on how to start doing something now. What I had done-talking to Chris-I had fucked up royally.

“I don’t feel so good,” I said to Lizbeth. True enough. Emotionally, I felt like crap.

“Oh, it’s that spring flu, right?” Lizbeth said. “I know five people who have that. You have to be really careful or it could turn into pneumonia.”

“I’ll be careful. Thanks. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Great, well, Roslyn has been looking for you, so let me transfer you.”

I clenched my teeth together. Roslyn had an ultrastrong bullshit detector.

“Billy,” she said, coming on the phone. “I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well.”

I coughed for effect. I lowered my voice to a near whisper. “Yes, thanks.”

There was a slight pause. Roslyn, I knew, equated sickness with personal weakness. As a result, everyone usually came to the office when they had colds and flus and tonsillitis, fighting through fevers and runny noses and getting everyone else sick in the process. Everyone except Roslyn, that is. The woman was never ill, never nervous, never much below or above her own personal flatline.

“Well, take care of yourself,” she said with as much compassion as if she were ordering a hamburger. “But I wanted to talk to you briefly about the Teaken account.”

I took a seat at my mother’s breakfast bar, pulling the green tea toward me. “All right.”

Twenty minutes later, the green tea was gone, and I was hunched over the breakfast bar, mumbling responses to Roslyn’s exhaustive list of questions about the Teaken budget, the firm’s P &L and the status of getting new prints to hang in the lobby, a task which had somehow fallen to me. The tedium of my job overwhelmed me. Where was the creative thinking about different story angles for our clients, different ways to write a press release, alternative media outlets? Those decisions, those queries were what I had always enjoyed about my job. My old job as a senior account exec. This new one was all business, all the time. Before the promotion, I hadn’t thought of the work as business or boring or beneath me. I’d enjoyed it, except for those times I was obsessing about how I should be promoted, without ever stopping to think about what being a VP would entail.

At last, Roslyn wound down. “Well, we can figure out later which account exec to assign to the new Bulls benefit,” she said.

Me! I wanted to scream. Let me do it. But I was a VP now. I worked on the big picture, not the individual accounts. “Sure,” I said, listlessly.

“We’ll talk about it when you get here tomorrow.”

It wouldn’t matter if I really did have pneumonia. Roslyn would expect me to get a chest X-ray and some powerful antibiotics and be back at my desk in a day.

I began dialing Evan’s number almost as soon as I hung up with Roslyn. It was sheer habit-seeking out Evan’s opinion about all things work. It was how our friendship had functioned for nearly eight years. But I’d blown that. We both had. I clicked the off button on my mom’s phone, still sitting at the breakfast bar. I turned it on again in the next second. I couldn’t avoid him forever. We had to talk about what happened. What there was to say, I wasn’t sure, but something had to be said, acknowledged.

I dialed Evan’s direct line. He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, it’s me. Billy.”

A slight pause. “Where are you? I just stopped by your office.”

“Sick.”

“Really?”

“No. Just sick in the head.”

We both laughed lamely.

“You ever going to talk to me again?” Evan asked.

“Yeah. Sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”

“Hey, I’ve been rejected by women before,” he said in a teasing tone. “Not many, but…”

I tried another laugh, but it was forced, more of a groan than a giggle. Another pause, longer this time and more potent, since Evan and I rarely had the slightest break in our conversations.