I nod. “Museums are chronically understaffed on the maintenance and facilities side, but curators, conservators, and preservationists? There’s a line ten-deep of people dying to get into those positions, and those of us in the jobs are fighting to keep them like it’s the Battle of Bunker Hill.”
“I know you had many wars to choose from. Thank you for choosing the Revolutionary War.”
“Curators do have to know their audience.” Francie is the only person I have nerdy history banter with. It’s never made me wonder about kissing her, but that’s what I’m thinking about right now with Jay. What would it be like to kiss each smirk off his face when he’s pleased with his own jokes? This is strictly a Jay effect. A bad one. But that’s okay. I know exactly how to kill that vibe.
I take a breath. “I’m telling you all this so you know how much I loved working at the Sutton. It was an honor to be overworked and underpaid.” He smiles like he understands, but how could he? He’s a trust fund kid. “Promotions are rare. They usually only happen if we get a massive donation for a new exhibit or when someone retires. I knew I’d have to wait for a retirement to get promoted, but I felt lucky enough to be on staff at all.”
I wish I could rush through the next part, squishing the words together so I can get it over with. Or maybe mumbling them so low Jay can’t make them out. But I forge ahead. “About a year ago, I started dating the attorney who handles the museum’s legal issues. He works for a big-deal firm. His father is a managing partner and happens to be a board member of the Sutton, which is why he turned the account over to Hayes to do the legal work.”
“Nepo lawyer,” he says. “Cool.”
“Yes. But Hayesisvery good at his job.”
The first time I saw Hayes, he had just taken over the museum account for the firm. He was working out of a small office the museum held for the firm when we called them in to deal with the legality of acquiring or repatriating specific pieces. He’d been the most stereotypical version of an East Coast Ivy boy, and I’d immediately begun building his personality in my head. He’d be polished, funny in a highbrow way, confident, always wearing the highest quality but least flashy suits and shoes. He’d be big on tradition in a comforting, not stifling, way and want to name our children after Founding Fathers in his direct ancestral line.
It took a whole year before Hayes noticed me, and it was because we almost collided when I was stepping out of an elevator he was stepping into. He apologized. I smiled and told him not to worry about it, I’d see him in the office, then walked away as he looked at me in confusion.
Jay doesn’t need the details, but I’ve reviewed them so many times, trying to figure out where I missed the red flags. Probably the fact that it took Hayes a year to notice me was the biggest one.
“We dated for a few months, and I kept waiting for things to get more serious. We went out to restaurants and galleries and all of that, so I knew he wasn’t trying to hide me, but he never suggested I should meet his parents, even though they live in Boston. Around the six-month mark, I asked him what our relationship was. I was spending more time with him than I had to spare, and I wanted to know we were going somewhere.”
This isn’t even the “bad” part, and I already feel way too exposed. It shouldn’t matter what Jay thinks about how uninvested Hayes was in me.
“That all sounds reasonable,” Jay says, as if encouraging me to continue.
Might as well get it over with. “He told me he was the kind of guy who took things slow, but he said lots of nice things about how much he cared about me, that he thought he was falling for me, but it was a new feeling for him, and he was trying to understand it.”
I laugh at this, a short, disbelieving sound at my own naïvete. I’d dated enough to know better, but I’d been too caught up in finally finding my ideal man to wonder why he’d have to try to “understand” his feelings. I had my East Coast Ivy boy with his charming grin, his deep Boston roots, and his tailored suits. It was enough.
“This went on for a couple more months, then he invited me to a social at the Harvard Club for his law school cohort. Even though I’ve worked around fine art and wealthy patrons for years at the Sutton, socializing with them has always been limited to the winter fundraising gala. The Harvard Club was a totally different experience. Do you belong?” I ask Jay.
He nods, almost reluctantly. “It’s too good of a networking opportunity to pass up. I know the kinds of socials you’re talking about.”
“From the second we walked in, I felt like a faker.”
“I bet a lot of the people there do, even some who would surprise you.”
“Do you feel like that? A faker?” I can’t imagine it. Jay is the definition of “at ease.”
He moves his head side to side in a motion that isn’t yes or no. “Not a faker, no. More like I don’t belong because I’m not a doctor, lawyer, or CEO. Maybe it’s a shortcoming I have, but I don’t have much to talk to the other people about. I mostly go to the lounge, where I can run into my old professors.”
That’s a big difference. He felt like he didn’t belong because they didn’t have anything to offer him. At the social with Hayes, the other lawyers and their dates looked rightpast me because I had nothing to offer them. “It was an awkward night, but I didn’t think too much about it when we left. It’s an annual thing, so we wouldn’t have to do it often.”
“When did it change to not dating at all?”
“A week later. He told me he didn’t think we were a good fit because I was too suburban middle class.”
“He said that?” Jay looks as appalled as if I’d announced Hayes sold organs on the black market.
“Not in those words. He told me that we didn’t have enough things in common. He said down the road, he’d need to think about a partner who could host and entertain his high-powered friends comfortably because there would be a lot of that as he negotiated deals and brought in new clients.” I lean forward. “It turns out it was all because of lobster.”
“Sure, of course,” he says, deadpan. Then his expression switches to disbelief. “Lobster?”
“Yeah. They were serving some bacon-wrapped hors d’oeuvres at the Harvard thing. I took one and said it was tasty and asked if it was crab. But it was lobster. And this helped Hayes realize that I lack the background he needed in a partner. He meant a girlfriend or even a wife, but it felt more like business partner. But girlfriend, wife, or business partner, his person would need to know lobster on sight, or he couldn’t bring them around the Harvard Club. Who needs that kind of embarrassment?” I say this in a wry tone, but traces of shame from his words make my face feel hot and my heartbeat sound loud.
Jay’s eyebrows draw together into a single dark line over his straight nose, and he calls Hayes a word that’s an insult to well-behaved donkeys.
I nod again. “Basically.”
