We take the dance floor with the energy of women who have collectively decided that tonight is not the night for self-restraint. Geeta’s cousin—her name is Priya, I learn, shouted over the bass—turns out to be an excellent dancer. Maybe Miranda turns out to be Maribella and is an even better co-conspirator. We are loud. We are enthusiastic. The scarves are a menace and I love them.
At some point, I become aware of Miller watching from the edge of the room.
I tell myself I don’t care.
This is only partially true.
But I keep dancing anyway, because I promised twelve-year-old me, and she has been through enough.
Two songs later. Maybe three. Priya gets stolen away by her husband. Not long after, Maribella’s date steals here for a dance, and I drift back toward our table, flushed and slightly breathless and feeling, despite everything, significantly morelike myself.
Miller hands me a glass of water when I slide back into my chair.
No comment. No raised eyebrow. Just water, offered with the quiet matter-of-factness of a man who noticed I’d been dancing and thought I might be thirsty.
I take it without a word.
We sit in companionable near-silence as the reception winds down around us. The candles are burning low. The dance floor is thinning. Someone is definitely asleep at the far end of the head table.
“Did you have fun tonight?” he asks.
I consider this with perhaps more seriousness than the question requires. “Oh, absolutely. Brilliant, amazing fun. Not what I expected to happen, but exactly what I needed.”
He looks at me with that steady, slightly unreadable expression. “What did you expect?”
“Well.” I turn my water glass in my hands. “I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect willowy Raquel to show up with her polished shoes and her cake-related restraint.”
There’s a beat.
“Raquel?” he says.
Just the name. Like he had to search for it.
I stare at him. “From marketing. The woman youwere talking to for—” I check an imaginary watch. “Approximately one geological era.”
Something shifts in his expression. Not guilt. More like… genuine confusion.
“I was being polite,” he says.
“You seemed very comfortable.”
“She’s a colleague.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Sure.” He says it the way someone says the sky is blue—accurate, factual, completely devoid of personal investment. “And?”
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
Becauseandis actually an excellent question, and I don’t have a clean answer for it.
“Devon said you used to date,” I say finally.
“A long time ago.” He looks at me directly. “She’s seeing someone.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I ask.
