“That has not been considered a flaw in the plan.”
Her voice was dry, but the exhaustion underneath it was harder to miss. I set my cup down and looked at her. “What do you want?”
Aster met my eyes, and for once, that usual composed mask of hers slipped. “I don’t want this,” she said. “I don’t want a husband picked for me because my family got impatient.”
Gwen swore under her breath. “That’s insane.”
“Yes,” Aster said. “I know.”
Giselle, who had gone still beside us, watched her carefully. “Have you told them no?”
Aster gave a small, humorless smile. “I’ve tried. They hear it as if I’m negotiating.”
Silence followed, heavy and familiar in the worst way.
I reached for her hand where it rested beside her knee and squeezed once. “You’re not wrong for wanting your own life.”
She looked down at our hands, then back at me. “They call it love when they’re really just trying to make decisions for me.”
Something in me tightened at that. I understood more than I wanted to. Before I could answer, Gwen reached over from the other side and caught Aster’s wrist. “You’re not saying yes.”
Aster looked between us and let out a tired breath. “I’m trying not to say anything until I know what the hell I’m doing.”
“That still means you don’t want this,” Gwen said.
“It means I’m tired.”
Giselle’s voice came calm. “Marrying a man you don’t know sounds like a very efficient way to spend the rest of your life resenting everyone involved.”
For one beat, no one spoke.
Then Gwen pointed at her. “See? I like her.”
That broke the tension enough for us to breathe again. Aster smiled despite herself, small but real.
The day moved that way, between laughter and heavier truths, between Gwen’s wedding excitement and the things none of us said unless we were sitting with people who knew how to hold them.
Giselle stayed through most of the afternoon and fit in more easily with every hour. After a while, I noticed her checking her phone. She was subtle about it, casual enough that no one else commented, yet every time the screen lit up, her face changed. I remembered all the times she had mentioned her husband, and the stranger fact that I had still never seen him.
When she finally stood and reached for her coat, Gwen groaned at once. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t leave now.”
Giselle smiled, though some part of it stayed held back. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” Aster asked. “Is it your husband?”
Aster had never believed in walking around a thing when she could step straight through it.
Giselle’s expression shifted so quickly someone else might have missed it. I didn’t.
“Yes,” she said. “Personal reasons.”
I helped her with her coat in silence, my mind catching again on the strange shape of that marriage. I had heard about him many times, always through some mention or excuse, yet the man himself remained absent.
I hugged her goodbye and said, “Come again when you can actually stay.”
She gave me a tired, grateful look. “I’d like that.”
After she left, the apartment felt quieter, reduced to something smaller and more intimate. Evening had started pressing against the windows, and beneath everything else—Gwen’s wedding glow, Aster’s tension, Helena’s joy—my thoughts had already begun returning to Hayden.
