Everything about the scene felt unreal and sordid. Wasn’t Ren married? She stood inside her hotel room door and sent a quick text to Paul.
Hey.Ren and Paola are coming to your wedding, right?
That should be vague enough to fish out the details.
Her phone buzzed a moment later.Not Paola. It would get awkward after the divorce.
Sarah heard footsteps outside her door that she knew were Ren’s. He was standing there deciding whether to knock. She waited, frozen in place, then heard a quiet sigh before the footsteps kept going.
She wondered what to text Paul, whether to mention what she’d seen. Instead, she wrote, When was he divorced?
Paul replied:Finalized a couple of weeks ago but separated a year.You guys should catch up. He may be slow getting going today because my bachelor party went late but he’ll be at the rehearsal dinner.
Bachelor party. That explained the bad Vegas cliché that she had stumbled upon. It still seemed so out of character for Ren. At school, he had hooked up with young women he liked talking to, not ones whom he wasn’t interested in giving his phone number to…at least, none that she knew of. Maybe he had a whole other life she’d never known about.
She stood there, pressing her back against the wall and shutting her eyes tight. Something else hit her, a delayed reaction. He was still gorgeous. Startlingly so. Of course he was.
Everywhere she visitedin Las Vegas seemed to have some kind of gimmick: flamingos, fountains, shiny red décor. At the Thai restaurant that Paul and Trish had picked for dinner the night before the wedding, the gimmick was massive fish tanks on the walls lit by glowing blue light. Everywhere in the city sounded like a dance party and smelled like cigarettes, and this place was no exception, Sarah thought. But it did look cool.
As she entered the private room reserved for their event, she paused to give a quick hug to Trish, who looked as slim and elegant as ever in a navy-blue cocktail dress, and then turned and threw her arms around Paul.
“Guess what! I got a teaching job!” Paul half-shouted in her ear over the aggressively loud music.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m going to be a history teacher. For twelve-year-olds.”
“Poor little bastards.”
“I know! And I’m doing acting again. I’ve started an improv group.”
“That’s fantastic. Send me a video of you doing improv!”
“Absolutely no fucking way,” he said with a laugh.
As she released Paul from her hug, she noticed Ren standing behind him, dressed in his usual dark colors as if he wanted to recede into the wall.
“Hey!” she said as she approached, acting like they hadn’t seen each other earlier.
“Hey, Sarah.” He was frowning.
Everything about him felt overwhelming suddenly: that he was here, and close, and staring at her. She took another step towards him. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“And the boy? How old is he now?”
“He’s almost five. He’s in pre-school.”
“The famous Camus years.”
He finally broke into a grin. “Right. Picking up English has not been as easy as we’d hoped.”
“Well, I’d love to see photos of him,” she said. “If you want to share any.” There, she was being normal, right?
“Sure.” He stared at her for a long moment. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Weren’t they already talking? “Of course.”
