Page 71 of Wrong Mail

“You heard me.”

I watch the reactions go around the terrace like a wave. I see Yvette's phone come up. Lil's mouth tucks into a small satisfied line. Whatever Chris means to start, David thinks he’s already ended it.

Again, Julia tries to pull Chris away, but he pulls his arm back.

“No. No. I want to hear this.” Chris laughs. It’s not a good sound. He gets louder as he approaches. "After what I've done? And what would that be, David?”

David braces as Chris closes the distance.

Chris stops in front of him and plants a hand on David's chest, giving him a little shove.

“Huh?”

“Back off!” David says.

“No, I want to hear what Julia’s been telling you.”

Chris reaches to prod David again, but this time David slaps his hand away.

That’s when Chris attacks.

He shoves David so hard that he falls back into the cake table, and the whole thing goes with him. The vases, the hydrangeas, the cake with its one elegant candle, all down onto the flagstones in a wreck of glass and cream. David comes back up covered in cake, his hand already raised. He’s not fast enough. Chris hits him once, clean, across the mouth, and blood spatters bright across the white of his shirt.

Then it's just a tangle of men. Nate has Chris from behind. A waiter grabs his other arm. The club manager appears out of nowhere, murmuring and steering and trying to turn violence into an incident.

Chris keeps shouting over all of it as he’s pulled away.

“You’ll hear from my lawyer. I’m pressing charges. Everyone saw it. Everyone saw you hit me first.”

“Get him out of here,” I say.

David stands in the wreck of my cake with one hand pressed to his mouth and blood coming through his fingers. He looks stunned, like he can't quite believe what just happened.

I go to him. Of course I go to him. But in the few steps it takes, I see the other thing.

I see Julia go.

She goes to Chris, not away from him. When Nate lets him go, Julia slips under his arm, takes his weight, and turns him toward the doors. Her chin is up, her face composed. Just a woman leaving a party with the man she came with.

As they leave, she meets my eyes for one second and mouths, “Sorry.”

Then she’s gone, through the club and into the dark.

I exhale hard and turn back to David.

David won't go to the hospital, which is a joke none of us make.

He sits in the club office with a bag of ice from the bar against his mouth. The manager talks low and fast, going over the damage and what happens next. David says all the right things.

“No police. We won’t be pursuing anything. Please give my apologies to the members.”

I stand behind his chair with my hand on his shoulder and feel him vibrating under it. Still, some part of tonight is going to cost him something, even if I can't see the edges of it yet.

He turns in his chair.

"Go home, Mal," he says finally, the ice still pressed to his mouth. His lip has split at the corner and it makes his voice thick. "I have to handle this. The club, the members, all of it. There's no reason for you to stay.”

"I'm not leaving you."