Page 5 of Waiting for You

Violet's name flashed across the screen, and I swiped to answer.

"Hey," she murmured. "You holding up okay?"

"I'm fine. What's the emergency?"

She hesitated, chewing on her words. "I need you to come over. The fancy wedding planner I hired is a disaster. I need you, your ruthless brain, and your willingness to tell me when a centerpiece looks like hot garbage."

I chuckled. "Give me an hour. I'll be there."

"Thank God!" Her voice dropped an octave. "Ah, Sloane... There's one more thing..."

"Is it your parents?" I braced myself. "Are they coming?"

"No." She paused. "I pulled their invitations."

Sympathy tugged hard in my chest.

Violet and I had a thousand things in common, but nothing stitched us together like our disastrous families. Hers and mine were toxic in the same ways, just set in different fonts. She'd grown up under parents who physically showed up and still managed to overlook her, always measuring her worth against a shifting metric and calling the abuse concern. While I had a father who hunted territorial dominance everywhere he went, and a mother who'd decided decades ago that checking out beat clocking in.

We'd both been hauling that generational baggage long before our paths crossed. And somewhere in those first months of friendship, we'd realized we never had to spell it out for each other.

"Good for you."

"Xavier is coming to the wedding," she sputtered.

My stomach dropped.

TWO

XAVIER

The steak was terrible. The one saving grace of the evening was the wine, a vintage Bordeaux I'd ordered without consulting the sommelier. I refilled my crystal glass, carved off another tough piece of meat, and chewed because I was hungry and the night wasn't over.

Across the linen tablecloth, Eliza was fielding a work call. She wore a tailored red dress that fit her without a flaw, her dark hair slicked back hard from her face. Her posture was rigid. But her voice on the phone stayed calm, not letting her rhythm break. She kept it at a low murmur that never traveled past our table. Until she hung up and set the phone face-down.

"Everything handled?" I asked.

"It's fine," she replied, and went back to her salad.

I cut off another piece of beef.

That was the thing about Eliza. She could take a high-stakes crisis mid-dinner, kill the problem without lifting her voice above a whisper, drop her phone, and pick up her fork with her shoulders at the same angle they'd held before the interruption.

I'd watched her do it to everything—million-dollar portfolios, boardroom fights, the night I told her I was moving to New York. She'd listened, nodded once, and sipped her ice water.

It was a useful quality in a business partner.

Our routine ran like clockwork. My assistant forwarded an address, and we both showed up on time. This place had dim lighting and tables spaced close enough to feel lively without crowding us. But good food wasn't among its strengths.

Between us, the silence was the norm.

A few tables over, I watched a younger couple lean over their plates, fingers loosely tangled across the white linen. The woman hadn't glanced at her phone once since they sat. The man murmured something that made her laugh, her shoulders lifting and her head tipping back slow. He watched her with his chin propped on his free hand, his eyes locked on her face. When her laughter died down, she squeezed his fingers and didn't let go.

The candle between Eliza and me had been burning down to the wax since we arrived.

We weren't in love.

We'd settled that hard fact at the start—which was why the arrangement had lasted this long.