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“Is there wine?” Bishop interjected, searching the table. Alannah already had a glass poured for him, holding it out.

Taking the wine, he said, “I may consider rescinding any disparaging comments I’ve made about you today depending on the vintage you picked.”

“You’ve been making disparaging comments about me again?” she asked, utterly unfazed.

“It is a Wednesday, after all. Are you aware your blouse is horrifically wrinkled?”

Alannah snorted. “Jackass,” she shot back. “Is your hairline receding?”

“Unlikely. And the last I saw him, my father still had all his hair.”

“Pity. There’s still time. I won’t give up hope.”

Molly’s focus shifted from Alannah to Bishop and back again, trying to decipher if either of them was offended. Or upset. Or if, God forbid, they were simply joking around with each other.

As Molly pulled out a chair, Bishop stopped her, motioning to the one in front of him instead.

“I can’t pick my own seat?” Molly asked. Her tone edged closer to snappy than she intended.

Even though Bishop didn’t actually roll his eyes, she heard it in his tone. “I’m left-handed,” he said. “You don’t want to sit on my left.”

Alannah added, “Much like his face, Bishop’s elbows are quite pointy.”

“This is great,” Roy said, staring at the bread basket in front of him. “This is going to be great.” Molly couldn’t tell who he was trying to convince.

Quiet fell across the table as they settled into their seats, swiftly annihilating whatever their old sense of normalcy had once been.

“So, tell us about this promotion, Waters,” Bishop prompted, refilling his wine and offering Rachel the bread.

Molly supposed if she could have expected anything from Bishop, it was a rigid sense of social decorum. That’s what private tutors and etiquette classes were for, she assumed.

It was all the invitation Roy needed to launch into a lengthy retelling of his entire baseball and coaching career. Chronologically, and in excruciating detail. Molly got the sense he was partly reliving his interview process, partly embellishing for Molly’s benefit, and partly participating in some kind of reluctant stage performance with Bishop.

Bishop, for his part, listened patiently, drank more wine, and kept asking probing questions like “How did you decide on that lineup?” and “What made you pick that play?” and, worst of all, “Don’t you think that was a bit of a hasty call?”

Molly felt herself glazing over, lost between two men engaged in a never-ending discussion that it seemed like neither of them truly wanted to have. Entrées arrived, meals were eaten, and the back and forth between Roy and Bishop droned on.

Molly’s attention drifted to the other side of the table where Simon and Rachel had their heads bent together, engaged in their own conversation. Molly watched them interact, examining her own reactions, and waiting for a surge of jealousy or painful longing. Instead, she found herself mostly perplexed.

Something about seeing him with Rachel scrubbed the affinity for Simon from her veins, leaving behind a more clinical attachment based on their shared history. It was a strange feeling, and a far cry from what she’d expected. She’d been so desperate to see him when she first woke at the hospital, convinced that his familiarity would make whatever time they said she’d lost dissipate into the ether.

If she tuned out Bishop and Roy enough, she might have sworn she heard Simon chewing.

She wanted to love him. She did. Somewhere, fighting with the logical part of her brain, a piece of Molly wanted to love Simon because he was her first, and because she thought he’d be her last. She smiled, finally feeling the fondness she’d been expecting—but it was like the fondness she felt for Roy and Alannah, separate from feelings of want and desire.

Simon looked up at her, brown gaze questioning, and Molly realized the table had gone quiet.

She’d been staring.

God, how long had she been staring? Her stomach dropped. Unease spread like a cold stain across the tablecloth, seeping into her, soaking her to the bone. She looked down, wishing to disappear as she considered how long her friends might have just watched her stare at her ex-boyfriend while he chatted with his pregnant wife.

Beside her, Bishop’s fist was clenched by his leg, knuckles white. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Molly glanced at Alannah instead. She had a brow lifted, wineglass in hand, and a disapproving tension around her eyes. Molly switched to Roy, who wouldn’t make eye contact and seemed ready to crawl under the table.

Finally, Molly turned her attention to Bishop. His focus was lost on something in the middle distance behind Alannah’s head. The only indication that he was even breathing came from the slight flare of his nostrils as he inhaled.

The table rattled as he stood abruptly. His head jerked down to look at Molly before immediately jerking back up again.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, before hastily pushing his chair in and beelining for the bar across the restaurant.