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“You’re Russian?”

She shrugs. “My father was. My mother went to Russia after college and he came over with her.”

I sense at any moment this curtain she’s opened will be pulled shut. I know I need to proceed carefully, not look too far in, and she might close the curtain anyway.

“Was he a lawyer too?” I ask.

She laughs. “God, no. A musician. That was her first mistake…musicians are the worst.”

My smile is muted. Some of them are, I think. Like the one you’re with. “So what happened?”

“She wanted to be an opera singer and he wanted to be in a band, and neither of them were good enough at what they did to make a living from it.” She scuffs her sneaker into the dirt and kicks a rock down the hill. “So my mom went to work as a paralegal, and then went to law school, which my dad deeply resented and felt emasculated by, and he drove a cab until he drank himself to death.”

My hand nudges hers. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugs. “I can’t be ashamed of what she does for a living forever.”

She laughs and I do too. There’s more here she isn’t saying, I’m certain. There’s more in the fact that she has never mentioned her mother once, until this moment, and that it sounds like she was closer to her dad and lost him young. Messy, Sloane says in my head. Resilient, I think again.

The sun begins to burst over the horizon at last and we watch quietly, my thigh pressed to hers, her hand resting on the rock just behind me, brushing my back every once in a while.

Someone offers to take our photo together.

“He has this affliction,” Drew tells the guy as I hand him my phone. “He’s unable to smile. I’ve started a Go Fund Me on his behalf but we haven’t had much success because he looks so cranky in the photo.”

The picture is taken. I thank the guy and glance at it when Drew is looking away.

I was smiling.

22

DREW

An hour after we return, I attempt to rouse Six for his day of golfing and he says Five more minutes and pulls the pillow over his head so I go to breakfast without him.

I sit at the table with Josh while his parents go through the buffet, trying hard not to laugh at him in his dumb golf shoes and belted shorts and polo.

It’s not that he looks dumb in golf clothes. It’s that everyone looks dumb in golf clothes.

“Something to share?” he asks, raising a brow. “Go ahead. Your struggle is palpable.”

“You look like an idiot,” I reply, unable to restrain my laughter. “Why are golf clothes so dumb?”

His lips push forward, in an attempt not to smile. “Golf clothes are a mark of civility. If you were from a better family, you’d know this.”

“Wow,” I say, picking up a roll, fully prepared to pitch it at his head. “I can’t believe you went there.”

“I can’t believe you think lobbing food at me in the middle of The Four Seasons will prove me wrong.”

I close my eyes as I laugh, and when I open them, Six is standing at the head of the table.

“What did I miss?” he asks, and it feels as if I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t have, which makes no sense. Six would love a food fight in an upscale restaurant more than anyone.

“I was just saying you look like idiots in your golf attire.”

“Josh does,” says Six, “because he’s too fucking big and he has no tattoos.”

“Yes, he does,” I reply too quickly.