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“You are so bothered.”
“I am! Why does he do that?”
“He’s asked us to trust him. Let’s just…do that.”
“I like Penelope,” I said. With a sudden pang, thinking about that conversation we’d had, I wished I’d cut her a break earlier. Wished I could take back some of the things I’d said. Thought, even.
“Food’s good. Have you had any?” he asked, and I smiled at his predictable change of topic.
“Not yet.”
“There’s a crab thing you’ll love. But they go fast.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, and he looked at me sideways. Because I was always hungry. Around him I put food in my mouth so I had something to do with my hands. Something to keep me from saying the words I was so scared of saying to him.
“There’s a chocolate fountain.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. In the corner. You can dip all kinds of stuff in it. There’s pretzels.”
Sweet and salty, another one of my favorites. How well he knew me was a bruise he kept poking.
And it had not escaped my notice that we’d been standing here, chatting and looking at each other and breathing the same air, and he hadn’t said a single word about how I looked. I glanced down just to make sure I was still wearing a tight, sparkly blue dress.
Yep.
So, should I say something? Like my dress? Notice anything different about me? It felt silly. Needy.
“You enjoy your time with the glassblowers?”
“Is that what they are?”
“Indeed.”
Had I ever said indeed before? Never. This thong was cutting off all the blood to my brain.
“This is quite a party Wes is throwing,” he said. “He trying to convince everyone the company isn’t bankrupt? Or is it to impress Penny?”
“Both.” I shrugged. He took a sip from his bottle of beer.
“Have you talked to him?” I asked.
“Nah. Saw your mom.”
“Christmas spirit herself?”
“She hissed at me.”
“Well, that’s an improvement.”
We grinned at each other. I actually couldn’t stop. He made me so happy.
“You want a drink?”
I want to know what you think of my dress. I want to know what you think of my ass. Of me.
“Sure.”
“Champagne or the usual?”
“You know my usual?”
He turned and ordered a gin and tonic with two limes for me, which was, in fact, my usual, and when he slipped the glass into my hand I broke. I broke right in half.
“Notice anything different about me?” I asked, my voice strident and loud. It was like I was screaming the question at him.
“You’re taller,” he said, ordering another beer for himself.
“Well, it’s the shoes.”
“Your hair is…bigger.”
Something went sour in my stomach.
“Your dress is very…bright.”
It was reflecting the light from the dance floor. I was a beautiful blue disco ball. But I didn’t have the breath to say that. “You’ve never seen me in a dress.”
“Yeah.” He laughed and took a huge gulp of his beer, his eyes going across the bar to where the glassblowers were standing. “It’s a little weird.”
It was like one of those balloons shot in slow motion. That was actually the feeling in my stomach. In my body. I felt the terrible puncture and the slow explosion, like every part of me had lost connection to every other part of me. I gasped and gasped again, and he looked at me and then looked away.
“So, what are the names of the glassblowers?” he asked.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” I said, trying to gather myself up. Finding an arm over there and a leg over there, the beating of my weak heart right there at his feet.
“The blonde is hot.”
Tears. I hadn’t cried since we got the phone call from his mother three months ago that Sam had been hurt and that he was unconscious and alone a million miles away.
Humiliated, I blinked the burning tears back, but it wasn’t working.
There. That’s the answer. He never saw you like that. Never thought of you like that.
“Sophie?” he said, like I’d chocked on an olive pit. “You all right?”
If I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure what I would say. If I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t sob, and it had already been a bad night. The stuff nightmares were made of. I didn’t have to go and add more to it. Crying because of Fucking Sam Porter was one thing. Crying in front of him was the kind of thing I would never recover from.
So I sucked back that gin and tonic like it was medicine for a broken heart.
“Hey, careful—”
Yeah. Fuck him and his worry. I turned on my fancy high heel and got the hell away from him before I could do anything else I might regret. Blindly, I circulated back through the shadows, looking for my brother. Joy. Anyone who might make this feeling go away, but then I realized, it wouldn’t. It would never go away.
The humiliation shifted, making room for the grief. The bone-deep grief that the man I loved with my whole self didn’t feel at all the same way about me.
