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“Like she needs you. Like you’re giving her something she never thought she’d get.”
I smile. I can’t keep it off my face. This girl may not be a friend, but I can hear her honesty. We join in the table conversation and it becomes easier as the night goes on, though I only catch glimpses of Faye in passing.
The groomsmen get up and excuse themselves, and the girls giggle.
“What’s that about?” I ask.
“Oh, you know, boys’ club.” Hadley giggles.
“Probably measuring their… cigars,” Gwen says around a hiccup.
It sends the two of them into a giggle fit, and Liza rolls her eyes.
“There’s always a moment at these sorts of things where the men go to some back room and drink brandy and smoke cigars and make land grabs or merge companies or marry off their unborn daughters.”
“Why aren’t you back there, Zeke?” Hadley asks, her voice heavy with innuendo.
“It’s not sexual, Had,” Liza says with a sharp chuckle. “Stop making everything sound like porn.”
“You know when I’ve had too much rum, I get breathy,” Hadley says, making a hurt face, but it doesn’t last long because Gwen hiccups and they both lose it.
Just then Gwen’s phone lights up and she makes a face at Hadley, who nods at her.
“Excuse me,” Gwen says, leaving the table and walking out of the room.
She bumps into Mike at the door, and they exchange brief words. His eyes shoot to our table, and when they connect with mine, he motions for me to join him.
“I’m being summoned,” I say, glad to have an excuse to leave the table.
“Have fun,” Liza says, touching my bicep in a way that seems both unthreatening and calculated.
I give her a tight nod, and head to the exit.
* * *
“What’s up?” I ask Mike when I reach him. He nods toward the hall.
“You’re with Faye, you should come to the saloon,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“Indoctrination by fire.”
“Sounds painful,” I quip, but then he pushes me through a heavy windowless door and into a dark, wood-paneled room with a layer of smoke hanging in the air. About a dozen men in tuxedos and nice suits sit in wing-back chairs, puffing on cigars and swirling amber liquid in snifters.
“Is this for real?” I mumble. I must have said it out loud because Mike claps me on the back and nudges me toward an empty chair.
“Zeke,” a voice comes from the chair next to mine and when I get around it, I see Faye’s father sitting there, puffing on a cigar.
“Sir,” I say.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Call me Jack. Have a cigar?”
“No thank you, Jack,” I say, with a grateful nod. “Season starts this week.”
“Ah, right. Of course. Maureen hates when I smoke, but I do limit it to special occasions only.”
“Nothing wrong with enjoying the celebratory vice,” I say.
