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“It’s not scientific. I kinda think she wants me to date someone who’s like herself. Maybe it’d work out, you know. She is my best friend for a reason.”
His lips are a thin line. “So you’re going there tomorrow to flirt, as well as to support your friend. Sure you want me to come?”
“Of course I do. I have no intention of flirting with anyone.”
“Except that your friend will encourage you to.”
“I’m my own person,” I say, and I mean it in more ways than one. Why is this silly little story a sticking point? He disappears several nights a week, going who knows where and doing who knows what.
With who knows who.
I’d snuck downstairs on one such night the past week, but he was nowhere to be found on the bottom floor. Gone.
We didn’t promise one another celibacy, and he seems to be making full use of that liberty.
Victor rises from the kitchen table and puts his plate in the sink. It’s an oddly domestic thing for him to do, but with his rolled-up sleeves and ruffled hair, he looks at home here in the kitchen. As elegant as one of his expensive kitchen appliances.
Bonnie’s words come back to me. The St. Clair name is old. Moneyed. Historic. And he’s the last one who carries it. It strikes me as tragic, suddenly, that he never pursues real relationships.
“You are your own person,” he says, as if that settles everything. “Tomorrow evening. I’ll meet you at the gallery.”
“Sounds good.”
“As there will be photographers there, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t flirt in front of them.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he’s already disappearing down the hallway and out of view.
* * *
When I come down the next morning, there’s an envelope with my name on it waiting for me on the kitchen counter. Bonnie is nowhere to be seen and Victor had left the apartment over an hour earlier. I’d heard his bedroom door close and the telltale sound of his dress shoes against the hardwood floor.
Judging by the writing on the envelope, he’d left it here for me.
I open it. Two familiar rings lie at the bottom.
The message couldn’t be clearer. For tonight.
I hold them in the palm of my hand, the heavy gold ring and the peculiar design of the engagement ring. It’s gorgeous, the solitaire diamond reflecting under the kitchen lights, the ring of emeralds sparkling. It’s not something I thought he would have picked out.
I slide them on and close my fist around them. He wants us to go tonight as a married couple. Him as the investor; me as the supportive friend.
Does this have anything to do with the careless comment I made last night about Nadine’s friend Jake? The one she’s so sure I’d hit it off with?
I smile down at the rings. Pretty they may be, but they’re an illusion, and that’s what Victor’s keen to protect. Nothing more and nothing less.
And if he thinks he’s the only one allowed to have his fun, I’ll give him my opinion tonight, too. Because the contract goes both ways. I can date, as long as I’m discreet. Perhaps it’s time to remind him of that.
A few hours later, and he’s late and Nadine is busy, but I couldn’t be happier. I’m surrounded by my best friend’s art. It’s professionally displayed on the walls and sets the sterile gallery ablaze with color, the abstract pieces flowing from one frame to the next.
The series with the seven virtues is my favorite. She’d been working on it for a year. Sometimes she’d worried whether it was old-fashioned to have the virtues represented. But we’d both agreed the world could use more of them, and she’d infused that into the paintings, with abstract concepts and colors matching each one.
I sip my glass of champagne and ogle Nadine without shame. She looks drop-dead gorgeous tonight, like she could take the stage and give an impromptu performance at any time. We’d been at her place yesterday to test out looks, and the fitted auburn jumpsuit she chose makes her look tall and graceful. The eccentric artiste and the polished young woman, rolled into one.
Ready to sell you a painting for a few thousand dollars right before she returns to her Brooklyn studio to paint her heart out.
She’s wearing the gold hoop earrings I got her for her twenty-fifth birthday, and they catch the light as she talks to a visitor, her hands moving in a pattern that is so uniquely her.
If this is how parents feel when their children graduate, then I can understand why so many of them cry. I’m so proud, watching her own this space and this role. Nadine-at-sixteen would be overjoyed at this, having her biggest dream come true. I feel as proud for Nadine-at-sixteen as I do for Nadine-at-twenty-eight, standing there across the space.
