Caroline squirmed, because it sounded like Adrian had been correct in his assessment of the reasons for Tom’s divorce: he’d been a dickhead. “Maybe you just weren’t right for each other.”
Tom finished lining her eyes and turned away to grab the eyeshadow.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “We met at freshman orientation. Before I even met Adrian—he was across the hall that year—I was crazy about her. Our families were pretty unhappy that we got married right after graduation, but Adrian was thrilled. He thinks I just fucked things up. And maybe he’s right. Rosie only worked at that place for a couple of years, and now she’s got this nice life in New York. Adrian is still friends with her. Pretty sure she would have gotten him in the divorce too if I hadn’t been sleeping on his couch and looking pitiful.”
“You didn’t try to work things out?” Caroline asked, chin forced to her chest so that Tom could apply eyeshadow.
He gave a small laugh. “I didn’t see how things could work out. That’s where being so young came in. It was really embarrassing that my friends knew my wife had kicked me out. It seemed like a big deal that she worked in the qualified dividend mines, and I was trying to break into musical theater. I lost sight of me and her in all that other junk that didn’t ultimately matter.”
Caroline wasn’t one for platitudes, so she just drew out the corner of her mouth and gave him a sympathetic grimace.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back? Or does she have, like, dibs on the whole city?”
“Her lawyer was good, but notthatgood. Maybe. I don’t know. If the restaurant closes, I might start thinking about it.”
Tom finished his work, bopped her on the end of the nose with a fluffy brush, and told her to put on some lip gloss.
“Take care of yourself tonight, okay?” he said. “You look great. Text me if you want me to not be here when you guys get home.”
Caroline snorted. She wasn’t planning on sleeping with Adrian that night. It seemed like the kind of thing she’d want to read the libretto for first. Also, excellent capitalist education aside, she had a few lingering doubts about the morality of sleeping with someone who would be doing it for money. But Tom did not seem to expect such hesitation, even though he knew the score between her and Adrian.
“Oh good, because I’m really loud,” she said, rolling her eyes and pretending to knock the back of her fist against the wall.
Tom’s grin was openly delighted. “God, he’s such a stupid, lucky bastard,” he said.
After a week to think on it, Adrian was even less convinced that bringing Caroline to the art opening had been a good idea. Tamsyn and her girlfriend were good people, but the art scene could be cutthroat and insular at the best of times. The same people who’d resented him for his early success might be looking to get a little of their own back now that his circumstances had changed. Not that he was primarily worried about his own reception. He’d earned whatever potshots he drew. It was Caroline who was not prepared to navigate the petty rivalries of the small world of Boston gallery artists or even the occasional sleaze of the art collectors and journalists who would also be in attendance.
“Are there any rules for this?” Caroline asked him as their Uber driver wound his way east to the gallery in SoWa.
“Rules?”
“You know. Stuff I wouldn’t know to do. Or not do. Instructions for Martians at a gallery opening.”
Adrian felt another knot of anxiety form. Her tone was light, but he knew she worried too much about breaking the bullshit unwritten laws of these unfamiliar tribes. He thought hard about it.
“I don’t know anything about Tamsyn’s new series, but only say positive things if anyone else is around.”
“Of course. The artist’s your friend,” Caroline said, nose pressed to the window to take in the unfamiliar neighborhoods.
“Tamsyn will spend the first part of the event talking to potential customers and any journalists who show up. We’re there mostly to help her sell her work.”
“Okay,” Caroline said seriously. “I’ll act very impressed.”
“She’ll come talk to us later in the evening. If you have questions about the art, you can ask then.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have to talk to anyone else though. Or stay very long, if you get bored.”
Caroline turned and blinked big green eyes at him. “I won’t do anything to ruin your friend’s opening,” she promised.
“I know, I know, it’s not that. I just—”
I am just terrified that now you are going to meet most of the people I know in Boston, and you are going to think I’m just like them.
That worry didn’t reflect well on him already. And beneath it was the smaller, meaner worry about how he was going to look arriving at a big art event three months after his very public breakup. Arriving at the event with a young blond ingenue on his arm. He’d look like he wastrying very hard, when the absolute worst thing to be seen doing, by the standards of the scene, wastrying.
It didn’t help that Tom had rubbed some mousse into Caroline’s straight bob and smudgy black eyeshadow into her long, thick eyelashes, and the combined effect suggested that Caroline had tumbled straight out of bed to come to this event—Adrian’s bed in particular, since he was the one bringing her. Caroline radiated sex, and Adrian would need to be entire states away from her not to think about it. But anyone else who saw her would think the same thing, which was an even less appealing thought. Jesus, what had he been thinking? He was about to throw her in the deep end. He ought to fake an illness and take her home to watch PBS documentaries on the couch.
