“I’m fine,” Caroline insisted, pushing at his elbow and shaking her still mostly full cup of wine.
She scanned the room as Adrian slowly walked away, looking back over his shoulder at her as though she might be not fine in the middle of a well-lit art gallery. His friends had moved to the opposite end of the room and were discussing a large painting of a horned owl voguing on a red velvet sofa.
Caroline took a deep sip of wine and squared her shoulders. She’d try again. This time she’d be charming. And submissive. She’d show her throat and vulnerable belly, and even if they didn’t like her, they wouldn’t think she was trying to keep her presumed new boyfriend away from his friends.
Approaching people at parties was not a skill she’d attained, but she positioned herself at the next painting over from the owl and pointed her feet at them, hoping the knot of their group would expand to include her. She hoped they weren’t still disparaging the art, even though she supposed she ought to hear out what their exact objections were. They were talking with animation, whichshe could hear even over the background hum of the room.
“—owe me twenty bucks and a bottle of Scotch.”
“Like hell I do. I said six months. It hasn’t been six months yet.”
“He’s not going to beg her to take him back while he’s still fucking Truck Stop Nooner Barbie. Pay up.”
“As if she would care. Plus he’s got to be broke by now. He hasn’t sold a painting without the gallery’s help in years. I’m still going to win the bet.”
Without names, it took Caroline a moment to realize they were talking about her. And Adrian. And his ex. She couldn’t help a startled inhale, and Vanessa, at the edge of the group, turned and smirked at her.
Caroline dug her fingernails into her palms and reminded herself that they didn’t know anything about her.
“I, uh, I don’t think we got off on the right foot,” Caroline said. She’d just play through it. Rub some dirt on it. Adrian hadn’t exactly been easy to get to know either.
“Oh, you think?” Vanessa said with poisonous sweetness, emphasizing the last word of the question.
“You must have been surprised to see your friends break up after so long, but I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Caroline continued on doggedly.
“That didn’t surprise me. Meeting his midlife crisis in person is what’s surprising. It’s so fucking tacky! I didn’t think he had it in him.”
David leaned in. “Let it go, Vee. Sometimes a guy just has to clean his paintbrush off, if you know what I mean.”
Vanessa scowled at David, wide mouth condensing into a hard point. “No, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know why men do the most boring thing possible when they go looking for variety.”
“I don’t think having athletic sex with girls who still have all their original parts is ever going to get boring.”
“You have the wrong idea about my relationship with Adrian,” Caroline tried. A hot, shaky feeling was climbing up her back and wrapping around her throat, but they really couldn’t be this awful. She’d done something to set them off. “It’s really not about that.”
“What’s it about, then?” Jillian asked, layers of delicate rose-gold bracelets clattering on her wrists as she crossed her arms.
Adrian wouldn’t want her to tell them the whole truth. That would be more humiliating for him than showing up with her, which his friends thought was embarrassing enough. Her mouth was as dry as though she’d swallowed gravel. “We—we went to the symphony for our second date, and I wanted to learn more about the opera—”
Vanessa snorted. “Right, I’m sure he broke up with the age-appropriate fiancée with the art history degree and started dating a teenager with her tits hanging out of a cheap dress because he wanted to talk more about theopera.”
All three of them laughed at that.
It was someanand sowrongbut so ultimatelytruethat the entire room seemed to darken in Caroline’s peripheral vision. Adrian wasn’t with her because he wanted to talk about the opera with her. He wasn’t even with her because he wanted to sleep with her, which would have at least said that there was something he found desirable about her. He was with her because of money, which his awful friends thought would send him back to his awful ex soon enough, so Caroline didn’t even have to be very nice to earn the privilege of paying for his time.
Running away was an unfortunate habit. She’d relivethis later and think of clever rejoinders. She’d wish she’d stood her ground and told them off. But instead, she mumbled “Excuse me” and darted for the first door she saw, hoping it was a bathroom. She was through it and closing the door behind her as quickly as she registered that there was a light on inside. Sobs threatened to crawl out of her throat, choked off only by the hot, swelling burn in her cheeks. She couldn’t have deserved them saying allthat, could she? What did she evendo?
After she blinked enough to clear her eyes, she realized that her hidey-hole was not a bathroom. It was more of a utility closet, crowded with shelves of cleaning supplies and office materials, with a tiny desk wedged into one corner for some miserable administrative assistant. And it was already occupied.
Tamsyn slouched against the shelving unit on the far wall, the neck of her bottle of wine dangling from one fist. As Caroline stiffened and backed up to the doorway with another apology on her lips, the other woman took a lengthy drink straight out of the bottle. Her face was tight and pinched.
“I’m not sure this closet is big enough for two people to have a breakdown in at the same time, and I was here first,” Tamsyn said. “So I call dibs.”
“I’m so sorry, I was trying to cry in the bathroom like a normal human being, but I couldn’t even manage—” Caroline took a deep gulp of air.Say less, Caroline. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
Tamsyn tipped her bottle at her in farewell. “Don’t mention it.”
“I’m sorry,” Caroline said again. “I won’t say anything.”
