After a minute or two, the upbeat song ended, and Lacy, glistening, came over with a drink and a handful of gummy bears that she’d swiped from the abundant snack table laden with candy corn, Mike & Ikes, cherry sours, and M&Ms of every kind. Catered canapés and crudités were also circling the room, but we both preferred the cheap, sugary stuff. She pasted on a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and offered the handful to me. I picked out the yellow and green bears and popped them in my mouth.
A new song began to play, one I vaguely recognized. Cheers went up around the room, and people started lifting hands in Brett’s direction, singing along.
“What song is this?” I shouted into Lacy’s ear.
“‘The One That Got Away,’” Lacy called back, eyebrows knit in concern. “Brett recorded it. Remember?”
I listened for a few more seconds, and the melody started to come back to me. I even recalled having a lively discussion onetime with Lacy about whether or not the popular song was about her. I certainly hoped not. “Is this the one that goes, ‘She was the hottie who made me wanna be naughty?’”
“That’s the OG version. I heard he had to change the lyrics to get more radio play. Apparently his manager thought the line might be too sexist, and that he should go for a more brooding, wholesome kind of love song. Listen.” Lacy pointed a finger in the air, and instead of the lyrics I’d just quoted, Brett’s voice crooned, “She was the mind who made me wanna find… myself.”
“Great rhyme,” I said, with a hint of sarcasm.
“Did you see his girlfriend?” Lacy asked as she nodded toward the other side of the dance floor.
I followed the direction of her eyes to where Savilla, wearing a belted, one-shoulder, deep purple midi dress and matching ankle boots, stood speaking to a fashionably dressed woman in tight black pants, a fuzzy gray jacket, and stilettos. Even I, who considered most of pop culture a mindless wasteland, had recognized her immediately when I’d arrived tonight. At the door, Savilla had introduced the two of us, and we’d all exchanged a few sentences of pleasantries before I’d excused myself to find my table and begin the countdown.
I hadn’t needed the introduction because Brett’s girlfriend was Presley Lombardi, the contestant who’d won his heart onSmall Town, Big Romancetwo years ago. I still remembered the ridiculous teaser that was played and replayed and quoted all over town the summer before it had aired:
You’ve loved and hatedThe Bachelor. You’ve binged every season ofLove Is Blind. Coming this August, you’ll fall in love all over again withSmall Town, Big Romance, a new reality show that will test whether opposites really do attract and whether or not you can put a price on love.
Before the show aired, Presley had already run with the New York elite, but she’d become ultra-famous after the show when a sex tape of the two of them, everything laid bare, had been released online.
Since then, Presley had started her own fragrance line, performed cameos in a few films, opened a New York restaurant in her name, and somehow put up with Brett Brinkley, which was likely more doable because the two of them seemed to lead separate lives, him living on the West Coast and pursuing his acting career while she mostly stayed on the opposite side of the country. Unfortunately, I knew this last part because I’d seen a tabloid headline about them having separate residences and questioning whether a breakup was imminent. Not that I actually cared.
Anton approached from the left. I gestured toward him as I said to Lacy, “I think some guy is looking for you.”
I sensed Lacy stiffen slightly as Anton placed a kiss on her cheek and his arm curved around the small of her back. They were cute together, her polished persona parallel to his rugged Texan vibe, but her reluctant smile concerned me. Lacy was nervous about something.
“I saw you on the dance floor,” he called above the music. “Aren’t you supposed to be working this thing?”
Anton sounded so much like me that I sometimes teased Lacy about him being me in male form. No wonder they worked well together—although, right now, I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or simply curious.
Lacy shrugged off his question. “My job is to make sure everyone has a good time. That includes me.”
“Just be careful, Lace,” Anton said. He tilted his head toward Brett Brinkley and frowned. “Especially around that guy. He looked like he was ready to lean into your neck and take a bite.”
“I know how to handle a man who bites,” Lacy said with a side eye, and Anton laughed, whatever tension I’d imagined between them broken momentarily.
But then a new song started, this one Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” and Brett came and stole Lacy away for a slow dance. Immediately, the crackle in the air was back, and Anton excused himself, stalking toward the bar.
I watched people pretending to have—or perhaps actually having—a good time while I debated whether or not I could break the promise I’d made to be social. I checked my phone. Screw it. Twenty-four minutes to go, and I was calling it. I was going home, putting on my sweatpants and an old T-shirt, and eating brownie batter until Charlie arrived to have his way with me.
I took one last swig from my cup of wine, but as I turned to go, Jemma Jenkins abruptly stopped singing and knocked over her microphone. I spun around to see her pointing at Brett in the middle of the ballroom. Lacy was right behind him, receding into the darkness at the edge of the dance floor.
The room went silent except for the sound of the speaker system trying to recalibrate itself for a handful of seconds that, to my ears at least, lasted an eternity. A shadowed figure ran to the back and spoke to the sound guy, who fixed the problem. Just as the feedback ended, the sound of coughing began.
Brett Brinkley was grabbing—no, clawing—at his throat as if an invisible string had been tied around his neck. He was emitting a new noise, a kind of gurgling that quickly became a violent spewing. He hunched forward and fell to the center of the dance floor, where the crowd had parted around him.
Suddenly, it was as if a spotlight had been pointed straight on his sprawling figure.
Behind the bar Joe Larson dropped the bottle he’d been holding, and glass broke across the diamond designs on themarble. He hurried toward Brett, propping him up enough to attempt the Heimlich maneuver, thrusting into his abdomen in steady pulses.
When that didn’t work, Joe dropped Brett on the ground and started yelling, “Is there a doctor? Does anyone know CPR?”
Out of the class of 2015, there wasn’t a single medical professional in the room—except me, but this wasn’t a horse with a hernia. Seconds passed, and no one else stepped forward. It had to be me.
“Call 911,” I told Lacy as I rushed to the center of the dance floor and fell to my knees. I sprang into action as Presley Lombardi came closer to the now-unconscious man’s side.
