“How much have you had to drink?”
I shrugged and turned back toward the living room. I picked up my glass from the table. It was half empty. Or half full. I could not tell anymore.
“Enough,” I said.
She followed me. “You shouldn’t drink this much,” she said, reaching for the glass.
I pulled it away from her, annoyed by the gesture. “I’m fine.”
She straightened, smoothing her dress, and for a moment my eyes caught on the curve of her body. On the way the fabric pulled across her chest. On the unfamiliar awareness of someone else in my space.
I felt a flicker of something like fear.
“I should call Claire,” Ashley said abruptly. “She should know you’re like this.”
The name snapped me back.
“No,” I said, too fast. “Don’t.”
She froze.
The silence stretched. It felt loaded in a way I did not understand yet.
“Are you two fighting?” she asked slowly.
I laughed again, a short, broken sound. “We don’t fight.”
She studied me. “I didn’t know you ever did,” she said. “Everyone thinks you’re perfect.”
The word lodged in my chest and twisted.
Perfect.
I sank onto the couch, the cushions giving way beneath me. The room tilted. The football game played on, the crowd roaring, distant and unreal.
“I’m not,” I said quietly.
Ashley sat down beside me.
“I’m not good enough for her,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. They had been circling me all week, waiting for a crack.
She did not answer right away.
I expected her to disagree. To tell me I was being dramatic. To wave it away with a joke.
Instead, she nodded.
“I know,” she said.
The shock sobered me faster than anything could.
I turned to her, searching her face. “What?”
She shrugged, looking down at her hands. “I’ve always thought so,” she said. “Not just you, everyone. Claire is too good for all of us.”
The room seemed to close in.
“She settles,” Ashley went on. “I think she always has. Maybe because no one ever told her she deserved better.”
