For fuck’s sake. I pick it up, turning it over as if there is more information on the back, like maybe they meant a different Brooke Bennett. One who’s not the bane of my existence.
I glance around the room, actually considering switching it with someone else’s card. Or finding Martha and asking if there’s been some kind of mistake. Or just moving to a different table entirely and claiming confusion about my assignment.
These all seem like reasonable options until I remember that I’m a forty-three-year-old man and not a teenager trying to avoid his ex at prom. So instead I set the card back down, take another long drink of bourbon, and remind myself that I’m perfectly capable of sitting next to a woman I despise.
The table fills in over the next ten minutes. A couple whose names I can’t recall settle in across from me, mid-argument about whether the babysitter charges extra after midnight or if that’s only on weekends. They look vaguely familiar in that way everyone in Dark River looks vaguely familiar.
And Marjorie, who’s worked at the post office for as long as I can remember and who I’ve known since I was old enough to mail a letter. She drops into the chair on my other side with a glass of white wine and a smile.
“Dominic Midnight, don’t you clean up nice,” she says, looking me over with obvious approval. “If I was twenty years younger, honey, I’d be in trouble.”
“Marjorie, you’re trouble at any age,” I tell her, and she cackles, delighted.
She’s always been easy to talk to, loud and funny and completely without filter, and for a few minutes I manage to have a normal conversation about the rabbits that have been decimating her vegetable garden and her increasingly elaborate plans to stop them.
“I’m telling you, I’mthisclose to setting up a motion-activated sprinkler,” she says, gesturing with her wine glass. “I’d never hurt the little things, but I think a little water is alright. Frank says I’m overreacting, but Frank didn’t spend three months growing those tomatoes just to watch some cute fuzzy little bastard eat them for breakfast.”
I’m laughing at her description of the rabbit she’s named “The Godfather” when Brooke arrives.
She approaches with a glass of wine in one hand and a small clutch in the other, and a flash of surprise crosses her face when she sees me at her table, there and gone so fast most people would miss it.
“Marjorie, Tim, Anne, good to see you all.” Her voice is warm as she greets everyone. Of course she remembers the babysitter couple’s names.
She doesn’t look at me and I don’t look at her.
“Oh, Brooke, you look like asupermodel!” Marjorie leans back in her chair to take in the full effect of the dress, letting out a low whistle. “My god, if I had those legs of yours, honey, they’d have to arrest me for indecent exposure because I would never wear pants again.”
Anne gasps and covers her mouth with her hand, scandalized. Tim’s eyes dart toward Brooke’s legs for half a second before he catches himself and stares intensely at the centerpiece like the flower arrangement is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
Brooke throws her head back and laughs, and dammit if Marjorie isn’t right. It’s hard not to notice Brooke’s very toned legs when her dress has a slit that goes up to mid-thigh, a thigh that’s about to be right next to me for the entire dinner.
She pulls out the chair beside mine and sits, and now her leg is right there. Inches away. Tan and toned and on full display, and I focus on the stage like my life depends on it.
“Marjorie, you’re too much,” Brooke says, still smiling as she settles in and crosses her legs, which somehow makes it worse.
“I’m just enough, sweetheart. Ask anyone.” Marjorie takes a sip of her wine and winks at Brooke before turning to Anne, who still looks like she’s recovering from the indecent exposure comment. “Oh, come now, Anne, don’t be such a prude. We’re all adults here. Well, most of us.” She shoots a look at Tim, who’s still pretending the centerpiece holds the secrets of the universe.
Brooke presses her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. “I’ve missed you, Marjorie.”
“Of course you have. New York doesn’t have anyone like me.”
“New Yorkdefinitelydoesn’t have anyone like you.”
I reach for my bourbon at the same moment Brooke reaches for her wine glass. Our hands almost collide over the table and we both pull back like we’ve touched a hot stove.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, not looking at me.
“You’re fine,” I mutter back, also not looking at her.
Marjorie’s eyes ping-pong between us with obvious interest, but mercifully she doesn’t comment.
The salads arrive, and I eat mine without tasting it. I’m too aware of Brooke beside me. Every shift of her body. Every breath she takes. The way she crosses and uncrosses her legs, making that fucking slit open and close like it’s taunting me specifically. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear and I catch a glimpse of her neck, the soft skin just below her jaw, and I remember exactly what that skin tastes like.
Her knee shifts under the table and brushes mine. She angles away immediately, but not before I feel the contact through my slacks, a point of heat that lingers longer than it should. The six inches between us might as well be the DMZ.
“Dominic! Brooke! Holy shit!”
The voice comes from behind me, loud and sloppy, and I turn to see Tommy Callahan weaving between tables with a drink ineach hand and a grin on his face that’s at least four drinks wide. Tommy went to high school with us, ran with the football crowd, and has apparently not changed one bit in the intervening decades.
