Izzy tilted her head, watching her. Then, softer than her usual snark: “What are you most excited about? You know… when you’re married.”
For once, Pete didn’t have a quip ready. She fiddled with a chip, staring at it like it might bail her out. Then her mouth curved, smaller, almost shy.
“Honestly?” she said. “Waking up next to her every day, knowing I get to keep choosing her, and she keeps choosing me.”
Izzy blinked, surprised by the sincerity.
Pete shrugged, still fidgeting with the chip. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Makes all the dumb stuff feel easier. Even when I’m messing everything up, she… I don’t know. She makes me feel like I’m not.”
For a moment, the table went quiet except for the shuffle of cards. Even Hawaiian Shirt Guy gave her a faint smile.
Lillian lifted her martini, her voice smooth. “To knowing when you’ve already won the only game that matters.”
“When did you get so good at toasts, Lil?” Pete grinned at that, sheepish and proud all at once, and Izzy reached across to squeeze her hand.
Gwen looked away, focusing on her own chips, but her chest ached in a way she didn’t care to name.
Pete ducked her head, still pink around the ears, andgestured wildly at the dealer. “All right, let’s play before Izzy starts journaling about my feelings.”
Izzy leaned back in her chair, smirking. “Too late. I already drafted the chapter:Petra Pancott Learns Vulnerability.”
Pete groaned. “You’re insufferable.” The cards slid out, and she grabbed hers like she’d been born at the table. “Okay, okay. This hand’s mine.”
It wasn’t.
Pete went all in after the flop with nothing in her hand, bluffing with the enthusiasm of a game-show contestant. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt across the table blinked once, cool as ice, then flipped over a full house.
Pete’s jaw dropped. “This is bullshit.”
Izzy nearly fell out of her chair laughing. “You’ve got to stop betting like you’re inCasino Royale,Pete. You’re not Daniel Craig — you’re like… the guy who accidentally gets shot in the cross fire.”
Lillian hid her smile behind her martini glass. “Darling, not everyone gets to be James Bond.”
Pete slumped dramatically, head in her hands. “Fine. I’ll just die broke and in love. At least Danica still thinks I’m charming.”
That earned her a round of chuckles, even from Hawaiian Shirt Guy, who pulled the pile of chips toward himself with the detachment of someone who’d seen this a hundred times.
Izzy tipped her drink toward Pete, grin softer now. “Hey, if she thinks you’re charming, you’ve already won.”
Pete peeked up at her, still flushed, and gave a crooked smile. “Yeah. Guess I have.”
The table quieted for a moment, the sweetness of it lingering in the air.
Gwen stacked her modest pile of chips with careful precision, keeping her expression unreadable. But inside, something twisted. Because it was impossible not to see the truthin Pete’s sheepish little grin — that sometimes love was worth looking like an idiot for.
And that truth pressed against Gwen’s ribs in a way that had nothing to do with poker.
Pete was still sulking theatrically, Izzy egging her on, and Lillian calmly placed her next bet with the confidence of a card shark. Gwen should’ve been watching her cards, but her mind slid somewhere else entirely.
Back to the space between “yes” and forever.
She remembered the night before the wedding — how her hands had shaken lacing up her shoes, how Maggie had paced the hallway outside the hotel room like she might combust from nerves. Gwen hadn’t been scared, not exactly. Just wired, restless, like her whole body was a live wire stretched too tight.
And then afterward. The dizzy relief of it being real. The cheap champagne in plastic flutes, the way Maggie had kissed her so hard she’d knocked her own veil askew.
Their honeymoon hadn’t been Paris or Bali, not even close. They’d scraped together enough for a week in Santa Fe, splitting enchiladas at hole-in-the-wall restaurants, sharing one decent bottle of wine for the whole trip. Their hotel had creaky pipes and floral bedspreads older than they were, but Maggie had insisted it was perfect. She’d called it “romantic in a grad-student-budget kind of way,” and Gwen had believed her.
She could still picture it — the two of them lying on a borrowed blanket under a too-bright desert sky, Maggie laughing at nothing, Gwen certain they’d built something that would last.
