The doorbell rang again.
Looks like you don’t have anything to wear.The corners of her mouth turned down into a faux pout.That’s very unprofessional, T-o-m-m-y.
The bedroom door fell shut. He was left alone in the quiet.
Blackwell’s was a popular steak house situated in downtown Greenwich. The tables were capped in white, fluttering cloth, the walls a lovely exposed brick. The menu rotated daily, based solely on the chef’s changing whims. It was the sort of place one went for aesthetic, not for appetite.
Everyone in the extravagant dining room was dressed for either business or pleasure. New Yorkers in tailored suits and beetle-bright brogues conducted expensive conversations over expensive meals. Couples in their designer best sat side by side, lost in a world of their own and splitting vintage bottles of wine. Vivienne felt odd and out of sorts, her dress ill fitting, her bones disjointed, her skin coming loose.
She was certain everyone could see it.
She’d spent the night slumped against her bedroom door, listening to the sound of Thomas breathing on the other side. In the shattered glass of her vanity mirror, a dozen black eyes peered out at her, cold with triumph. She hadn’t slept. Not a wink.
Now she poked at her beet salad and did her best to look alert.
“He’s not really blending in,” said Hudson, helping himself to another generous pour of merlot. “Is he?”
Vivienne smiled and shrugged, ignoring the hard wall of Thomas’s stare as she leaned in to take a bite of lettuce. Hedidlook extremely out of place, dressed in a gray sleeveless hoodie and running shorts, his tattoo scrawled along his forearm and a cowlick rising from the mess of his hair. Directly across from her, Hudson was his stark opposition in a gray crosshatch suit. He looked every bit a trust-fund princeling, his dark curls cut into a fade and the top three buttons of his dress shirt artfully undone.
Hudson’s father worked as an anesthesiologist for Shetland Health. Hudson and Vivienne had known each other since infancy—enrolled in the same overpriced daycares and then shipped off to the same stuffy schools. They’d never been friends, per se, but Vivienne hadn’t called him here today because she needed a friend.
She needed an anesthetic.
She slid her phone across the table, taking a sip of Riesling as she did. Her demands were all typed up in notes, directly copied from the list of supplies Jesse had grudgingly emailed her just the day before. She swirled the contents of her glass as Hudson read them over, cutting intermittent glances toward Thomas. He stood at the bar, looking entirely out of his element as he bargained with the hostess.
Vivienne watched the scene unfold with slow-climbing glee, waiting for the inevitable moment when he’d be kicked out. Instead, her hopes were dashed as he braced a forearm against the bar and leaned in, whispering something into the hostess’s ear. Color crawled into the girl’s face in a blush. Throwing her head back, she laughed an open, pretty laugh—the kind of sound Vivienne hadn’t made in years. Not without drawing blood. She watched, irritation cutting into her, as the hostess jotted something onto a cocktail napkin and handed it to Thomas.
When he looked up, it was right at her, as though he’d known all along she’d been watching him. His self-satisfied smirk turned her frustration to a whipsaw.
I’ll be right back, she signed to Hudson, who was still reading the message on her phone.
By the time she stormed the bar, Thomas’s smile was gone. In its place was an expression that was so perfectly solemn he might have been a monk. She tore the cocktail napkin out of his hands and peered down at it. A phone number scrawled across the front in neat bubble numbers. Something white-hot and indefinable sparkled through her blood.
“Tough to interpret from over here,” noted Thomas mildly.
Vivienne ripped the napkin in half one way. She ripped it the other. He leaned back with the patience of a saint, reaching for his drink. Before he could so much as raise it to his lips, she’d shoved the napkin neatly inside the glass. Seltzer water sopped into the paper, leaving a pale, pulpy skin on the ice. For several seconds, the two of them stared down into his cup.
“Your date is looking for you,” said Thomas.
Sure enough, Hudson had hooked his arm over the back of his chair and was staring at them with increasing interest. Edging past Thomas the way she would a bug, Vivienne stalked back to their table and dropped into her seat. If Hudson had an opinion, he kept it to himself, sliding her phone back over to her.
“I don’t know about all this, Viv. I could get in huge trouble.”
She glowered. Hudson didn’t sign—at least not fluently—and so they were reduced to a purely textual relationship. It was an arrangement that usually benefited both of them, but she hadn’t wanted to have this particular conversation over text. Not since Reed had told her about Thomas snooping through her phone. She fished through her bag and pried out a notecard and pen, jotting down the exact dosage Jesse had given her and sliding it across the table.
Hudson’s eyes went wide. “And you’re not even going to tell me what you need this for?”
She shook her head.
“Figures.” He lifted his wine and stared into it before setting it back down without taking a sip. “Lie to me, at least. Is it for a prank? A party? Is it part of a game?”
Vivienne only stared solemnly across the table at him, waiting him out.
The minutes crawled past, flooded with the clink of cutlery, snatches of conversation. Several tables behind them, someone laughed. In the end, Hudson caved first. He always did. It was the opportunist in him. He could never resist a bargain. Tipping back his chair, he let out a bone-weary groan that Vivienne knew was all for show.
“Fine. I want Reed Connolly.”
Vivienne tugged the notepad back to her, conscious of Thomas watching their every move.
