Whitney is beside me. She’s wearing a dress I made for her—a deep emerald silk with a bias cut that follows her frame like water. I finished it two weeks ago, specifically for tonight. The neckline took three iterations. The hem is hand-stitched. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever made, and watching her wear it feels like watching someone read a letter you wrote them—your work, her body, the collaboration of love and craft.
Her red curls are down. Her freckles are showing because she stopped wearing foundation six months ago and announced, with the conviction of a woman discovering religion, that “covering freckles is a hate crime against your own face.” She looks beautiful and restless, and I should be paying closer attention to the restless part, but I’m not, because the fondue is perfect and the wine is a Sancerre that Whit picked specifically because it was the wine we drank the night we graduated, and I am thirty-six years old and in love with my life.
That’s the version I’m telling myself, anyway.
Next to me, Greg is telling a story. He tells stories the way he does everything—louder than necessary, taking up more spacethan the content warrants. This one involves a golf trip and a celebrity I’m supposed to be impressed by. The table is laughing in that polite, wine-lubricated way that could mean anything. I’m half-listening, dipping a cube of bread into the Gruyère, when I notice Greg lean toward our waitress—a brunette, mid-twenties, the kind of effortlessly pretty that makes you feel like you’re working too hard at your own face—and murmur something near her ear while touching the inside of her wrist.
It’s three seconds. Maybe less. His thumb grazes her pulse point and she smiles—not a service smile, a real one—and he holds the contact a beat too long before pulling back and returning to his story like nothing happened.
I dip my bread. I chew. I swallow.
Whitney’s hand finds my knee under the table and squeezes.
I don’t look at her. I know what I’ll see if I look at her, and I am not interested in seeing it tonight. Not on my birthday. Not in this restaurant that I rented and this life that I chose and this marriage that I am holding together with the same meticulous attention I bring to a seam that’s starting to fray—steady hands, even pressure, the quiet belief that if I just keep stitching, nobody will notice the fabric is coming apart.
But thirty minutes later, right after my birthday cake is served, Whitney is missing. My birthday candles still giving off wisps of smoke when I notice she’s gone.
And I mean gone-gone. Her clutch is missing. The vintage Chanel jacket that she found at a consignment shop in SoHo and considers her greatest material achievement—is no longer draped over the back of her chair. A cold draft from the front of the restaurant tells me the door has been opened recently, and so I take a chance and leave the table while my guests are lost in small talk and surface-level conversations.
Rina notices me rise, and gives me a concerned look. I smile and nod, a charade of: it’s all fine. I just need some air. I graba to-go box and stuff a slice of the cake in the square, plastic container. It’s tiramisu—my favorite, to most of my guests’ chagrin. But it’s my birthday. Whit special-ordered from that place in Carroll Gardens because “regular cake is a betrayal of the Italian people.” She didn’t even stay for dessert which is very un-Whit-like. I pack her a piece as either an offering or a hostage. I’m not sure yet.
As I suspected, I find Whit on the sidewalk. She’s pacing, which is what Whitney does when she’s trying not to explode—short, tight laps, heels clicking, arms crossed, the emerald dress catching the streetlight and throwing it back in shards of green.
“Whit.”
She stops pacing. Turns. Her face is flushed and her eyes are bright with something combustible.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t what? I just came to see if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. Go back inside. Enjoy your party.”
“You are clearly not fine.”
She presses her fingers to her temples—a gesture I realize, with a jolt, is one I’ve stolen from her. Or she stole from me. After eighteen years of friendship, the plagiarism runs both ways.
“I can’t do this anymore, Celeste.”
“Do what?”
“Sit in there and pretend.” She gestures toward the restaurant, toward the warm glow of the windows and the muffled laughter and the man at the head of my table. “Pretend I don’t see what’s happening. Pretend Greg isn’t—” She stops. Breathes. Starts again. “The audacity. It’s your birthday and he’s shamelessly hitting on other women right in front of you.”
“Oh, he’s just a flirt when he’s drunk. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“Lessi! Wake up. The waitress inside is the tip of the iceberg. What about the fact that he has two phones?—”
“Two work phones. Two totally different businesses?—”
“The plane ticket receipt you found which was to a city he never told you about.”
“Because we don’t babysit each other! That’s called trust. Without it, we have nothing.”
“It’s called gaslighting. Greg has officially made you feel like you deserve the way he treats you.”
Her voice cracks the quiet of the street like a rock through glass. A couple walking their dog across the street glances over. Whit doesn’t care. Whit has never once in her life modulated her volume for the comfort of strangers.
“I’ve been keeping my mouth shut,” she says, lower now but no less intense. “For years, Celeste. Years. Because I kept telling myself it wasn’t my place. You’re a grown woman, you make your own choices, and it’s not my job to stand between you and your marriage. But I can’t—” Her voice catches. “There is no way you aren’t seeing this. He’s not even trying to hide it. The late nights. The way he guards his phone like a Rottweiler with a bone. The way he looks at every woman in a room that isn’t you. And the jokes, Celeste. About your age. ‘My vintage wife.’ ‘The classic model.’ It’s not charming. It’s not banter. He’s reminding you—and everyone else—that in his eyes, you’ve expired, and he thinks that gives him permission to shop around.”
