PROLOGUE
Maia
One Year Ago
“Remind me, did you fuck the bride or the groom?”
I choked on my champagne and glanced over to see if my boyfriend heard Ophelia. Nate was bothered by any mention of my past partners, but he was in the midst of telling the person on the other side of him about NFTs. He wouldn’t surface again for a while.
I grinned at my friend. “Groom.”
Bill had started as a regular client of mine a lifetime ago when I’d been working as an escort and then he’d invested in my first restaurant when I finished cooking school and had enough experience to branch out on my own.
He was a dear friend now, but a handful of people remembered he was once something more.
I cocked an eyebrow at Ophelia. “What about you?”
She cackled. “Both.”
“At the same time?”
She nodded smugly, so I saluted her with my martini glass. “I would expect nothing less from Mistress Ophelia.”
The wedding reception was a dream. The decor made the outdoor venue look like a diaphanous fairy-tale fantasy. The weather was perfect the way only a Southern California late summer evening can be. What little of the food I’d eaten was mediocre at best, but tasted divine because for once I hadn’t overseen its creation.
My date was handsome and charming. Nate and I had been together for four years and we’d settled into comfortable domestic bliss.
Bliss might’ve been taking it too far. I hadn’t had an orgasm with him for months, maybe years, but spells like that were normal in a long-term relationship, right?
Ophelia waited until he got up from the table, then nudged me with her knee. “WTF is with the stockbroker?”
I nudged her back. “You know perfectly well that Nate’s a chef.”
He’d won a season of a cooking reality show, which made him a weirdly niche celebrity in some circles without actually being famous. I’d met him shortly after his win when he was struggling to translate reality TV stardom into a real cooking career. He had an idea for a restaurant and I already had three that were successful by then, so I’d taken a meeting with him and he’d somehow charmed me into going to dinner with him afterward.
Ophelia waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. He’s judgy, talks over you, and he has the sexual magnetism of a mop. Baby cakes, are you really gonna marry that?”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re happy. You’re just scared you’re going to catch the monogamies by sitting too close to us.” She toasted me in affirmation. “He’s—wait who said anything about marriage?”
“That man is so clearly going to propose to you tonight.”
“How do you know?” I sounded panicked even to my own ears.
She inspected her nail polish. “I overheard him discussing it with the bride. Can’t do something that tacky without permission, now can we?”
I picked up the champagne glass in front of me and finished it in three big gulps without realizing what I was doing. I didn’t even like champagne, but I’d taken it from Nate to be polite. I set the empty glass down next to my empty martini glass and blinked at Ophelia’s sympathetic look.
“Fuck you, O,” I said, but there was no anger in it. “I’m excited. You got in my head with your mind tricks, but I’m thrilled he wants to propose.”
She held her tongue, but her expression gave away everything she wasn’t saying. I couldn’t bullshit her. She knew me too well.
I’d never been the girl who wanted a surprise proposal. I hated surprises.
Hell, I didn’t even know how I felt about marriage. It always seemed sort of unnecessary to me. If he’d ever had a conversation with me about marriage, he’d know that.
But that didn’t necessarily mean I didn’t want to marry him, did it? Somehow, I hadn’t felt like we were at that point of our relationship yet, but four years seemed to be more than enough for most people to figure it out at our age.
“I love him,” I told Ophelia, managing to sound sure of myself. “He’s smart and driven and he understands how important work is to me because his work is the same for him. We travel well together. Neither of us want kids. We never fight.” She blinked at me again, recognizing what I was leaving out. “The sex isn’t what it used to be, but since I’m not asking for it to be better, that’s not really his fault. I’m lucky, Ophelia. You and I know better than most just how vile men can be. Nate is one of the good ones.”
