Grant’s voice drops to a level only the two of us can hear, with a wry glare that could hopefully pass for a smile from a distance. “Will you—please—make me the happiest man alive, and stab me in the temple with a fork when we get to dinner?”
“YES!” I shriek, my fingernails carving divots in my palm as a cheer goes up from the patio. “Yes, yes, athousand timesyes!”
• • •
ACCORDING TO WENDYand Paul, an on-site engagement is cause for a celebratory family-style dinner.
It is apparentlynotcause for Heather to cede attention for even a single moment.
Soon after we gathered in the candlelit dining room, she began by frowning at my hand and asking with deep concern where my ring was. She then interrupted our cover story (it’s still being polished up in New York; Nathan was simply too lovestruck to wait) to launch into the story of how Nicholas proposed. Which led to Nicholas giving an overview of the ring’s value and cut and carat and zodiac sign. Which led to them both compiling a laundry list of their fine jewelry brand deals. In short, it’sThe Heather and Nicholas Show.
And that suits me fine, since I’m not in the mood to talk. Grant and I sit stiffly side by side, fresh out of the will to press Martin’s buttons. It’s not as if Heather and Nicholas are doing a better job. Forty-five minutes of blathering, and Martin is unruffled as always, enjoying his roast chicken and listening contentedly.
After a while, though, Wendy seems eager to redirect the group’s attention as she tops up everyone’s wine.
“How about another toast for the new fiancés?”
Grant and I adopt grateful smiles as we all raise our glasses.
“And to couples in general,” adds Heather, beaming that big plastic smile around the room. “You know, Nicholas and I were delighted to hear about this weekend because you never see events for couples anymore! It’s Singles’ This, Singles’ That. It’s like the worldwantspeople to be alone.” She gives a tinkling laugh and swirls her rosé. “What a joy to look around this room and be reminded that we’re not the only ones still in love.”
“Which is not to say we don’t welcome our single friends,” Wendy chimes in with a gracious nod toward Martin. He waves her off with a chipper grin.
“Oh, never mind me,” he says. “It’s been a lovely stay. It’s just as wonderful to be surrounded by love as I expect it would be to be in it!”
Yeah. He’s definitely going to try to murder someone tonight.
“Mmm.” Heather swallows her wine, nodding toward Martin. “And happy to have you here, of course. There’s something so dignified about a man living and writing in noble solitude, isn’t there? But”—she chews a bite of roasted potato, tilting her head in thought—“it’s the ladies that are such a pity. It isn’t natural for us to be alone. Yet you’ve got all these single women parading around their so-called independence like it isn’t the saddest thing in the world.”
I try to remind myself that Heather is just a plot device, literally designed to be an asshole and therefore not worth my actual anger. It doesn’t work. I hate her anyway.
Before I can decide which to throw at her—a vicious clapback or a pitcher of water—Nicholas chimes in.
“A man wants to be needed,” he says plainly, cutting his chicken. “All thatI don’t need a mannonsense …Sucha turnoff.”
Well, that settles it. These are the worst people I’ve ever met. And I say that knowing that there’s an actual serial killer at the table with us.
“Quite right,” says Heather, rubbing Nicholas’s shoulder. She raises her glass with a patronizing smile and says, “She who ‘needs no one’”—this she puts in air quotes—“will never find anyone.”
With every word out of their smirking mouths, I can feel the shell of my character cracking.
“Maybe it’s more of an honor to be chosen by someone who doesn’t need you, but wants you anyway,” a different voice says.
The room falls quiet as heads turn Grant’s way, but he keeps his focus on the Fiorellos. “Someone who doesn’t sit around waiting for permission to live her life—that’s a person with stories to tell. I’d consider myself lucky to be the one she wanted to tell them to.”
The silence that follows is stunned on my part, aghast on the Fiorellos’, and holds a mix of approval and confusion from the rest of the table. Grant stutters as he catches himself.
“I … Iamlucky, I mean,” he adds. “To be dating someone like that.”
Martin holds up his glass. “Engaged, you mean!”
“Right,” Grant says, his voice laced with self-conscious laughter.
As the table eases into a calmer flow of conversation—the Fiorellos having been properly silenced, eating their dinner with prim faces—Grant drops his head toward mine.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. And I don’t think he means for whatever just happened.
“Thank you,” I say. And I don’t mean for the apology.
