Page 90 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

I pick the phone back up and stare at the restaurant name.

Of course he did.

***

The restaurant looks exactly like the photos. Low lighting. Warm cypress wood, pale and honey-colored, expensive-looking without announcing it. Handwritten menus on washi paper, small and clean and precise. The twelve seats curve around the bar, and the chef greets each of us like we're expected, like he's been keeping something special aside.

Connor orders the full omakase for the table before anyone else has a chance to read the menu. He doesn't look at the card.

When the chef turns to me, I smile and say I'd love the cooked options—black cod if there's a choice, wagyu, tempura. I make it sound easy. A personal preference, nothing significant. What you say when you need a reason that isn’t the real one.

Connor's chopsticks pause.

Half a second. Maybe less.

He doesn't comment. He reaches across me and refills my water glass before I can reach for the pitcher myself, and I pick it up and take a sip and focus on the menu I'm no longer reading.

Sarah is radiant. Cream dress, hair loose, naturally pretty in that effortless way. She's already telling the Maldives story—the overwater bungalow, a night the rain came so hard they couldn't see the lagoon from the bed. Connor is smiling the whole time and it's nice seeing him so happy.

I laugh in the right places and mean most of it.

She goes on about the snorkeling they hadn't planned on and getting sunburned in the exact shape of a starfish on her left shoulder. She pulls down the strap of her dress to show Andrew and he makes a face of genuine horrified respect. Liam tells her she should lean into it, get the other shoulder to match. She laughs hard enough that the couple two seats down looks over.

The food comes in several courses. Each plate small and refined. The black cod is perfect and I eat more than I probably need to. It helps.

Across the bar, Connor and Ethan are into the Harrington deal. Final approval timeline, a meeting next week with the city contact. Andrew and Liam lean in. The conversation becomes its own contained thing, the three of them angled together over minute details.

Sarah catches my eye. Makes a small, fond face.

“They're at it again.”

I smile back.

Then she leans toward me, voice quiet and easy, like it's nothing.

“Do you have a tampon? I thought I packed one and I didn't.”

I open my purse.

I know exactly what's in it. I haven't packed one for weeks. My phone, my lip gloss, the prenatal vitamin I forgot this morning, now tucked into the small inside pocket where I keep things I can't leave on the counter.

I shuffle the items around anyway.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don't.”

She squeezes my arm and excuses herself to the restroom anyway. I pick up my water and take a long, slow sip.

When I set the glass down, Connor is still talking to Andrew but reaches across me and refills my water glass before I can reach for the pitcher myself. He knows me too well. The thought hits because this is Connor doing what he's done since our parents died. Taking care of me without a second thought. His hands are moving, open and emphatic, talking through something he cares about. But his eyes cut to my face.

Just for a second.

Then back to Andrew.

By dessert he's watching me like he did at sixteen.

I know this look. I've been on the receiving end of it for half my life—calm and patient and already past the point of being fooled. He gave me this look for months after the accident, when I kept telling him I was fine and he kept not believing me and not pushing, just watching and waiting for the moment I stopped holding it together.

He doesn't order sake for the table with dessert.