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Caspian followed, raking a hand through his own hair, his shirt slightly untucked.

“He’s been channeling his divine masculine energy again,” Sofia whispered.

I nodded gravely.

Caspian left, and the noise of water running came from Vivienne’s bathroom.

I arranged the peonies in a vase, taking the liberty of plucking one, ripping off its head, and feeding it to the garbage disposal. It felt meaningful. Spiteful and meaningful. I half-expected a wasp to fly out of it and sting me on the collarbone.

I took a photo of the flowers and the card and texted it to Damian.

Aurora sent Vivienne these amazing flowers. how kind of her, I typed.

He replied in under a minute with an exclamation point on how kind of her, which he quickly changed to a heart.

Then he sent: hope you slept well, gorgeous. I can’t stop thinking about you.

It stung, worse than a wasp from a flower. Exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I couldn’t have.

had a wild dream, I replied.

Thirty seconds later he wrote:

call me later and tell me all about it, followed by a flirty emoji.

“Marlowe! Marlowe, I need you!” Vivienne called. I put my phone away and found her in her office draped in floor-length mulberry silk and cashmere, LED facemask glowing red like a possessed stormtrooper.

“Bring me some Icelandic yogurt, please, with goji berries and hemp hearts. We need to talk about the pool party,” she said, muffled from beyond the mask.

I returned with her yogurt on a dish with a gold spoon next to it, as swiftly as a butler, and set it on her desk.

“What arrangements have you made so far?” she said, setting the spoon into the yogurt.

“Just some preliminary planning,” I lied. “I’ve called a few caterers.”

“I want it to feel like a soft launch of the summer, you know?”

“A soft launch. Yes, of course.”

I had no idea what that meant.

“And under no circumstances call it a pool party. Call it an ‘afternoon of poolside connection.’”

“Of course. Do you have an attendance list, or would you like me to put one together?”

“I’ll text you a few names, and you can fill in the blanks. Make sure you invite Blythe Withers, the Sacred Feminine Embodiment Coach, and Raff Stone.”

“Raff?”

“Oh Marlowe you know Raff. The venture capitalist.”

We went back and forth like that, me scribbling on a notepad while she rattled off a list of absurd human beings: Parker Ainsley, a perverted architect who designed ten-million-dollar homes, and Amethyst Vaughn, an artist who painted with placenta and talked about decolonizing her own wealth. Then my phone rang from my purse.

It was an unknown number. I answered anyway, wondering if I should.

“Sweetie, how are you,” a warm and careful voice said.

Aurora.