Page 25

"You two were married," Steven said to me, brightly, sitting down. "Right?"

The terrace did not go silent. Harold was still pouring and Rhoda was telling Zephyr something about her sacral chakra.

But four of us went silent, in a small tight geometry. Me. Blaine. Lance with his glass halfway up. And Benny Longworth at the far end, who I'd have bet the guest house had clocked every single thing about this table inside thirty-seconds of sitting down.

"We were," I said. "Once upon a time."

"That's so healthy," Steven said, with total sincerity. "That you're here. I told Blaine — I said, the fact that your ex is coming to the wedding is honestly, like, a flex."

"Steven. Please." Blaine’s eyes squeezed shut.

"It is."

"It's marvelous," said Rhoda warmly. Then she came around the table and took my face in both hands, in front of every person present. "This one was ours for six years. You don't stop being family because of paperwork."

"Mother…"

"You don't, Blaine Solstice."

"Rhoda," said Harold, quietly, which in forty years of marriage is the closest that man has ever come to intervention.

Steven was still smiling. Genuinely. Uncomprehendingly. Filming us with his phone.

"Gregory's arrival was not planned," Blaine said, in a voice like a folded napkin. "He's producing a film about my mother's other recently arrived houseguest."

"Wait." Steven turned. "You're doing a documentary about Zephyr?"

"Isn't it thrilling," said Rhoda, sitting back down.

"Oh my God, is he available?"

"He's sitting right there."

"No, like — available available." The phone was already out, thumb already moving, and here is where I understood that I was not in a duel with this man. I was in a meeting with him. "Because Ascendant has a whole vertical launching in Q4 and the entire brief is authenticity. We've been auditioning practitioners for months and they are all so —" he rolled his eyes "— cold plunge in a caftan. But he's the real thing. You can feel it. Would you be open to a conversation? Obviously not now. Thursday?"

"Steven," said Rhoda. "What is it you do again, exactly?"

"I'm SVP of Community Ascendance."

"How wonderful." Rhoda turned to Zephyr and laid a hand on his forearm. "Zephyr. You must tell me more about the Western simplification."

"Steven," said Blaine. "The salad is being served."

"After the salad," Steven agreed, squeezing my hand one final time, and went back to his seat.

I sat down. My legs did it before I told them to. Because here's what I had planned for. A rival. Someone I could out-produce. Someone Blaine was choosing.

What actually arrived was a genuinely nice, entirely oblivious man who liked my movies, wanted me on his podcast, thought my presence at his wedding was a flex, and did not appear to have been told — by anyone, ever, in any detail — what six years and a divorce and two years of silence actually amounted to.

Which meant one of two things.

Either Blaine had explained all of it, and Steven had filed it where Steven files things. Under content, potential.

Or Blaine had never explained me to him at all.

I looked down the table at my ex-husband, unfolding his napkin with the exact geometric care of a man defusing a bomb. He still hadn’t looked at me once.

You didn't tell him about me. You have been with this man for however long and you never told him what I was to you.