“It’s fine,” I assure her. “Go mingle.”
“You’ll be okay?” The look she gives me silently conveys her concerns.
They’re the same as my concerns, but this isn’t the time to dwell on them. I force a smile and nod. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Just enjoy your party.”
After one last assessing look, Emma nods and allows herself to be whisked away. I wander through the crowd in the opposite direction, smiling politely even though my chest is tight and my breathing is shallow. A waiter with a tray of wine crosses my path, and I pluck a glass of red from it. Maneuvering to an inconspicuous spot where I blend into the crowd without exactly joining it, I scan the room. But I don’t see him. Somehow, that’s both a relief and a disappointment.
Between small sips of wine and even smaller bits of passing conversation, my eyes keep drifting. Roaming. Searching. Waiting for that inevitable moment when he’ll appear.
Then I hear his voice.
It’s familiar, warm.
A punch to my sternum.
My gaze cuts across the room, following the sound. My body tenses, bracing for the impact of seeing him. For the possibility that he won’t be here alone. For the realization that I may not be over him even if we are truly over as a couple. For weeks of therapy to be wasted on this single moment.
Ethan steps through the backdoor, backlit by the afternoon sun and smiling at something another man says. He’s wearing a light grey button-down shirt, cuffs rolled up around his forearms, and a pair of black slacks. He looks as handsome as ever, but there’s something weary in his expression, a hint of exhaustion in his otherwise happy façade.
My heart is suddenly everywhere: in my throat, my ears, my fingertips. Then his eyes connect with mine.
His smile falters, reshapes. The look he gives me is too much to contain in a single word. It’s happy, apologetic, conflicted, and hopeful. Months of emotions all at once. My knees almost buckle under the weight of them all.
Ethan says something to the man beside him, then breaks away, moving toward me in slow but steady strides. It reminds me of the way one might approach a stray chihuahua when they aren’t sure if its natural defense mechanism is bolting or biting.
And that’s fair, actually.
I take a deep breath that does absolutely nothing for the stampede happening in my chest.
“Hi,” he says softly when he reaches me.
“Hi.” My voice is thinner than I’d like.
“How have you been?”
“Good, and you?”
“Yeah… good.”
The words are shallow, mere placeholders for all the things we need to say. The silence that follows says even more. Ethan’s eyes hold mine as a million unspoken things hover just out of reach.
“I’m glad you came,” he says eventually. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“I’m here,” I say, my voice doing a strange crescendo. If that isn’t awkward enough, I perform what can only be described as some sort of half-curtesy.
There were a lot of ways I thought I might react to seeing him again: tears, silence, fleeing. But doing a curtesy was not on my bingo card.
I expect Ethan to laugh. The old Ethan certainly would have laughed at this. Instead, he looks more serious than ever as says, “It’s good to see you, Margot.”
The words, paired with the earnest tone in which they’re spoken, drip through me like honey, soothing away some of the pain.
I swallow hard. “Do you think we could maybe talk later?”
His eyes flare slightly. There’s a hint of eagerness in the way he nods. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Someone clinks their glass, calling for a toast. Unfortunately, it’s far from the last random toast of the day.
As the speeches drag on, Ethan and I are pulled in separate directions back into the swell of the celebration. But for the rest of the afternoon, our eyes continuously drift back to each other. My pulse stumbles with each lingering glance and every hesitant smile. Even though I try to push my own feelings aside and focus all my attention on Emma and Garrett, something hums beneath my skin. Something I can’t quite admit even to myself—hope.