Isabelle's eyes go wide. "No."
"Yes. And I kept tasting things and thinking, why is this weirdly sweet? So I'd add more of what I thought was salt to balance it, which was actually more sugar, so then everything just got sweeter and I was twenty-one and panicking and somehow convinced myself that if I just kept cooking it the sugar would... I don't know, transform into salt or something."
Jack is already laughing, covering his face with his hands. "Mom took one bite of the mashed potatoes and set her fork down and didn't speak for two hours. Not a word. She just sat there in total silence while the rest of us were too terrified to stop eating, so we all kept shoveling down this disgusting food and smiling at each other like everything was fine."
"Dominic ate three plates," I add. "Which I'm pretty sure was out of spite. He wanted to prove a point about not wasting food or something."
"How did you not taste it and realize sooner?" Isabelle asks.
"I was twenty-one and overconfident," I say. "I thought my palate was just off that day or something."
"Clearly," she says, and swats my arm, laughing. The feelingof her hand on my arm and the sound of her laugh buries itself deep in my chest and stays there.
This whole arrangement, the one-night thing, the possibility of a summer fling hidden from Jean-Pierre, a bit of fun I'd joked to Theo about before I left for Napa. I'd agreed to her terms easily even though I liked her from the start. But somewhere between the porch and this table, between sleeping together and right now, thelikinghas shifted into a different gear entirely.
I've had flings. Plenty of them. I know what they feel like, the easy come-and-go of it, the lack of weight. None of them felt like this. Like I want to know what she's thinking all the time. Like I want to see her face first thing every morning and cook her breakfast. Like the idea of her going back to New York and me going back to Dark River and this just ending feels wrong.
She said she doesn't do boyfriends. She said New York is the plan, that's where her life is, that's what she's working toward and nothing's going to change that. And I agreed, no complications, very casual, very mature, just a celebration of a good night.
The cumbia gets louder and the candle on our table burns down to a stub and nobody makes a move to leave even though we've been here for over two hours. Isabelle leans into me to hear something Lark is saying across the table, her shoulder pressing warm against mine, and she doesn't move away after. She just stays there, laughing at whatever Lark said, her weight settled against me like it belongs there.
It takes everything I have not to put my arm around her. To keep my hand on the table instead of sliding it to her knee or her back.
Mia is telling a story now about a show in Chicago that went sideways, something about a malfunctioning stage and a dancer who improvised an entire solo on the spot while the tech crew scrambled to fix the lights, and everyone is leaning in to listen.Isabelle shifts slightly, her hand landing on my thigh under the table for balance, and she leaves it there for just a second too long before pulling away.
I'm so fucked.
CHAPTER 13
Isabelle
The table has split along natural lines over the last half hour, the way tables do when the group is big enough and the drinks are good enough and everyone is comfortable. Alex and Jack are at the far end, deep in a conversation about Jack's upcoming championship race in LA.
I only half follow Formula 1 but I keep tuning in anyway because my father would lose his mind if he knew I was sitting three feet from Jack Midnight, casually eating anticuchos and listening to him talk about tire strategy.
Alex showed me photos earlier of his two nieces from his brother Theo—Chloe and Clara—and a new baby nephew from his brother Calvin. And then the dogs, Gus and Laila. It's just who he is, the kind of person whose life is built around the people he loves.
Watching him with Jack tonight, the way they talk over each other and reference disasters from fifteen years ago and laugh at jokes nobody else at the table understands, I keep thinking that I don't have this.
I've never been great at making friends. I don't know why exactly. I want to be. I see other women who have those effortless, text-all-day, show-up-with-wine friendships and I think, how? How do you just do that? What's the secret I missed?
I have a few people in New York I get dinner with occasionally, colleagues mostly, but nobody I'd call at two in the morning, nobody who knows what I look like when I cry, nobody I've ever admitted to that I sleep with a stuffed rabbit named Monsieur Lapin that I've had since I was four. Margot was the first person in a long time who felt easy, who I didn't have to perform around.
And now Mia and Lark, sitting across from me on a Monday night, talking to me like I've been in their group chat for months, and I keep catching myself mid-laugh thinking,oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like.
Mia is telling me about the music video she's working on with Lark, a piano ballad that they're pairing with contemporary dance. She lights up when she talks about dance, and Lark gets the same way about her music, her eyes going bright when she describes the melody she's been working on.
Their creative energy is infectious. It makes me want to be around them more, which is a feeling I'm not used to having about people I just met.
Mia's phone buzzes and she glances at it, smiling softly. "Derek wants to know if I'm having fun. He's in LA being boring without me."
"You two are cute, in an insane sort of way," Lark says, reaching for her water glass.
"We're chaotic," Mia corrects, then looks at me with a grin. "We're very on again, off again, currently very on. He's a choreographer and we keep swearing we won't work together again because it always ends in a fight, and then we do anyway and it's a whole thing."
She tucks her phone away and leans forward conspiratorially,pulling Lark in by the elbow with one hand and gesturing me closer with the other. I find myself leaning in too, the three of us hunched together like teenagers at the back of a classroom about to share contraband.
"So," Mia says, dropping her voice to a whisper that barely carries over the cumbia. "You and the hot chef."