“The food is insane. There’s this one bakery that does these amazing cookies, and I’m not exaggerating, I would commit actual crimes for them.”
Denise laughed. “Okay, I need the name.”
“Artopolis. But go early, they sell out.”
Elizabeth took another sip of vodka and tried to look like she was listening.
Kelsey’s thumb had started moving. Small circles. Deliberate or unconscious? Elizabeth couldn’t tell. Either option was a problem.
She shouldn’t have stared.
An hour ago, when Kelsey had stepped out of the bathroom, Elizabeth had been at the mirror fastening her second earring. She’d glanced up, meaning to say something about the time, and the words had died somewhere between her brain and her mouth.
Pale gold silk. A halter neckline that tied behind Kelsey’s neck and plunged in a sharp, clean V that stopped just above her sternum. The dress clung to her waist, her hips, the fabric heavy enough to drape but light enough to shift when she breathed.
Elizabeth had seen Kelsey in her work uniform a hundred times. Black apron, fitted tee, jeans. She’d registered that Kelsey was attractive in the way you registered any fact: noted, filed, moved on.
This wasn’t a fact to be filed.
This was Kelsey’s collarbones, bare and angular. The soft shadow at the lowest point of the V, the line of her throat when she’d swallowed hard and asked, her voice going small,Is it too much?
Elizabeth had frozen. Stood there. Let the silence pull open like a wound while her body responded to something her brain wasn’t ready to authorize. Heat in her face and lower, in her chest, behind her ribs. A dull, physical pull that had nothing to do with contracts or appearances or Grace’s wedding.
She should have saidYou look beautiful.She should have crossed the room and straightened the necklace that sat slightly off-center in the plunge, her fingers brushing Kelsey’s skin, and said,This is perfect, you’re perfect, stop worrying.She should have done anything other than stand there with one earring in and her lips parted and her composure six feet behind her.
Instead, she’d managed “amazing.” Like a movie review. Like she was rating a restaurant.
And then turned away, because if she’d kept looking, she would have done something she couldn’t take back.
She’d watched in the mirror as Kelsey’s expression shifted. Something bright dimming behind her eyes, her mouth pressing flat, her hands going to the fabric at her waist and smoothing it in that anxious tell. Kelsey had glanced down at herself like she was seeing the dress through someone else’s judgment and finding it wanting.
Because Elizabeth had done that. With her silence, with her three-second stare and her clipped response and her immediate retreat to logistics. She’d made Kelsey feel wrong.
“So wait, you’re a barista? That’s how you two met?”
Denise’s question pulled Elizabeth back to the bar. The wood was cool under her fingertips. Ice shifted in her glass.
Kelsey’s thumb paused its circuit, then resumed. “She came in every morning. Same order, same time. I just made sure her cappuccino was perfect and eventually she noticed.”
“That’s so much better than an app.”
“Anything’s better than an app,” Kyle offered from behind his wife, his first real contribution. Denise patted his arm without looking at him.
“How long have you two been together?”
“Few months,” Kelsey said. “She’s pretty private, so we kept it quiet for a while.”
“That tracks.” Denise glanced at Elizabeth with a grin. “No offense, Elizabeth, but getting personal details out of you is like pulling teeth. I’ve worked with you for three years, and I just learned last month you had an ex-wife.”
“I contain multitudes,” Elizabeth said, and Denise laughed.
Kelsey looked up at her then. The angle brought her face close, and Elizabeth could smell her perfume, something warm and a little sweet that she hadn’t been wearing when they signed the contract at the wine bar.
“She does,” Kelsey said, still looking at Elizabeth. Her eyes were very brown and very warm, and she was smiling, but the smile had a question in it. A small, careful question that Denise and Kyle couldn’t see, but Elizabeth could read like case law.
Are we okay?
No. They were not okay. Elizabeth was standing in a hotel bar with a hand on her bare back and a thumb drawing circles into her skin and a week of avoidance sitting between them like a deposition she’d refused to give, and she could still see the way Kelsey’s face had fallen in the hotel room when Elizabeth couldn’t find the right words.