PART 6:

That wasn’t terrible, Ethan said. She was being polite. For tonight, Victoria drank again from the champagne flute. She’ll have opinions tomorrow. Tomorrow is tomorrow’s problem. She looked at him sideways. You’re remarkably calm. I’m pretending to be your boyfriend, not applying for her approval.

He watched Catherine Sinclair move across the room with the ease of someone who knew exactly how to navigate a party, who to stop and speak to, how long to linger. She’s good at that, the room management. She used to host dinners every month when I was growing up. 40 people, sometimes more. She could tell you who needed to leave 15 minutes before they needed to leave. A pause.

I used to think it was a performance. I think now it was actually how she loved people in the arranging. It was said quietly like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Ethan didn’t respond immediately. He let it settle because it was the kind of thing that needed settling. Makes sense, he said. She just never thought to arrange things the way I needed them. Yeah, he said that happens.

He felt her look at him again with that unguarded expression, the one that came through the perimeter when she wasn’t watching. Then she seemed to realize it and put the composure back, and he pretended not to have seen it happen. They made their way through the room. Lily brought Jake over. He was easy to like, a man who asked questions he actually wanted the answers to, which was rarer than it should be.

He shook Ethan’s hand and said, “Lily talks about you constantly. You know that?” which made Victoria make a sound that was almost a laugh and said he’d heard great things, which was generous since Lily had known about Ethan for approximately 15 minutes. They talked to a few of Victoria’s relatives, cousins, a great aunt with formidably good posture, who looked at Ethan and said, “You have good hands.

” In a way that could have meant anything and seemed to mean several things at once. Victoria introduced him each time with the careful naturalness of someone telling a story they’d rehearsed just enough, and he backed her up with the easy shortorthhand of someone who had actually been paying attention to her for months, which wasn’t hard because it was true.

He noticed around 45 minutes in when Marcus came to find them. It wasn’t accidental. The man crossed the room with the specific trajectory of someone who had decided something and was implementing it. And Ethan saw it before Victoria did and shifted just slightly, just enough that when Marcus arrived, he arrived at Ethan’s shoulder rather than directly to Victoria’s side.

Victoria, Marcus said her name the way someone says the name of a city they used to live in. Familiar, slightly proprietary, with a nostalgia that was also a claim. You look incredible, Marcus. Her voice was entirely level. This is Ethan. Marcus turned to him, and the smile was immediate and complete, the kind that said the man had practiced it until it felt real, which maybe it did at this point.

Marcus Webb. Good to meet you. He gripped Ethan’s hand. Not a power play grip, actually, just a handshake, which somehow made him harder to dismiss. How do you two know each other? We live together, Victoria said. A beat. Marcus’s smile held. Oh, and we’re together, she said. Marcus looked between them.

Something moved through his expression. Too fast to catch cleanly, but Ethan saw it. It wasn’t jealousy exactly. It was something more complicated. The expression of someone who has spent a long time being the most important person in a particular story and has just discovered the story has been edited. That’s great, Marcus said in a tone that made the words into their opposite. Really great, Vic.

I’m happy for you. He looked at Ethan again. She deserves someone who gets it. What she needs it takes. He paused, tilted his head. She can be a lot to handle. I say that with love. The room went exactly as loud as it had been before. No one near them had heard it. It was the particular gift of Marcus Webb. Ethan understood now that he could say the precise most harmful thing in a voice that would pass his affection in any transcript.

Victoria had gone very still beside him, not frozen. Still in the way of someone deciding. Ethan said pleasantly, “She seems pretty manageable to me.” Marcus blinked. I mean, Ethan continued, same tone. She runs a company, raises a staff of 60 people, keeps her apartment clean, makes excellent coffee, and has never once made me feel like existing near her was a burden.

So, I’m not sure what version of her you knew, but this one’s not that complicated. A pause opened up in the conversation. Marcus’ smile had dropped its pretense at this point. It was still there technically, but the architecture had changed. “Right,” Marcus said. Well, it’s good to meet you. He looked at Victoria once more, and it was the look of someone who had planned to say something else and decided against it.

Enjoy your night, Vic, he moved away. Victoria watched him go. Ethan stood beside her and waited. “She can be a lot to handle,” she said after a moment. Flat like she was playing it back. “He practiced that one,” Ethan said. “It had timing.” She exhaled long, quiet, controlled. I used to say things like that in front of my friends, just casually, and I would laugh because what else do you do? And then we’d get home and I’d think about it for 3 days.

And he’d have moved on by the next morning, by the next hour. She turned to look at him. How did you People who do that rely on the other person holding it, he said. They put it down and walk away clean. She studied him. You knew someone like that? I’ve known a few people like that in different ways.

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