Chapter 12
Gwen
After Gwen pulled herself out of the shower, the suite felt quieter, calmer.
The bass from the pool was a dull throb through the glass, muffled by heavy curtains.
Maggie was stretched on the pullout couch in a towel, hair damp, pretending to scroll her phone but mostly looking like she could fall asleep again if left unsupervised.
Pete was starfished across the other couch bed in a robe, muttering about “the champagne flu.”
Kiera emerged from the bathroom with her hair slicked into a neat bun, eyeliner sharp and lethal, and a determined glint in her eye. The one that usually preceded group projects, chore charts, and field trips nobody wanted but everyone needed.
“Everyone up,” Kiera said, clapping her hands once. “We’ve got a reservation.”
Pete groaned into the pillow. “Cancel it.”
“Nope.” Kiera tugged at the tie of Pete’s robe, ignoring her muffled protest. “We didn’t come all the way to Vegas to eat sad nachos from room service. This is supposed to be celebratory. We are celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?” Danica asked, emerging from the bathroom in a silk top, lips already glossed. Her tone was too innocent.
Gwen found herself smiling despite the heaviness still lodged under her ribs.
The nap had dulled her edges, but it hadn’t erased the memory of Maggie in the pool — laughing, sparkling, daring her — and it sure as hell hadn’t erased what had passed between them in the shadow of the bathrooms. That was still humming in her veins, quiet but insistent.
Dinner was mercifully quieter than the pool had been. The restaurant lighting was low, amber spilling over the table, softening everything into gold and shadow. Their group took up half a banquette — plates of pasta and steak and vegan pizza with overpriced sides scattered like trophies.
Pete stood halfway through the meal, one hand braced on the back of her chair, a glass of wine clutched dramatically in the other. “All right,” she announced, voice hoarse but strong enough to carry over the room. “I’ve got something to say.”
Danica groaned, already pink. “Pete—”
“Shh,” Pete said, putting a hand to her fiancée’s cheek. “Let me.”
She cleared her throat, then launched into it — equal parts irreverent and sincere.
A list of all the things she loved about Danica, half of them jokes about her obsessive calendar management and half of them so earnest Gwen felt her throat tighten.
“Wendell, you make me better,” Pete said finally, simple and direct.
“You make all of us better. And somehow, for reasons I’ll never understand, you want to marry me. Which is insane, but I’m not arguing.”
The table broke into laughter and applause, glasses clinking. Danica leaned up to kiss her, eyes shining.
The feeling landed in Gwen’s stomach — sweet and sharp all at once. That quiet intimacy, so unshowy, so sure. The kind of thing she used to have, once.
She looked back down at her glass before she could help it, pretending the reflection of the candlelight was what had made her chest ache.
Beside her, Maggie laughed at something Pete said, tossing her head back, hair catching in the glow. Gwen didn’t look. Not right away. She just took a slow sip of wine, willing herself to stay composed in the middle of so much love.
She told herself not to. She told herself to focus on the wine, on Pete still holding court at the head of the table, on the flicker of candlelight reflecting in polished silverware.
But she looked anyway.
Maggie was across from her, shoulders relaxed for once, laughing at something Kiera had added to Pete’s speech. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine, hair still damp at the ends from her shower. She leaned forward on her elbows, listening intently, and when she smiled — open, unguarded…
It was the kind of smile that had once been hers, that had lit up Gwen’s worst days, that had carried them through years of chaos and compromise. And god, it made her chest ache to see it now, angled somewhere she couldn’t quite reach anymore.
Maggie caught her looking.
Just for a second, their eyes locked across the table, the noise of their friends receding until it felt like the room had gone quiet. Gwen didn’t look away. Couldn’t. The air between them was too heavy with everything unsaid.
Maggie’s lips curved, faint and fleeting, a secret she wasn’t about to share with anyone else.
And Gwen, holding her gaze in the soft golden light, felt that old familiar tug somewhere between her ribs — love and ache, wound so tightly together she couldn’t tell which was which.
The air between her and Maggie had gone taut, stretched to breaking, when Maggie blinked like she was recovering from a trance. She cleared her throat and stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the tile floor. “All right. My turn.”
Maggie had a pasted smile. “Here’s to Pete and Danica — the only people brave enough to willingly corral this disaster crew through Vegas. May your marriage survive overnight shifts, bachelorette weekends, Pete’s bad jokes, and an obscene amount of champagne.”
The group laughed, glasses raised automatically. Pete cheered, “Hell yeah!” Danica reached and squeezed Maggie’s hand.
Maggie sat back down, the laughter was still trickling down from her toast when Lillian, poised as ever, lifted her glass. “If I may,” she said smoothly, her voice cutting through the chatter. “I’d like to add one more.”
The table quieted, all eyes on her. “It’s been such a joy,” Lillian went on, “to see all of you celebrate love in such… spirited ways.” Her smile flicked toward Pete, who was still half standing, trying to get the waiter’s attention for another round.
“Danica, Pete — you two clearly bring out the best in one another. I wish you a lifetime of more laughter than arguments, more joy than chaos, and at least a little bit of this sparkle every day. It’s been such a joy getting to know each of you and to be welcomed into your group. ”
She tipped her glass, effortless, golden in the candlelight.
The group let out a warm chorus of cheers, glasses clinking again. Danica pressed a hand to her heart, touched despite the blush creeping into her cheeks. Pete made a mock swoon face and laid her head on Danica’s shoulder.
Maggie ducked her chin toward her glass, shoulders still tense.
And Gwen sat there, glass lifted, watching it all — the way Pete gazed at Danica, the poise of Lillian, the too-bright smile Maggie hadn’t dropped yet, the way Izzy leaned into Kiera with a private smile.
The last of the champagne was being poured when Kiera straightened in her seat, eyes sparkling with the same intensity that had pried everyone out of the room this evening.
“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands lightly against her thighs, “I have an announcement.”
Pete groaned theatrically. “Not another toast, for the love of—”
“Not a toast,” Kiera said, grinning now. “Reservations. At a piano bar. Ten o’clock.”
The table erupted — Izzy whooped, Danica clapped, Pete slapped the table like she’d just won a bet.
“You made us a piano bar reservation?” Pete asked, delighted horror in her voice. “You sneaky little minx.”
Kiera shrugged, smug in her practicality. “I know you all. If I didn’t, you’d be in bed by eleven. This way, we actually do Vegas properly.”
Izzy leaned over to kiss her cheek, murmuring something that made Kiera blush under the low lighting.
Maggie groaned, half into her glass. “Pretty sure I’m still dying from the pool. And last night. And all of Vegas.”
“Rally,” Kiera ordered, with the command of someone who’d wrangled high schoolers for a living. “You can’t bail on my itinerary.”
Pete laughed so hard she nearly spilled her wine. “Oh my god, not the itinerary.”
“She color-coded it,” Izzy added proudly.
Danica perked up. “You did? For me?”
“Of course she did,” Maggie muttered, though there was a smile tugging at her mouth despite herself. “She sent it my way, but again, I don’t open spreadsheets just as a rule.”
“And,” Kiera said, digging in a tote bag at her side, then producing two handfuls of sequined items. “I have sashes and tiaras.”
Danica grimaced, but Maggie was already reaching to put on a tiara that proudly read Miss Behaving. Gwen’s offering simply glittered in a curly, feminine font: MILF.
Lillian laughed, pointing up at Gwen’s tiara. “Classy,” she said. Her own read Sexy & Single.
Maggie helped Danica with her Bride to Be sash — Pete immediately tied hers around her waist like a cummerbund.
Gwen sat back in her chair, watching the wave of energy build again, feeling the buzz of it under her skin. A bachelorette party. A nightclub. At ten p.m. Vegas wasn’t done with them yet.
Fremont Street was its usual neon circus — showgirls with feathered headdresses taking photos with tourists, people stumbling while looking up at the kaleidoscope ceiling, the hum of slot machines leaking out of every doorway.
Their group wove through the crush until Kiera led them into an empty mall area and they stopped beneath a retro neon sign in loopy cursive: Strangers in the Night.
“Piano bar,” she announced, grinning like she’d just revealed the final square on a scavenger hunt.
Pete threw her arms in the air. “Yes.”
Inside was dim and rowdy, the kind of place that smelled like spilled whiskey and glittered like sequins.
Two grand pianos faced each other on a low stage, and the pianists were hammering out dueling versions of “Great Balls of Fire,” harmonizing with total commitment.
The crowd — half musical theater nerds, half retirees who hadn’t gone home since 1968 — clapped along like this was holy ritual.
Gwen got the idea that there were a lot of regulars at this place.