Chapter 2
TWO
The moment Alma and I step back into the ballroom, sensory overload hits me like a confetti cannon to the face all over again.
There’s gold, black, and white everywhere; draped from the ceiling, twinkling along the walls, floating above the crowd in giant glossy balloons that bump lazily against one another.
A massive disco ball. A plethora of masks…
It’s like someone at Van Corp took the words Masked at Midnight and asked a designer with zero concept of restraint to put it together.
“Christ,” Alma says, looking around with a dramatic sigh. “Did I mention earlier that whoever planned this decor was either a genius or had a deep emotional wound to fill?”
“Why not both?” I chuckle, my eyes catching on a mirrored centerpiece that reflects my mask back at me in a dozen little fractured angles.
Fitting considering the fractured nature of the disaster that is my current love life.
Alma tugs my arm, as if somehow reading my mind. “Nope, no lingering. We’re getting food. You’re not allowed to be sad on an empty stomach. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m not sad,” I protest. “I’m resolved.”
“Resolved people still need protein,” she insists, guiding me toward the buffet like she’s my personal security detail. “And alcohol, and a lot of carbs.”
The buffet is obscene in the best possible way.
Gold-rimmed platters, piles of tiny fancy finger foods, pastries shaped like stars, something involving smoked salmon that looks far too pretty to touch, and a massive ice sculpture of an old-timey clock that looks like it’s silently judging me.
I grab a plate, and Alma immediately starts putting things on it—like I’m a child who can’t be trusted to feed myself.
“Eat. Hydrate.” She puts a champagne flute in my other hand. “And flirt with anyone who isn’t named Klaus or Nick.”
I snort. “Great, so ninety-eight percent of the party?”
“Precisely. There’s plenty of options.”
I laugh, and it’s a genuine, easy breezy kind of laugh. The room glitters, people chatter, the DJ transitions into “Red Wine Supernova”. Taking a sip of the champagne, I allow myself to simply enjoy the moment.
It’s gonna be fine. Tonight will be the start of something new and healthy. Something not rooted in complicated penis politics that was never supposed to be complicated in the first—
The buzz of my phone disperses the thought like a plane hurtling through a cloud. Setting my untouched plate onto the buffet, I slide a hand down the bodice of my dress and fish it out. One look at the screen and every drop of blood in my veins crystallizes on the spot.
Klaus
Can I see you tonight?
Five little words. Instant full nuclear emotional payload.
No. No, no, no. God no. Not now.
It’s not sadness that hits me, but panic with a side of frustration. Because of course he would pick tonight. Of course he would wait almost three months and then break the silence—when I’ve just committed to a life of good decisions and emotional detox.
I down the champagne in one gulp, a detail Alma doesn’t miss.
She stiffens like a mother hen sensing danger. “What happened? Did someone die? Did you read a spoiler? Please don’t tell me the chocolate fountain stopped working…”
Wordlessly, I tilt my phone toward her.
Her eyebrows shoot up behind her mask, brown eyes flicking my way. “Oh, hell no.”
“I haven’t spoken to him since before Halloween,” I explain. “Nick, either.”
“And he didn’t reach out, right?”
“Correct. So why break the stalemate tonight?”
“Because men have a sixth sense for when you’re finally moving on.” She rolls her eyes. “They smell progress and come running like raccoons to a trash can.”
I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I knew this resolution would be hard, but not pre-midnight hard.”
Alma snatches my phone, shoves it back between my cleavage, and replaces my empty flute with a full one. “Here. Drink and reset. He is not derailing your night.”
“I’m not derailed.”
Setting her plate down beside mine, she gives me that look, the kind that says you’re absolutely derailed and I love you anyway. “Noelle, babe, you cannot start a drama cleanse and then shotgun emotional poison.”
“It’s just a text,” I insist.
“It’s a Klaus text,” she fires back, and while it isn’t the sharpest arrow ever thrown my way, I wince nonetheless.
“Okay, fair.”
Smirking in satisfaction, my work wife loops her arm through mine and begins tugging me away, leaving our food—forgotten, abandoned, probably crying—on the table. “And now we’re leaving before you get any bright ideas about replying.”
“I’m not!” I scoff.
“You are. You’re already thinking about what you’d say back, which isn’t happening. Not tonight, anyway. What you do after the new year is your business. Right now, you need a distraction. Movement. Ideally, someone else’s cologne wafting into your general orbit.”
I blink at her. “So…the dance floor?”
A devilish grin slithers across her face. “Exactly.”
Before I can argue, she drags me toward the disco ball. The music deepens, vibrating through the parquet floor into the soles of my heels and up my spine. People dance all around us—masks glinting, dresses swishing, bodies pressed close.
“Come on!” she shouts as she spins me into an open space. “Shake off the ghosts of Klaus and Nick-past!”
“That’s not… That’s not a thing!” I yell back.
“It is if I say it is!”
The text still burns like a coal against my skin, but the music is too loud, the lights too bright, and the crowd too alive.
Slowly, I feel my shoulders drop and my heart unclench, and by the time the song swells toward its end, I feel lighter.
Nowhere near healed, and not perfect or totally over anything—but lighter.
Hopeful.
Alma grins at me, breathless and triumphant. “See? You look better already!”
I raise my champagne flute in a mock toast. “To emotional progress?”
“To emotional progress,” she echoes, clinking her glass to mine.
A new song starts—bright and triumphant—and the dance floor shifts like the night itself is unfurling in glitter and gold. And for the first time since walking away from the two men who’ve had my heart all year, I let myself believe this resolution might actually stick.