EMBER
The Mavericks gala is the event of the season, apparently, and Harper has decided that Cassidy and I are not showing up in anything we already own.
“Absolutely not,” she said when I suggested it. “Love you girls, but you’re so Midwest. We’re shopping.”
So, we shop. It’s me, Cassidy, Jo, Harper, Issy, and Collette, moving through a series of boutiques so expensive I’m scared to breathe near the racks.
It’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. Harper is ruthless, she takes one look at a dress and either lights up or waves it away like it personally offended her, and she’s almost always right.
I end up in a deep emerald gown that Cassidy gasps at, and Cassidy finds a black dress with a slit that Harper declares ‘dangerous, in a good way’. Jo, who is trying on something floor-length and elegant, catches sight of herself in the mirror and grins.
“Last gala,” she says, “Collette got married.”
Collette goes bright red. “We didn’t plan that.”
“You got married at the gala?” I ask.
“No, we flew to DC in the middle of the night and got married.” Collette smirks. “Best decision ever.”
Jo smiles. “So really, anything can happen. Let’s all just hope nobody else runs off and gets hitched.”
“One wedding per gala, that’s the rule now,” Issy says, and Collette throws a scarf at her.
“It was very romantic,” Collette says.
“Until your brother’s found out,” Issy adds.
“That was true, but your poor brother took the brunt of their anger.” She cringes. I remember finding out Pierre had knocked him out when he learned about him and Jo.
“Not my brother’s finest hour.” Jo winces.
“Well, it’s all worked out in the end,” Harper states. “And also, ladies, watch out. Last year I heard some of the boys rented rooms in the hotels for some hanky panky.”
“Not my fault we couldn’t keep our hands off each other,” Collette says.
“No way, you too. Emmett did the same,” Jo says, bursting out laughing.
“That’s what happens when you are sneaking around behind everyone’s backs. You have to go to those kinds of measures.” Harper grins. “But damn it’s hot.”
“It really is.” Collette sighs happily and disappears back into the change room.
I take a gold dress off the rack again and hold it against myself in the mirror. It’s a deep, warm gold, liquid-looking, and it moves like water when I turn. It’s the most expensive thing I have ever put on my body, and I am absolutely putting it back.
“That one,” Harper says, appearing behind me with an armful of shoes. “That’s the one. Don’t even think about it. You’re getting it.”
“Harper, it’s too much. I haven’t even looked at the sales ...”
“Don’t look at the price. Looking at the price is for people who don’t have me.” She waves a hand. “It’s handled.”
“You are not paying for my dress,” I argue with her.
“I’m paying for everyone’s dresses, so don’t feel special.” She dumps the shoes on the bench. “Try these with it, the gold ones, trust me.”
I try them, and she’s right, obviously, she’s always right.
“Oh, before I forget,” Collette calls from her change room, “I saw the photos of Nelly’s apartment on your socials. You two did such a beautiful job, it looks incredible.”
“Thank you,” Cassidy says. “He was a dream client. Just handed us his card and told us to make it nice and then stayed out of the way.”
“Best kind,” Harper agrees.
“He’s very happy with it,” Cassidy says as she comes out in the black dress with the slit and the whole group stops talking.
“Okay,” Jo says. “That’s a lot, but you look hot.”
“Too much?” Cassidy twists to look at herself.
“Not too much. Just enough that the boys are going to swallow their tongues when they see you,” Harper says.
Cassidy goes pink and pretends to fix the strap.
Jo settles on the floor-length blue gown, elegant and simple, and Issy finds a metallic gray dress, something with room for the small bump that’s just starting to show. She stands sideways in the mirror with her hand on her stomach and smiles. She is glowing.
The saleswoman brings another bottle of champagne for us as we try on shoes and search for accessories.
“I could get used to this,” Cassidy murmurs to me, sipping champagne in a dress worth who the hell knows, a lot.
“Right,” I murmur back.
I stand there in the gold dress, a glass of champagne in hand, my best friend beside me, and these ridiculous, generous, loud women all around me. For a moment, I forget to feel like the version of me left behind in Wisconsin. I just feel like one of them.
“Right,” Harper says, clapping her hands. “Dresses, done. Shoes, done. Now, jewelry, we might have to leave for another day. I have a jeweler friend who would be happy to loan us some diamonds for the event. I’ve sent him photos of you ladies in the dresses so he can choose the diamonds.”
Wow. I’m speechless. Diamonds on loan for us.
“Right, we have shopped till we dropped and I am starving. I’m taking you all to lunch, and no one is allowed to argue with me about any of it.”
Nobody argues with her about any of it.
She’s the best.
The gala is stunning. The Rose Ballroom has been transformed into something out of a dream, with gold lighting, greenery, a string quartet in the corner, and champagne that never stops coming.
Everyone’s here, the whole team, the whole family, in tuxes and gowns, and for a night nobody is tired or sore or thinking about the standings.
We’re on the St. Pierre table, with our borrowed diamonds catching the light.
I feel like someone playing dress-up in a life that isn’t quite mine yet.
Issy glows in her metallic gray, Pierre’s hand never leaving the small of her back.
Fish and Collette can’t stop touching each other, and every so often Emmett catches Jo looking at him, and it makes him smile. And Sully looks unfairly good in a tux.
I’ve been trying not to look at him all night and failing spectacularly, and every time I do, he’s already looking at me.
By the second glass of champagne, there’s a charge in the room I can feel from across it.
We dance, all of us, in a weird group, no partners, just the whole family being ridiculous together, and it’s the lightest I’ve felt in longer than I can remember.
Bouch attempts to dip Evelina and nearly drops her.
Jo and Collette do a routine from a music video they apparently both know.
Someone keeps refilling my glass, and I keep letting them.
Then the MC taps the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the moment some of you have been waiting for,” he booms. “It’s time for our bachelor auction.
All proceeds go to the youth hockey program.
And this year, since half the roster has gone and gotten themselves attached …
” a laugh rolls through the room, and Collette raises her champagne like she’s personally responsible, “we’ve got a strictly single lineup for you tonight. ”
“Oh, this is going to be good,” Marlowe says, delighted.
They herd them up onto the little stage one at a time. Bouch goes first and hams it up so hard, flexing, and blowing kisses, that he drives his own price up out of pure showmanship. Evan goes next, shy and red-faced, and a table of women near the front bid him up just to watch him squirm.
Then Nelly saunters up there like he owns the place, all easy grin and broad shoulders in that tux. The bidding gets loud and fast, and it’s a woman near the stage who wins him, young, gorgeous, glossy. She stands up and does a little victory shimmy, and the room laughs.
Beside me, Cassidy laughs, too, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and her hand tightens just slightly around the stem of her glass.
“Are you okay?” I nudge her.
“Course, I am. It’s for charity,” she tells me.
I don’t believe her, but I let it go.
“And finally,” the MC says, “Connor Sullivan.”
Sully walks up onto that stage in his tux with that reluctant half-smile he does, and my stomach drops.
The bidding is immediate. There’s a whole cluster of women who’ve clearly been waiting for him, and the numbers climb fast. I sit there with my champagne and my borrowed diamonds and tell myself I don’t care, this is fine, it’s for charity, it means nothing.
Until I see who wins him. She’s young and stunning, and she’s wearing a red dress that leaves very little to anyone’s imagination. She claps her hands together and beams up at him like she’s just won a prize, which, technically, she has.
“The winner gets a dance,” the MC announces, “right now.”
I have to sit there with a smile nailed to my face and watch that woman put her hand in Sully’s and let him lead her out onto the floor.
I watch her step in close, closer than she needs to, watch her laugh at something and touch his arm and tilt her chin up at him.
I watch him be polite, easy, and gorgeous with his hand at the small of her back where his hand was on me not an hour ago.
Something ugly and hot uncurls in my chest, and I hate it.
I have absolutely no right to it. He’s not mine, that’s the whole deal, the entire arrangement, no strings, no claim.
We’re a secret, and secrets don’t get to be jealous.
She bought a dance for charity, and he’s giving her a dance, and it is none of my business who Connor Sullivan dances with.
So why do I want to walk across this ballroom and peel her fingers off his arm one at a time?
I put my glass down before I do something stupid. “I need the bathroom,” I say to Cassidy, and I don’t wait for an answer.
The garden is cold and empty, lit with strings of little lights.
The second the door closes behind me, the music drops to a muffled thump and I can breathe again.
I go to the far end, past the corner of the building, out of sight of the doors, and I press my hands to the cold stone balustrade.
I make myself look at the frozen garden and not at whatever’s happening on that dance floor.
Get a grip, Ember.