22. Mia
Mia
The room is exactly what Celeste promised but nothing I was ready for.
Two hundred people in black tie, every surface catching the light, the catering arriving in unmarked vans.
Donors I recognize from newspaper photos.
Press behind a rope line with cameras already running.
Board members scattered through the crowd like they were placed there, which they probably were, because Celeste doesn’t leave that to chance.
Harper is by the entrance in a navy dress with a white sash, both hands smoothing the front of it, her rabbit at home for the first time I can remember.
She spots me before I’ve cleared the door and her face opens up, relief cracking through before she can get it under control. I cross to her first.
“You look incredible,” I tell her.
She looks down at the dress. “The sash keeps moving.”
“It looks right to me,” I say. She lets me straighten it anyway, standing still with her chin up while I fix the bow at her back, and when I come around to face her she checks my dress the same way I checked hers, top to bottom.
“Good,” she says, and goes back to watching the room.
I take a glass from a passing tray and go to work.
This is the part I know. Warm, present, remembering names and asking the questions that make people feel like the most interesting person in the room.
I’ve been doing it for five weeks and I’m good at it now, good enough that it takes less out of me than it did at the Lowell benefit, good enough that I can track three conversations at once and still keep the smile up.
Reed is across the room with Celeste, the two of them moving through the crowd like they were born to it. He catches my eye over Vincent’s shoulder at some point, one second, and I tip my chin slightly, he tips his back, and that’s the whole exchange and it’s enough.
By nine the live stream has been running for forty minutes. Celeste passes me once and says, “The comment section is calling it the real thing,” which from Celeste is the equivalent of a standing ovation.
Reed appears at my elbow between the second and third round of appetizers.
“Balcony,” he says.
I follow him because Vincent has been describing a golf course in Westchester for six minutes and I would rather be anywhere else on the planet.
The balcony off the side corridor is dark and cold. Reed leans against the railing and looks at me. I can see immediately that this isn’t a strategy conversation.
“You’ve had that face since the door,” he says.
“I have one face,” I say.
“You have six. That one’s the one you use when you’re waiting for the next bad thing.
” He pushes off the railing. “The board is drinking our champagne, the stream numbers are the best we’ve had.
For the next hour, nothing is on fire.” He stops in front of me, close, the city behind him. “Just be here.”
“You got on one knee in my bakery for a live stream,” I say. “I’m allowed to still be thinking about that.”
“Are you thinking about it,” he asks, “or are you using it to keep your guard up?”
I open my mouth and he kisses me. His thumb presses into my cheekbone, his mouth opens mine, and the noise of the party disappears. I grab his lapel, my fingers closing around it and holding on.
His other hand finds the front of my dress, slides under the hem, his palm rough and warm on the bare skin of my inner thigh.
He doesn’t ease into it. He pushes straight up, fingers finding the edge of my underwear, pulling it aside, stroking through my pussy in one slow drag that makes my breath catch hard against his mouth.
“Reed,” I moan, his name coming out wrong.
“Still thinking about it?” he asks, against my lips.
Two fingers push inside me and my argument evaporates. I’m already slick, his fingers curling forward while his thumb finds my clit. I clamp my teeth together on the sound trying to get out. The city is right outside the railing, and two hundred people are thirty feet behind that door.
His hand moves faster, ruthless, like he has a point to make and he’s running out of time to make it.
My grip on his lapel goes white-knuckled.
My whole body pulls tight, his fingers driving deeper, his thumb pressing hard.
I press my face into his throat and come apart as quietly as I’ve ever done anything, one strangled exhale against his collar, my knees shaking through all of it.
He pulls his hand out from under my dress. I stay against his throat for a moment, catching my breath, listening to his racing heartbeat.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” I say, into his collar.
“I know,” he says.
“I still meant what I said in the bakery.”
His clean hand moves to the back of my neck, his thumb pressing once at the base of my skull. “I know that too.”
I pull back. Fix my dress, check my hair in the dark reflection of the window.
He watches me without saying anything, his tie still slightly loose, and I think about telling him to fix it before he goes back in, but then I think about the fact that I’m about to walk back into a live-streamed engagement party with his fingerprints on the inside of my thigh, and the laugh almost gets out.
Almost.
“I’m going back,” I say.
He nods and stays on the balcony a while longer.
I go back into the party alone, find a glass of water, find a corner, and give myself ninety seconds to be a human being before the smile goes back on. Ninety seconds is generous. I’m at sixty when the silver dress appears at the edge of my vision.
Vanessa cuts through the crowd with her eyes already on her destination, champagne glass in hand, every step placed like she mapped the route before she walked in. She ends up in front of me in a corridor off the main room, not a strand of dark hair displaced.
“You look well,” she says.
“You’re not on the guest list,” I say.
“I know a few of the board members.” She takes a sip of champagne, her eyes moving over my face. “I won’t stay long. I came to tell you something before you hear it from the lawyers.”
I wait.
“As you know, the custody trial is in three days, and Reed and I didn’t come to an agreement.” She holds my gaze. “I filed a supplemental motion this afternoon. I’m requesting that Harper’s contact with you be restricted while the trial is pending.”
My fingers tighten on my water glass.
“On what grounds?” I ask, and my voice comes out steadier than I deserve credit for.
“Instability,” she says, without any pleasure in it.
“Specifically yours. The contract leak, the live stream proposal, the comment sections calling you a fraud for two days running.” She sets her glass on a passing tray.
“A judge looks at a six-year-old who has formed a significant attachment to a woman her father hired, in the middle of a public controversy, with a custody trial already scheduled, and he asks one question.” She smooths the front of her dress.
“Is this good for the child. Not for Reed. Not for you. For Harper.” She holds my gaze.
“I think you already know what the answer looks like from the outside.”
She walks back into the room.
I stand in the corridor and breathe. Four counts in, four counts out. I get to four and the urge to throw my water glass at the back of Vanessa’s silver dress passes, mostly.
Three days. A courtroom, a judge, and a motion calling me unstable.
My stomach lurches. Not the low roll I’ve had every morning for a week, not the kind I can press two fingers against and breathe through in forty seconds. A hard wave, no warning, moving from my gut to my throat without stopping.
I walk fast, through the corridor, past two doors, into the bathroom, both hands on the sink before the second wave hits. I gag over the basin, knuckles white on the porcelain edge, the party muffled and distant through the walls.
It passes. I run the cold tap, press wet fingers to the back of my neck, and straighten up.
My face in the mirror is pale under the makeup, eyes too bright, the burgundy dress doing nothing to put color back in my cheeks. I look like a woman who has been holding a wall up all night and just felt the first stone shift.
I’ve stood at a sink before with my hands gripping the basin and known before I was ready to know. Different sink, different city, same cold spreading through my chest before my brain catches up to what my body already understands.
“No,” I whisper, to the woman in the mirror. “Not now.”