Chapter 4
Saylor
I’ve been to some dodgy venues in my line of work.
Warehouses converted into “experiential galleries.” Rooftop bars with forty-dollar drinks that taste like someone emptied a perfume counter into soda water.
A retirement party on a yacht that hit a sandbar.
But I have never, in my twenty-six years on this planet, attended a funeral with valet parking.
The bloke opens Celeste’s door before I’ve even fully stopped the car.
He’s wearing a pressed black polo with gold embroidery on the chest—some logo I don’t recognize—and he’s got the careful, neutral expression of someone trained to look at extremely wealthy people without actually seeing them.
A second attendant appears at my window and I hand over the keys, resisting the urge to ask if the trashcans around here are friendlier than the ones in Brooklyn.
Two women in black cocktail dresses intercept us at the entrance with flutes of champagne on silver trays. The bubbles catch the afternoon light, tiny golden explosions climbing the glass.
“Welcome,” one of them murmurs, like we’ve arrived at a spa retreat and not a memorial service.
Celeste takes a glass without looking at it.
I watch her jaw tighten as her gaze sweeps the venue—a converted estate hall with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a manicured lawn that rolls toward the ocean.
White hydrangeas spill from every surface.
A string quartet is warming up in the far corner, and the air smells like lilies and money.
Nothing about this says a woman died. Everything about it says look how much we can spend on the fact that she did.
“Champagne,” Celeste says flatly. “At a funeral.”
I take a sip of mine. “Decent champagne, at least.”
She shoots me a look. I raise my glass in a small, guilty toast.
“If Whitney could see this—” Celeste’s fingers tighten around the stem.
She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I’ve spent the last two and a half hours listening to stories about Whitney Trace, and I can fill in the blank.
Whit would’ve hated every square inch of this.
The hydrangeas alone would’ve sent her into a rant.
Celeste squares her shoulders. The transformation is immediate—the softness from the car, the tears, the wet laughter, all of it disappears behind a wall so polished I can almost see my reflection in it. She is, in the span of a breath, someone else entirely. Someone armored.
“I need to find Eleanor,” she says, scanning the room.
“I wrote a speech for Whitney, and knowing her mother, she’s planned every second of this program down to the bathroom breaks.
If I want a slot, I’ll need to ask in person.
” She reaches up to fiddle with one of her earrings—ones I probably couldn’t dream of affording, the kind of jewelry that comes in a velvet box with a certificate.
“It’s better if I approach her alone. Eleanor and I have… history.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I’m choosing to spare you. Eleanor has the warmth of an ice storm.” Celeste glances at me, and for half a second the armor slips. Something uncertain flickers beneath. “Will you be all right on your own?”
“Celeste, I’m a grown man at a weirdly fancy funeral with free booze and hors d’oeuvres everywhere. I’ll manage.”
The corner of her mouth lifts. “Avoid the truffle brie bites. I promise they will turn your stomach into an active volcano.”
“How do you know they will have truffle brie bites?” I scan the room as if Celeste has seen something I haven’t noticed yet.
“Because they always do. They always have white hydrangeas, staff dressed in black-tie, bottles of Dom Pérignon and Belvedere on ice. The pomegranate sorbet as a palate cleanser. These events are rinse and repeat. She couldn’t even switch up her playbook for her own daughter’s funeral.
” Celeste mutters something more under her breath that I miss. But it sounds bitter.
“Hey, I forgot to say this in the car.”
“What?” she asks.
I pull her into a hug, my arms circling her shoulders gently.
Her spine stiffens beneath my touch, and for a heartbeat, she’s frozen against me, like a deer caught in headlights—this small act of comfort apparently more startling than anything the day has thrown at her so far.
“I’m really sorry for your loss, Celeste. ”
She looks up, and once our eyes are locked I swear I see a flicker of something.
Nothing indecent. Maybe just…hope that tomorrow will feel more normal.
The next day even more so. It seems like Celeste, with one look, is asking me if everything is going to be okay.
I don’t know if that’s what’s really going through her head, but it feels right to answer her unasked question.
“Everything is going to be okay. You’ll get through this. ”
“Thank you.” Nodding, she touches my cheek.
It’s quick, almost reflexive—but before I can allow myself to enjoy the graze of her fingertips against my jawline, she’s free of my embrace, cutting through the crowd with the practiced stride of a woman who has been walking into hostile rooms her entire career.
I watch her go. She moves like she’s on a runway even when she’s not, which is either a professional habit or a survival mechanism. Probably both.
A man in a windowpane suit catches my eye from across the room and gives me a slow, assessing once-over—shoes, watch, shoulders, face—before returning to his conversation.
I’ve been on the receiving end of looks like that before, but usually I’m working security at the door, not standing inside holding champagne.
I drain my glass, set it on a passing tray, and go looking for the restroom.
The hallway leading away from the main space is quieter, all dark wood paneling and recessed lighting.
My dress shoes click against marble floors and I catch my reflection in a gilded mirror hanging between two oil paintings—a sailboat, a horse.
Rich-people art. The kind of stuff that exists solely to fill wall space in buildings where the walls cost more than the art.
I stop.
The mirror shows me exactly what I suspected: a bloke playing dress-up.
The suit is perfect. Celeste has an eye, I’ll give her that—but the man inside it is still the same kid who grew up in a fibro house in Wollongong, who learned to shave from a YouTube video because his dad was already gone, who eats cereal for dinner three nights a week because groceries are a luxury after Mum’s prescriptions.
The Rolex catches the light and I twist my wrist, watching the face glint.
It’s beautiful. It’s also a lie strapped to my arm.
Celeste and I spent the whole drive up here talking like equals.
She told me about Whitney—about their freshman year in adjoining dorm rooms, about the road trip where Whit’s car broke down in Delaware and they hitchhiked to a gas station singing Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.” I told her about Mum’s garden, how she grows tomatoes on the fire escape because she misses having land, how she talks to them in the mornings like they’re pets.
For two and a half hours, the twelve-year age gap and the several-hundred-million-dollar net worth gap didn’t exist. We were just two people in a car, being honest.
But standing in this hallway, surrounded by paintings and polished marble, I can feel the gap opening back up like a fault line.
This is her world. These are her people.
Even if she hates them, she speaks their language.
I’m a tourist with a borrowed watch and a borrowed suit and a return ticket to Alphabet City, where the trashcans fight back and nobody gives you champagne for showing up.
So stop it, mate. Stop replaying the way she tucked her hair behind her ear during the drive.
Stop thinking about how she laughed—really laughed, open and startled—when I told her about the time Mum accidentally FaceTimed Forrest while wearing a mud mask and he nearly called an ambulance.
Stop cataloging the exact shade of her eyes, which is a color I’m fairly certain doesn’t have a name but should, because the world is worse off without one.
She’s a client. She’s twelve years older. She’s grieving.
And she called you her little brother.
So act like one.
I push through the men’s room door and the marble-and-mahogany theme continues. Individual stalls with actual wooden doors, not the gapped aluminum slabs, and a countertop with rolled hand towels arranged in a basket. There’s a small dish of mints. A candle is burning. It smells like eucalyptus.
I approach the sink and run cold water over my wrists, a trick I use for calming down. The water hits the Rolex face and I pull back instinctively, shaking my hand. Right. Borrowed watch. Probably shouldn’t drown it.
Then I hear it.
Retching.
The sound is unmistakable—violent, full-bodied, the kind that comes from the gut. It’s coming from the last stall, and whoever’s in there is having a genuinely terrible time.
Another heave. A low, miserable groan then a soft, “fuck my life.”
I freeze, water still running. This is the men’s room. I’m certain of it—I checked the sign twice because the font was so ornate I thought it might be decorative Latin. But regardless of what the sign says, that was most certainly a woman’s voice.
“Oi,” I call out, shutting off the tap. “You all right in there?”
The groaning stops. Silence. Then the woman’s voice again, thin and hoarse: “Shit. This is the men’s room, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Of course it is.” A pause. More groaning. “Can you just go…and pretend I’m not here?”
“Uh, I absolutely cannot do that. Are you sick? Do you need help?”
“I need a time machine to get me out of this mess.”
“Hangover?” I ask.
“Sort of. But it’s kind of a nine-month hangover from one risky afternoon.”