14. Liliana #2
It comes out miserable, and I hate how miserable it sounds.
“That’s the problem, Dani. He’s been so good.
For weeks now. The flowers, the notes, the song in the rain, the…
the band-aids.” I gesture helplessly at the box.
“Every single thing I ever needed him to be and wasn’t, he’s being it now, and I swore to myself that I was going to stay angry.
That I’d earned my anger and I was going to keep it.
And instead I’m sitting here going soft over a box of drugstore band-aids like a complete idiot. ”
“You’re not an idiot.”
“But I don’t want to be weak.”
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I don’t want to be the woman who takes him back the second he says the right things.”
My hands drop as I look at her. “It scares me. What if this is just… the honeymoon of it? What if I let him back in, and I fall all the way back in, and then he slowly disappears on me all over again? I don’t think I’d survive it twice, Dani.
The first time nearly killed me. A second time would finish the job. ”
Danica is quiet for a moment, and she doesn’t do the thing I half expect, doesn’t rush to reassure me or tell me it’ll be fine or push me one way or the other.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Then here’s the actual question. And I’m not going to answer it for you, because I can’t, and neither can your mom or the internet or anybody else.”
She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “You’re not deciding whether he’s sorry.
He’s obviously sorry, a blind man could see he’s sorry.
You’re deciding whether he’s worth the risk of a second chance.
Whether the man he’s being right now is a man he can actually keep being, or just a man he’s being to win you back. ”
Danica shrugs, gentle. “That’s the only thing that matters, and it’s the one thing none of us can know for sure. Including him, probably. You just have to decide how much you’re willing to gamble to find out.”
I don’t have an answer for that. I sit with it, turning it over, and it settles into me weighty and true.
“When did you get so wise?” I mutter.
“I’ve always been wise. You’ve just been late to the news.” She stands, and a look crosses her face, reaching over to the desk and picks up a cream envelope I hadn’t noticed sitting there. “Which reminds me. This came for you. From your mother.”
I take the envelope and turn it over.
Mother’s handwriting, precise and elegant, my name across the front.
“She sent it here?” I ask.
“She called first, actually. Which, growth. She wanted to make sure you’d get it, said she wasn’t sure you’d take her call directly.” Danica’s mouth quirks. “Your mom is trying, Lil. In her extremely Aurelia way. It’s kind of sweet, in a slightly terrifying manner.”
I slide a finger under the flap and pull out the card inside.
It’s an invitation, cream stock so stiff it could cut, gold lettering, one of my mother’s foundation evenings, the kind of glittering charity affair she’s been hosting my whole life. Her note is tucked inside in her own hand:
[ I would be glad to have you there. No agenda, just come. Bring whomever you like. Love, Mother. ]
I read it more than once. From Aurelia Astor, who spent my entire adolescence vetting my companions like a border agent, it might as well be a love letter.
“You going to go?” Danica asks.
“I sort of have to. It’s her event, and things are… we’re in a good place, she and I. It matters to her.” I run my thumb over the gold edge of the card. “So yeah. I’ll go.”
Danica nods and drifts back toward the door, giving me the space to think, and I sit there with the invitation in my hands, burning a small hole in my brain.
***
I don’t decide to do it, exactly. My body just does it while my mind is still arguing.
Alone in my room, I pick up my phone, and my thumb moves to the keypad. Before I’ve fully thought it through I’ve typed in a number I never saved and never needed to, because it’s been carved into my memory for years, ten digits I could recite in my sleep.
His number. The one I swore I’d deleted from my life along with the rest of him.
I stare at the blank message for a long moment.
Then I type it fast, before I can stop myself.
Me: My mother’s foundation gala is Saturday. Me: If you want to come, you can. As my guest. Me: No pressure either way.
I hit send before the sensible part of me can wrestle the phone away, and then I sit there staring at the screen with my heart going too fast, already regretting it, already bracing for I don’t even know what.
For him to read too much into it? For the whole careful distance I’ve kept to come crashing down over three sentences?
But his reply comes in under thirty seconds.
Unsaved Number: Yes. Whatever time, wherever, I’ll be there. Unsaved Number: Thank you, Lily.
And then, a beat later, a second message.
Unsaved Number: I won’t make you regret it.
I set the phone face-down on my chest and flop back onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling, and I let out a long, slow breath that does nothing to calm the ridiculous fluttering going on beneath my ribs.
Shit.
I just invited my estranged husband to a party.
On purpose. With my own two hands.
The gamble, it seems, has already started, whether I’ve decided to make it or not. And somewhere between the band-aids and the ceiling, I understand that I’m going to have to figure out the answer to Danica’s question soon.
Whether he’s worth it.
Whether I’m brave enough to find out.
***
The gala is exactly the kind of glittering my mother does best. Chandeliers and string music and a room full of people worth more than small nations, and I walk into it beside Tristan feeling, to my own surprise, almost at ease.
Weeks ago the thought of standing next to him in a room full of cameras made me want to crawl out of my own skin.
Tonight it’s just, easy.
We drift along the edge of the party, glasses in hand, talking low, and there’s a lightness between us I’d forgotten we were capable of, the kind where half of it is what you say and half of it is the thing underneath, the awareness humming along every place our shoulders almost brush.
“I have to say,” he murmurs, leaning in so only I can hear, “I’m about ninety percent sure your mother invited me here specifically so she could have me removed in front of everyone. It’d be very on brand.”
“She didn’t invite you.” I take a sip of champagne. “I did. So if anyone’s getting you thrown out, it’s me, and I haven’t decided yet.”
“Fair.” He smiles down at me, warm. “For what it’s worth, I’m honored to be your possible eviction.”
“Don’t get comfortable.” But I’m fighting a smile, and he sees it, and his own goes soft, and for a second the whole glittering room falls away and it’s just the two of us in a pocket of quiet, and I have to look away first.
We’re good. That’s the thought that keeps surfacing, warm and dangerous.
Right now, in this exact moment, we’re good.
I should have known better than to think it.
“Liliana! Oh my God, it’s been ages.”
The voice slides in from behind me, honeyed and bright and instantly, viscerally familiar, and every muscle in my body goes rigid before I even turn around.
Hallie.
She’s on the arm of some baby-faced pop star I vaguely recognize, poured into a dress that’s trying too hard, her golden hair perfect, her smile stretched wide and gleaming and utterly without warmth.
She looks as if she wasn’t invited. She looks like the kind of woman who talks her way past a guest list on a rising star’s arm specifically to be exactly where she isn’t wanted.
“Hallie.” I keep my voice level, cool, aware of Tristan going very still and very alert at my side. “I didn’t realize the foundation was letting just anyone in this year.”
“Oh, don’t be like that.” She laughs, light and poisonous, loud enough for the little cluster of people nearby to hear.
“I just came to say hello. I’ve been so worried about you, with everything.
All those awful things people are saying.
” Her eyes glint. “Especially that story going around. You know… About how the marriage really fell apart.”
And there it is. The blind item. Dropped right into the open air with a smile, in front of witnesses, daring me to react.
For one second the old instinct rises, the urge to flush and stammer and shrink. And then it just doesn’t. Because I know exactly what she is now, and I know exactly what she’s doing, and I am so deeply, gloriously done being afraid of her.
“You mean the anonymous little story,” I say, clear and calm and carrying, “that appeared out of nowhere, from a ‘source close to the couple,’ the same week you happened to need a headline with your name in it?” I tilt my head.
“That story, Hallie? The one that reads like it was written by someone who’s been jealous of my life since college and finally found a way to sell it? ”
The nearby conversations go quiet. Heads turn. Hallie’s smile freezes on her face.
“I don’t know what you’re implying,” she says, and her voice has lost some of its music.
“I think you do.” I hold her gaze, steady, unbothered. “But it’s okay. You can keep the story. You clearly need the attention more than I need to defend myself against it.”
Her composure cracks straight down the middle.
I see it happen, the mask slipping, the fury flooding up underneath it, and I have half a second to register the wine glass in her hand before she moves.
She flicks her wrist, quick and vicious, and a splash of red wine arcs across the space between us and hits me full across the chest and throat, cold and shocking, soaking into the silk of my dress.
The whole cluster of onlookers gasps.
And I don’t flinch.
I stand there dripping merlot down my collarbone, and I don’t gasp, and I don’t stumble, and I don’t give her the crumpling, weeping reaction she so obviously came here to collect. I just look down at the ruined silk, and then back up at her flushed, furious face, and I let one eyebrow rise.