Chapter 6 #2
Her hand was cooler than mine. Soft, but not delicate. Her fingers flexed once automatically like she was testing what this was before committing to the grip.
I closed my hand around hers and turned toward the bar set up in the sitting room off the dining hall. The family followed us in a wave.
That was the problem with Norouzis. Even private moments happened in flocks.
“What do you want?” I asked quietly.
“Something strong enough to survive your relatives.”
“That’s not a drink. That’s a medical intervention.”
She smirked and nodded. “Okay. Vodka.”
“Specific.” I said and reached for a bottle.
“Practical.”
I poured and asked, “You drink vodka when you’re nervous?”
“I drink vodka when I’m surrounded by people who think my love life is a spectator sport.”
“Fair.”
I gave her a glass. “Does your mother have a photographer planned that might pop up at any second?”
“I don’t think so.” I said closer to her ear.
Kelly gave me a look. “He’s by the hydrangeas. Pretending.”
I looked. She was right. “You’ll need Everclear. We don’t stock it.”
“Then vodka.” She said and held out her empty glass.
That made me almost smile again.
At the bar I let go of her hand only long to pour.
The room buzzed around us. Charlie already back to talking.
Hope trying to keep him from telling the story of how he once threw himself out of a plane to impress a woman who ended up dating someone else.
Michael arriving with Britney and giving me one cool, measured look.
Jeff and Miley still speaking to each other in compact, deeply married shorthand.
Isabel and Roman sliding into the room like elegant co-conspirators.
I handed Kelly the drink and our fingers brushed. My fingers sent a pulse through me from that moment.
She took one careful sip and exhaled very slightly. “That helps.”
“Always happy to help.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I’ve heard otherwise.”
I looked at her. “Okay happy to help you. You came in armed tonight.”
She turned her face toward the room, but not before I saw the edge of a smile. “I came in prepared.”
Before I could answer, Charlie dropped into the chair on Kelly’s other side like a badly contained weather event.
“So,” he said brightly, “when exactly were you planning to tell the rest of us?”
Kelly didn’t even look at him. “We’re discussing our eventual dismantling of any marriage and how we should have a prenuptial Charlie.”
Charlie slapped a hand to his chest. “Lies. In front of my own family.”
“Stay in your lane Charlie,” I muttered into my glass.
Kelly shot me a look over the rim of hers that landed low and direct enough to make my entire body wake up and realize how beautiful she was.
She turned back to Charlie. “Six weeks.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“How long we were actually dating,” she said. “It’s one of the questions everyone is whispering so you can report it.”
The beginning of the cover story settling into living speech.
“Six weeks,” Hope repeated from behind Charlie’s shoulder. “And you said nothing?”
Kelly gave her an expression I recognized from the terrace and the landing outside her apartment and the patio at the bar. One.
“Yes,” she said evenly. “Because unlike all of you, I don’t treat every romantic possibility like a federal holiday.”
Hope laughed helplessly.
Britney took a sip of her wine without looking at anyone and said, “She has a point.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “You’re all very disciplined all of a sudden.”
“Maybe because,” Kelly said, finally turning fully toward him now, “Relationships can take time to develop.”
Heat hit low in my stomach. Because she had said relationship and looked annoyed that anyone would fail to understand her silence was her choice.
My mother, who had drifted close to hear, smiled into her own drink like a woman being handed what she wanted without needing to ask for it. “No one will bother you Kelly.”
Laughter loosened the room again.
Kelly took another small sip of vodka and shifted slightly in her seat, and because I had spent too much time this week cataloguing her reactions, I saw she was still tense through the shoulder, and holding her drink too tightly.
I leaned down enough to say quietly, “Breathe.”
She paused. Then tension in her shoulders dropped one visible fraction.
Her gaze cut to mine. “Don’t say things like that to me where people can see you.”
“Why?”
“Because I get confused on where we stand and why.”
I held her gaze for one beat too long.
The server appeared before I could answer. My mother stood and everyone quieted as Maman said, “Come.”
We followed, but Kelly paused one step inside.
She seemed nervous. I stepped to her side, close enough that no one would question the move, and put my hand at the small of her back. The exact place she had chosen.
She inhaled. Once. Then she walked forward with me, and to anyone watching, it looked natural.
My mother had placed us together, of course. Halfway down the right side, not too near her, not too far. Kelly’s friends distributed in a pattern that looked accidental until anyone remembered who had arranged it.
I pulled out her chair and she sat. She looked up at me as she settled, the briefest flicker of surprise in her face before she buried it. Then, low enough for only me, she said, “Show-off.”
“How?”
“Gentleman behavior was probably taught by your mother over there.”
Dinner should have been easier once everyone sat. Instead the opposite happened.
At the table, all the little things became more obvious.
Kelly and I passed dishes without hesitation, but that words flew and Kelly asked me quietly what something was in Persian when she didn’t recognize it and I answered as quietly.
And my hand kept finding the back of her chair when someone on her other side leaned in too close and that every time she said something that made half the table laugh, my attention moved to her before anyone else.
I reminded myself her rules. No touching for no reason. No private jokes that implied a depth not yet built into the story. No overplaying. Let the family project. Let them fill in what they wanted to see.
The problem was that the more I tried to keep it measured, the more every small thing with Kelly seemed to intensify on its own. She asked for salt. I handed it to her and our fingers brushed.
Kelly noticed being noticed. Whenever I glanced at her.
Every time.
Her eyes would flick to mine. Her spine would sharpen. Color would creep under her skin and her mouth would go a little softer, as if the awareness kept hitting her body first and her pride only caught up after.
By the time tea was poured, I was beginning to understand that whatever this arrangement had been intended to contain, it was going to create as much trouble as it solved.
Charlie, naturally, accelerated that realization.
“So,” he said around his second sugar cube like a man with no interest in self-preservation, “who made the first move?”
My mother closed her eyes briefly and then gazed at us like she could uncover the truth.
Kelly set her tea glass down and looked directly at Charlie with the exact kind of patience teachers reserved for children testing whether a rule had consequences.
“I would ask why this matters to you,” she said, “but I’m afraid the answer would be worse than the question.”
Charlie grinned. “You know me so well already.”
“No,” she said. “I only get why you’re good with Hope.”
The table laughed. Then Charlie, because he lacked every healthy instinct God had ever distributed, looked at me and asked, “Well? Was it you?”
I should have let it go. Instead I looked at Kelly and said, “I asked if she wanted to escape one of your stories.”
Her gaze found mine so fast it felt like impact. I silently questioned her reaction as that had been our agreed answer.
But hearing it aloud in front of everyone made the thing tilt. We gave something specific that was easy to imagine.
Hope made a delighted sound. “That’s kind of romantic.”
“No, it isn’t,” Kelly said.
The room laughed again.
I watched Kelly recover from the moment in real time, drink, breathe, look away, come back. Good under pressure. Better than good. Excellent .
My mother sipped her tea and said, too casually, “I always knew there was something between you two. It was clear the first night I met Kelly as Xerses stayed close. And my son never stayed near any woman for long near me.”
Britney nearly choked on her own drink. Kelly, to her credit, didn’t even blink.
“If you say I was denying fate all this time,” she told my mother, “I’m leaving.”
My mother smiled. “I was going to say you looked good together and it’s clear my son likes you.”
Kelly’s face changed, enough as her blush grew.
She said, “You’re very kind to me.”
My mother laughed. “It’s not kindness. It seems I’m the trigger half my boys needed to settle down with the right women.”
There was tiny shift in Kelly’s body. That softening she couldn’t fully stop.
My father looked from Kelly to me and then to my mother with the expression of a man watching two valuable but unstable investments approach each other at speed.
I turned away and found myself watching Kelly’s fingers close around her tea glass and wondering what it would take to make her keep that look and not flinch from my touch.
I froze and then dragged my attention back to the conversation and found Charlie staring at me with all the subtlety of a fireworks display.
“What,” I said.
He grinned. “Nothing. You just look weirdly focused.”
“Focused?”
“On her.”
Silence hit the table for one potent beat.
Then Kelly, bless her for this if nothing else, looked at Charlie and said, “If you make me regret being nice to you, I’m going to tell Maman the truth about the jet-ski incident.”
Charlie recoiled. “You wouldn’t.”
Kelly took a sugar cube and dropped it into her tea. “Try me.”
Charlie shut up.
The rest of dinner went smoother.