Still, the room had glances that caught and catalogued. A lobbyist kept looking at Conley with interest; a mid-level board member sat with his jaw pressed like a man practicing grievance. The photographer hovered in corners, small and hungry. We were visible, yes—but visibility made us measurable, and that measurability makes enemies giddy with possibility.
After the formal part of the dinner, Conley steered a few of the donors to the library for a small, closed conversation—the kind of theatre that collapses rumor by introducing witnesses. I stayed in the main room with Angel, watching the way the light pooled over her cheekbones. The intimacy of proximity—our hands on the same glass, our shoulders barely touching—felt like a public argument that we were a functioning household, not a sc
