Distance between us

Vivian

It was Vivian, unexpectedly, who found her afterward, in the coat check line, both of them waiting for the same overworked attendant, the line moving with the particular slowness of a hundred wealthy people all wanting their coats retrieved at once.

"You're the one from the model shop," Vivian said, without preamble, in a voice that wasn't unkind but wasn't especially warm either the voice of someone taking inventory, cataloguing a fact she'd apparently been holding onto for a while. "Elena, right? Julian mentioned you. Once. In passing. Which, for the record, is exactly how I knew it wasn't actually in passing at all."

Elena's stomach dropped. "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't do that." Vivian's smile was thin but not unfriendly, more tired than anything, the smile of someone too experienced with a particular kind of situation to bother pretending otherwise. "I've spent eleven years being talked about like I'm not in the room by people who assume I don't notice things. I notice things. I noticed the way he watched you across that ballroom for most of the night when he thought no one was paying attention to where he was looking. I noticed it three separate times, actually, which is three more times than he's looked at me that way in as many years."

"Vivian, I promise you, there's nothing"

"I'm not accusing you of anything." She accepted her coat from the attendant, shrugging into it with the efficiency of someone used to leaving parties on schedule, tipping the attendant with a bill Elena couldn't see the denomination of but suspected was generous. "I'm telling you, as one working woman to another because despite what you might assume about me, I do actually work, I run half my father's portfolio and get credited for none of it that I don't actually want to marry Julian Ashford, and he doesn't actually want to marry me, and the only two people in this entire building who seem confused about that fact are our fathers. So whatever guilt you're currently drowning in and you are, I can see it in you, it's written across your whole posture you might consider directing it somewhere more useful."

Elena stared at her, unsure what to do with an honesty this direct from someone she'd assumed, an hour ago, was her rival, someone she'd been quietly, guiltily resenting for weeks without ever having spoken to her. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I like Julian. Not like that like a brother, God help me, we've spent too many awkward Thanksgivings together for it to ever be anything else and I'd rather he end up happy with someone who actually looks at him the way you were looking at him tonight than trapped for forty years in a marriage that exists to close a real estate deal, watching us both slowly turn into our parents at every dinner party for the rest of our lives." Vivian pulled on her gloves, finished, already halfway to the door, the line behind her having moved forward without her noticing. "Whatever's stopping you, Elena and something clearly is, you've got the face of a woman carrying something heavy, I recognize it because I see it in the mirror most mornings. I'd think hard about whether it's actually a good reason, or just a convenient one that lets you avoid finding out."

She left before Elena could respond, disappearing into the crowd near the entrance with the particular efficiency of someone who had somewhere better to be, and Elena stood alone in the coat check line for a long moment afterward, coat still in her arms, unclaimed, the folder's contents sitting in her phone like a stone in her pocket, wondering which one it was a good reason, or just a convenient one and suspecting, with a discomfort she couldn't quite shake, that she already knew the answer and simply hadn't wanted to say it out loud.