One Night in Vegas

Back to Reality

Chapter 5: Back to Reality

The subway rattled beneath her feet, fluorescent lights harsh after three days of neon. Ava stared at her reflection in the dark window across the aisle — hair pulled back, no makeup, same jeans and sweater she'd left in. She looked exactly like herself. She didn't feel exactly like herself.

She kept thinking about his hands. Not in a way she could explain to anyone, just the specific weight of them, the steadiness. The way he'd held her like he was paying attention.

Her apartment was exactly as she'd left it. That was the strange part — she'd expected it to look different somehow, expected the walls to have rearranged themselves to reflect what had happened. But the dishes were still in the drying rack, the Hopper postcard still above her desk, the sketchbooks still in the closet she never opened. Everything exactly where she'd left it, waiting patiently for her to come back and be who she'd always been.

She dropped her bag on the floor and sat on the couch for a long time without turning the lights on.

The red dress she hung in the back of the closet, behind her winter coats, where she wouldn't have to look at it. That felt necessary. She wasn't sure she could explain why.

Monday she wore a teal blouse to work instead of her usual beige. Small thing. Nobody noticed except Sarah, who paused at her desk mid-morning and said "you seem different" in a tone that suggested she wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

"Vegas," Ava said, not looking up. "I just needed a break."

"Well," Sarah said, moving on, "whatever you did, keep doing it."

Ava looked back at her screen and tried to remember what she'd been working on before Vegas. It took her longer than it should have.

Mia texted during lunch.

so are you going to tell me what actually happened or do i have to come over there

Ava smiled despite herself. I met someone. One night, no names. It was really good.

AVA. Details. Now.

There are no details. That was the point. I couldn't find him even if I wanted to.

A pause. Then: do you want to?

Ava stared at the question for a long moment, watching the cursor blink. Then she locked her phone and went back to work.

The weeks that followed had a strange texture to them. She did her job, fixed the printers, helped with the filings, stayed late when no one asked her to. On the surface nothing had changed. But something had loosened in her chest that she couldn't quite tighten back up — some door that Vegas had opened and that she didn't know how to close. She caught herself sketching during her lunch break for the first time in years, just small things, shapes and shadows on the back of a legal pad, nothing serious. She threw them away before anyone could see.

But she kept doing it.

Lucas stepped off the elevator into his penthouse, dropped his bag by the door, and stood in the silence for a moment. Manhattan spread out below the windows, gray and sharp and relentless, nothing like Vegas, nothing like her.

He'd been thinking about one thing specifically: the way she'd laughed when he stepped on her foot dancing and hadn't made him feel stupid for it. Such a small thing. He kept turning it over.

He poured a drink, picked up his phone, put it down again. Thirty-seven unread emails. A text from his assistant about a rescheduled board meeting. One from Julian asking how he was doing, which meant Julian already knew the answer and was giving him a chance to admit it first.

He didn't reply to any of them. Just stood at the window and watched the city do what it always did, indifferent and enormous and completely uninterested in what he was carrying.

Elias arrived at his office Wednesday afternoon unannounced, which was his way of reminding Lucas that nothing in Lucas's life was entirely his own. He sat in the chair across the desk without being invited, crossed one leg over the other, and looked at Lucas the way he always looked at him — like a problem that hadn't been solved yet.

"Six months," Elias said. No preamble.

Lucas looked up from his laptop. "Good afternoon."

"I'm not here for pleasantries. The board is losing patience and frankly so am I. You need a wife, Lucas. Someone appropriate, someone who understands what this family requires. Six months, and if you haven't made meaningful progress I'll begin making introductions myself."

Lucas kept his voice even. "I'll handle my own life."

"You'll handle it within six months," Elias said, standing, "or I'll handle it for you." He picked up his coat from the back of the chair. "This isn't about what you want. It never has been."

The door closed. Lucas sat very still for a moment, then turned back to his window.

The headache came an hour later, sudden and sharp behind his left eye. He pressed two fingers to his temple, breathed, and felt his right hand begin to tremble against the desk. Worse than the boardroom. Worse than Vegas. The room tilted, colors bleeding at the edges of his vision, and he reached for his phone with his left hand because his right wasn't reliable and texted Julian two words.

Office. Now.

Julian arrived in fifteen minutes, found Lucas on the couch with his head back and his eyes closed. He checked the pulse, ran the penlight, asked him to track his finger left to right.

"How long?"

"Forty minutes. Maybe more."

Julian sat back, and the silence he left before speaking was the kind that meant he was choosing his words carefully.

"It's accelerating," he said. "I want to run new scans but I think we both know what they're going to show."

"Then why run them?"

"Because I need the data and you need to stop pretending this isn't happening." Julian leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Lucas. You're spending whatever time you have left trying to outrun something you can't outrun. I've watched you do it for two years."

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"Something that matters to you," Julian said. "Not to Elias, not to the board. To you." He paused. "Who was she?"

Lucas opened his eyes. "What?"

"Vegas. You came back different." Julian's expression was neutral, clinical, which meant he already had a theory. "Who was she?"

Lucas looked at the ceiling. "I don't know her name."

Julian was quiet for a moment. "But you're still thinking about her."

Lucas didn't answer, which was answer enough.

Six weeks later Ava locked the bathroom door at work and stood with her back against it for a moment, eyes closed, before she could make herself look at the test on the sink.

She'd been nauseous for a week. Tired in a way that sleep didn't fix. Two weeks late, which she'd told herself was stress, was the disruption of travel, was anything other than what she was now looking at.

Two pink lines.

She sat down on the floor, back against the cabinet under the sink, and held the test in both hands and looked at it for a long time. The ventilation fan hummed above her. Somewhere down the hall a phone was ringing.

The father was a stranger. She didn't have his name, didn't have his number, had no way to find him even if she wanted to. She had a flight confirmation number and a memory of the way he'd held her like he was paying attention, and that was all.

She pressed her palm flat against the cold tile floor and breathed.