The Second Best Man

Harbor’s Rest hadn’t changed, and that was the worst part. Cass Reyes stood at the edge of the Wentworth Club’s terrace, a glass of champagne going warm in her hand, and watched the same golden light fall across the same black water it had fallen across five years ago. The same string lights threaded through the same pergola. The same smell of salt and jasmine and old money that never quite washed out of a place like this, no matter how far you ran. She’d sworn she’d never come back. And here she was, in a dress she’d bought specifically because it made her feel like armor, drinking champagne she hadn’t paid for, at an engagement party for a wedding she couldn’t get out of. “You’re doing the thing,” said Wren, appearing at her elbow with the particular radiance of a woman who’d just gotten engaged to the love of her life. “The jaw thing. Where you look like you’re deciding whether to fight someone or leave.” “I contain multitudes.” “You contain one facial expression, and it’s feral raccoon cornered in a garage.” Wren looped an arm through hers, steering her back toward the party like Cass was a skittish horse that needed managing. “You made it. That’s the hard part. The rest is just cake tastings and my future mother-in-law asking pointed questions about your dating life.” “Can’t wait.” “You’ll survive. You survive everything. It’s genuinely annoying.” Wren squeezed her arm, softer now. “Thank you for coming back here. I know what this town costs you.” Cass didn’t answer that. There wasn’t a version of the answer that wouldn’t ruin Wren’s night, and Wren had waited two years for this one, had earned every string light and every over-poured glass of champagne, and Cass wasn’t about to be the thing that put a c***k in it. So she smiled instead, the easy, unbothered smile she’d spent five years perfecting, the one that said I’m fine, this is fine, nothing here can touch me, and let herself be steered. The Wentworth Club’s terrace was filling up the way these things always filled up: expensive fabric and expensive perfume and the low, satisfied hum of people who had never once in their lives worried about the cost of anything. Cass recognized maybe a third of the faces. She’d made herself forget the rest on purpose, the way you’d sand down a splinter you couldn’t get out any other way. She was, midway through composing her exit strategy, thirty more minutes, say goodbye to Wren, be back in her rental car before the toasts started when she saw him. He was on the other side of the terrace, half-turned toward someone else, a drink he wasn’t drinking held loose in one hand. Taller than she remembered, or maybe she’d just spent five years shrinking him down to something manageable in her head, something she could hold at a safe, contemptuous distance. He wasn’t doing that now. He was just standing there in the gold light with his jaw set, and his shoulders set and every line of him exactly, infuriatingly the same as the last time she’d seen him, the night everything had ended, the night she’d stood in a hallway of this same club and heard four words that had rearranged the rest of her life. She’s not good enough. Cass’s hand tightened around her glass. Nobody had told her Eli Marchetti would be here. Nobody had told her Eli Marchetti would be here, at his own brother’s engagement party, standing twenty feet away like the last five years hadn’t happened at all, and as she watched, he turned his head, and across the terrace, across all that gold light and jasmine and old money, he found her eyes. He didn’t look away. Neither did she. And somewhere behind her, oblivious, Wren was already saying his name.