Page 59 of Reckless
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.”
