Page 63 of My Best French Wedding

Had a connection, Walter silently corrected.Past tense. But he was too curious to interrupt.

“Might be a stepping stone to something better.” It sounded like Wineke was trying to convince himself. He fixed Walter with a penetrating look. “You follow any of the gossip sites? Celebrity news, who’s dating who, that kind of thing.”

It had to be a trick question. If Walter said yes, he’d look frivolous for wasting time that would have been better spent on hard news. But if he said no, would he disqualify himself from whatever job-adjacent possibility might be in the offing?

“I’m aware of them,” Walter replied, trying to thread the needle.

Another grunt. “Derek Gratz is looking for a stringer.”

It took Walter a second to connect the dots. Derek Gratz as inGratz on That, an online tabloid with enough clout that even mainstream news outlets paid attention to their feed.

“And you thought of me?” Walter wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended.

“It’s about the Johnson kid.”

Ah. He should have realized Hildy wouldn’t come looking for him. This was a case of her life crashing into his, again, like an asteroid. “How did you know? That I knew her.”

“Old friend at the Pachner Institute. He told me the two of you worked together a couple summers ago.”

Walter nodded. It was technically true.

“You want to talk to this Gratz guy?” Wineke asked, clearly ready for this conversation to be over.

“Okay.”

His editor slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Call him at this number.”

It had never occurred to Walter that the founder ofGratz on Thatmight look like someone’s dad. He’d expected a pitchfork or devil horns, but when they met via Zoom, Walter’s laptop displayed a grainy image of a pasty forty-something with wire-rimmed glasses. He could have gone undercover at any midsize IT department.

“Think of it as a chance to catch up with an old friend,” his potential employer said, several minutes into their call. To hear him tell it, spying on Hildy would be easy, totally legal, and fun—as if Walter was joining a new gym.

He hesitated. It wasn’t that the work sounded shady—though itdid. Or at least, it wasn’t only that. Yet even as he asked follow-up questions to show he cared about things like journalistic ethics, he was mostly thinking about Hildy. A sense of inevitability settled over him. Walter had never fully believed their story was over. All these years, part of him had been waiting for some kind of postscript.

In the face of her silence, he could only assume that summer had been a joke to her, a silly exercise she put up with because her family expected it. Like sailing lessons and horseback riding, or whatever else her type of people considered basic life skills. She certainly hadn’t cared about Walter, except as a means to an end.

Which should have made it easy to forget her.

Except it still hurt. He had questions only she could answer. How was it possible to like someone so much when she represented everything he was against? Big money, class privilege, nepotism—Hildy had the cheat codes to life. And what did it say about Walter that he’d swallowed her act hook, line, and sinker? Of course she wanted to write an uplifting story about a wedding. Struggle had no place in Hildy’s life. She probably thought the world worked that way for everyone.

He wondered if she was still majoring in journalism, or if that had been a passing fancy.

If he took this job, Walter supposed he would find out.Whenhe took this job.

The trick would be thinking of her as an assignment rather than a person he’d once known. It helped that she looked like a stranger these days, according to the pictures he’d seen online of Hildy cruising the party circuit. High school Hildy had been pretty enough to fluster him, but still in the realm of normal. Version 2.0 gleamed with money and polish. Everything about her had a faint sheen, from her curls to her clothes. He would never have dreamed of befriending this Hildy, any more than he’d approach a movie star on the street and ask them to hang out.

And now a celebrity was what she’d become—someone whose comings and goings were of interest to total strangers. He should have found it validating to see her living that high-society life: more proof he’d been right. She wasn’t serious about the work because she didn’t have to be. Hildy’s first allegiance would always be to people like her, with money and connections. So why did he feel so disappointed?

Exceptdisappointmentwasn’t quite right. He wasn’t sitting on a mountaintop, judging her behavior. This touched Walter too, an acid prickling in his stomach that tasted more like regret or embarrassment. Maybe he was still kicking himself for believing in a different Hildy. Or maybe he was ashamed of the part of him that still felt pathetically excluded from her world.

Because the assignment wasn’t just Hildy. Derek Gratz wanted someone to report on what he described as the “junior C-suite set,” the pampered and hard-partying young offspring of corporate titans. Find out where they are and who they’re with. Name names, because apparently there were people out there who desperately wanted to know how trust funders were spending their parents’ money. Walter would have called it ridiculous if he wasn’t just as curious—in this one instance.

For him, it would be like pressing his nose to the glass of a fancy department store, staring at all the luxury items he could never afford—although it wasn’tthingshe coveted so much as access. A foot in the door. He wanted to be someone you wouldn’t easily ignore because a more important person came along.

As opposed to a nobody.

If that meant playing the hanger-on, lurking in the shadows just beyond the spotlight, he could check his ego for a chance to work his way up the ladder. It wasn’t how he’d imagined starting his career, but it was a chance.Gratz on Thatdrew more traffic than all but the biggest metropolitan dailies, and Walter wouldn’t have to wait years to see his byline.

Plus he needed money for rent and groceries.