Page 77 of My Best French Wedding

It would have been weird if she didn’t remember Hildy, considering they’d slept a few feet apart for a week. Not to mention the bit where Corinne stabbed Hildy through the heart. That had certainly left an impression on Hildy—and judging by the tension around Corinne’s eyes and mouth, her memories of that time weren’t terribly cheerful either. Maybe her conscience was bothering her, assuming she had one.

“You’re still in journalism?” Corinne flinched. “That was a stupid question. Obviously, you are.”

“There are no stupid questions.” Hildy did a credible impression of one of their teachers from that summer, who had labored under the mistaken belief that he was deep.

Surprise flickered across Corinne’s face. Had she assumed Hildy was humor-impaired, or was she expecting pistols at dawn?

“You thought I would have given up by now?” Hildy guessed, claiming the next sink over.

Corinne reached for a paper towel, averting her gaze. “I owe you an apology.”

That was unexpected enough to make Hildy overlook the nonanswer to her question. Her attempt to act casual by washing her own hands was foiled when it took four tries to get the motion-activated faucet to work.

Corinne took a deep breath. “I—was not at my best that summer.”

“Join the club.” The irony was that before it all fell apart, Hildy had convinced herself the summer before her senior year would be the high point of her existence. She was growing up! Doing great work! Meeting interesting people! One of whom she connected with so deeply, she foolishly assumed he’d be in her life forever!

He’dnever apologized, even though that betrayal was a lot worse. Corinne had been her randomly assigned roommate. Whereas Walter was (briefly) Hildy’s favorite person on the planet. A rejection hits differently when it falls on you from that height.

“Do you want to get a coffee?” Hildy was almost as surprised as Corinne to hear those words come out of her mouth.

“Do you?” Corinne replied, skepticism etched in the line of her brows.

Hildy shrugged; stranger things had happened. Maybe this one small piece of her past could still be salvaged.

Plot twist: Corinne was fun to talk to. Not in the bright, affirming style of Hildy’s sorority sisters, but with an understated wit that made you look forward to the next time she opened her mouth. Presumably, she’d always been the kind of person who made cleverobservations about the world, but that side of her personality had been hidden behind the barbed wire of her bad attitude.

Or the brambles of Hildy’s insecurity.

“Are you and Walter still in touch?” Corinne asked.

Hildy tried to scoff, but it came out as more of a choke. If only she had something other than a scalding cappuccino to clear her throat. At her suggestion, they’d left the convention center in search of a real coffee shop. For the fresh air, she’d told Corinne, though her main motivation was avoiding another run-in with Walter.

“In a word, no,” she finally managed to say. It was possibly the least smooth moment of her life.

“Strange,” Corinne said, without any particular inflection. “I figured you would have found your way back to each other by now.”

Hildy shook her head, since vocalizing wasn’t her friend.

“You were so into each other.” Corinne sounded like a doctor pronouncing a diagnosis. “Not quiteWuthering Heights–level, but borderline. It was like you were the only people in the room.”

“We weren’tthatweird.”

“Hence the ‘not quite.’” Corinne sipped her matcha latte. (Hildy would have pegged her as more of a triple espresso type, but she was turning out to be full of surprises.) “Maybe I was jealous.”

Hildy felt a stab of something unpleasant. Retroactive possessiveness, maybe. “You were into Walter?”

“Nah, I’m fully gay.”

“You were intome?” Had Hildy misread the situation that badly?

“Don’t flatter yourself.” The next words emerged with visible reluctance. “It would have been nice to have a friend like that.” She paused, mouth pruning. “Could also have been super annoying.”

“Trust me, you don’t want a quote-unquotefriendlike Walter Burns.”

Corinne studied her in silence. “What about you?”

Hildy shook her head, not caring if it messed up her curls. “I don’t want a friend like that either.” Not anymore.