Page 31 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

Harper sets her glass down.

Both hands flat on the table after. Spine straight. Her voice, when it comes, is perfectly pleasant.

“You’re right,” she says. “Not everyone can afford to be selective.” She tilts her head at Evelyn. “Some of us had to earn the rooms we walk into rather than marry into them. Different skill set. But it tends to stick around longer.” One beat, light as air. “The goodwill, I mean.”

She turns to Monica with the same pleasant expression.

“And it’s so nice to finally put a face to the name. I’ve heard it come up a few times since I arrived.” She doesn’t say how. She doesn’t need to. “You have a beautiful dress.”

Monica stares at her.

Harper picks up her wine and takes a sip and looks at me.

I look back at her.

Evelyn holds Harper’s gaze for a long moment. Something moves through her expression that isn’t anger and isn’t respect and might be both.

She stands.

“Early morning,” she says. “Monica.”

Monica looks at Asher one last time. He doesn’t return it. She follows Evelyn to the door without another word and they’re gone.

The restaurant breathes.

I look at Harper.

“You have a beautiful dress,” I say.

The corner of her mouth pulls up. “Too much?”

“Perfect.”

I look at Asher. The careful steadiness he runs on has slipped, just slightly. He’s looking at Harper and it’s an expression I haven’t seen on him in a long time.

Harper looks back at him. “How are you feeling after that, Ash?”

The corners of my friend’s mouth tilt up at the sound of his nickname from the woman between us. “I’m sorry that they spoke to you like that.”

She waves her hand in the air. “Don’t worry about me, I’m asking about you.”

“I’m fine,” he says. And then, quieter, “I’m better than I’ve been in a while, actually.”

Harper studies him the way she studies everything, direct and unhurried, like she has all the time in the world and nowhere more important to be. The restaurant is nearly empty now. One bartender moving slow at the far end. The low warm light doing what low warm light does to a woman who already doesn’t need any help.

“She still has a hold on you,” Harper says. Not an accusation. Just a fact, offered gently.

Asher looks at the table. “Less than she did an hour ago.”

Harper tilts her head. “Why’s that?”

He looks up at her.

She looks back.

I am sitting approximately six inches to her left and I have excellent peripheral vision and I watch my best friend reach up and brush a piece of dark hair back from her face with the back of his fingers, slow and deliberate, the way a man touches something he’s been thinking about touching for longer than he’s admitted to himself.

Harper goes still.