Page 54

Everett stands next.

His fingers brush the back of my chair for one brief second before he steps away. "I’ll be back."

"Of course," I say.

Sienna smooths her gown and heads off with him, her hand brushing his sleeve as she steers him through the room.

Daniel nods at someone across the room and he gets up to say hello. Meanwhile the other couple at this table hasn’t shown up yet so I am now sitting alone.

A waiter appears beside me with a tray of champagne flutes. I take one and sit there with a smile that’s already starting to hurt.

For the next twenty minutes, I watch them work.

Sienna leans in to whisper something. Everett nods. She touches his arm twice—once to get his attention, once to emphasize a point—and each time her fingers linger a beat too long to be accidental.

They look right together. That’s the part that twists in my chest. Two people carved from the same stone. Same world. Same instinct for power and proximity.

He has an agenda tonight. I knew that walking in. I’m not here because he wants me here—I’m here because Everly’s forty-two-page PR protocol says I should be. Because engaged couples attend galas together. But Everett had always planned to use this event to network.

I stand up and drift toward the buffet table because at least food won’t make me feel invisible.

That’s when I hear it.

A woman at the far end of the table is speaking to one of the waiters, her voice strained and her hands gesturing in a way that says she’s been trying to make herself understood for longer than she’d like.

"S’il vous plaît —" and then she tries a few words in broken English.

The waiter stares at her blankly. "I’m sorry, ma’am, could you repeat that?"

She tries again, slower this time, her English fractured and uncertain. "White wine? I would like—If you have?"

The waiter frowns. "We have a Chardonnay and a—"

"Excusez-moi," I say, stepping forward. I smile at the woman. And then use the French my mother taught me. It's rusty, sure, but the moment I start in, I can see relief on her face immediately. Her entire body loosens.

She tells me in French that her husband tells her that her English is fine but that she knows it is not fine.

I laugh. "Your English is better than most people’s French, trust me."

I turn to the waiter. "She’d like the Sancerre, please. And I’ll have the same."

He nods and disappears. The woman—mid-forties, elegant in a jade dress with her dark hair swept into a twist—takes my arm like we’ve known each other for years.

"I am Margaux," she says. "And you have saved my evening."

"Aria."

"Aria." She says it the French way—the R soft, the vowels open. "Please, sit with me. My husband has disappeared into whatever it is these men do at these things, and I cannot survive another conversation in English where I smile and nod and understand nothing."

I glance across the room. Everett is deep in conversation with Sienna and a silver-haired man I don’t recognize. Sienna’s hand is on Everett's arm again.

"I’d love to," I say.

We find a table in the corner and fall into a conversation that only happens when two people meet by accident and realize they actually like each other.

Margaux is from Lyon. She moved to Paris for university, met her husband at a wine tasting in Bordeaux, and has spent the last twenty years following him to business dinners in cities she’d rather be exploring alone. She’s warm and funny and self-deprecating in a way that reminds me of Cammy—except Margaux does it in two languages simultaneously.

We talk about Seattle. About the rain. About how French bakeries are superior to American ones and she will fight anyone who disagrees. About her two daughters, both in university. About my father, briefly—just enough that she squeezes my hand and says, "You are a good daughter."