I sat. They sat.
Mrs. Boughton pushed the gift to the side as if hoping someone would take it away. She raised a haughty finger at me. “Why did you cut off all of your hair?” she demanded. “And those bangs! Why, I can hardly see your face.”
It seemed that nobody was going to step forward into explaining anything about my surgery. This was when Holden’s natural quietness kind of got on my nerves. Anyway, I wasn’t about to give old Mrs. Boughton the whole spiel. “Yep, I changed my style. I like it, so I guess that’s what counts.” I tucked a few strands behind my ear—and then snapped my napkin into my lap.
It was going to be a long night.
Holden’s dad rolled his eyes amicably at me. Deep into his cocktails. It was clear he’d decided to let this night, like so many others, just float past him in a dream.
“Good to see you again, Ember,” said Raina, and then she and Drew resumed talking about whatever lovey-dovey thing they’d been discussing so privately that their foreheads nearly touched.
Under the table next to me, Holden gave my knee an appreciative squeeze. His eyes were already red from the fresh-cut roses on the table, which of course nobody had any intention of displacing. It was always kind of astounding how alone Holden was in his own family. As much as the Wildes could annoy me, and as cautious and unassuming a wingman as Holden was, he really did need me.
Within minutes, I was glad I’d shown up for the food, too, which started to interest me right from the lobster panna cotta. Followed by goat-cheese ravioli, and then pecan-crusted bass on a bed of sweet-potato puree. The panna cotta was a teeny bit jellyfishy, the ravioli was on the bland side but I finished it, and the fish had been sitting under the hot lamps a few minutes too long. But the sweet potato was fluffy as a cloud, and made with cinnamon—yum.
This was my first fancy dinner in forever, and I tasted everything excitedly, with interest and respect, like a chef. Like the chef I once told Lissa I’d planned to become. And I knew my newly-woken-up curiosity was really because of El Cielo. I’d put in another shift yesterday, and it had ended with my sampling more of Isabella’s best dishes. It wasn’t Parisian cooking, nothing as fancy as that, but it had its own complications, its unique difficulties to master. And in its own way, it was every bit as exotic.
“You have a real appetite,” Isabella had told me. “And I see how you want to try new things, too. You remind me of my nephew.”
It was her first reference to Kai. Her words had turned my blood to ice, and I hadn’t mustered an answer, but afterward when I was putting on my jacket to go, she’d looked up and said simply, “Come back,” and I knew she meant it. In spite of Kai, I could come back.
And of course I would. She knew I would.
The unfortunate penalty of tonight’s dinner, wonderful as it was to taste, was that I had to listen to the Wildes. Had they always been this boastful? Between Mrs. Wilde’s fairly creepy self-praise of her decorating decisions, Drew’s reference to his promotion, and Mr. Wilde’s telling anyone at random that nobody could beat his backhand, there was enough hot air at the table to power up a balloon.
But never any bragging from Holden. He asked the questions the others wanted him to ask, and he didn’t look too bothered when Drew undermined everything, from how he looked (“Dude, how are you surviving that haircut?”) to his college (“NYU sucks, it’s a rip-off; plus it’s overcrowded with wannabe hipsters”).
A couple of times, I bumped Holden’s knee under the table in solidarity, while above the table, I pretended to think Drew was not being a massive blowhard jerk but merely a young man of persuasive opinions.
Afterward, the town cars were waiting for us.
“Come over, hang out for a while?” Holden’s arm on my shoulder was strong. “No pressure…just, y’know.” He cleared his throat. “As friends.”
“Sure, why not?” Doors were being opened and the others were climbing in—Mrs. Boughton had her own car-plus-driver to whisk her back to her apartment in the city. And I had nothing else to do. I’d called Kai’s number a couple of times today and listened to the preprogrammed machine message. We hadn’t made plans for a next time. Of course.
“That was too much, right?” Holden murmured in my ear, so low that Raina, on his other side, couldn’t hear. “I lean on you too hard.”
“I’m used to your family; they don’t scare me,” I whispered back. “And more importantly, you know I’m here for you.” It felt great to say. Maybe because it had been such a long time since I’d been the one to offer strength—to be, finally, the someone who got leaned on.
Time tonight with Holden was restoring the balance, too, after what had happened last Thursday. What I hadn’t counted on was a late-night dose of Drew. Who, at the last minute, decided he didn’t want to head into Park Slope with Raina—since she had to wake up early for a 7 a.m. business breakfast.
“We’ll watch the fight on pay-per-view,” he said, pummeling Holden in the ribs.
“Not sure that’s what Ember signed on for,” said Holden in half protest.
Drew’s answering silence made me feel as though I were the evening’s interloper. And once Mr. and Mrs. Wilde had padded off to bed with their whiskey nightcaps, leaving me alone with Holden and Drew, I began to wish that I hadn’t come along after all. There was something needling Drew, and it had to do with me. He was showing me all the same behavior that he’d put me through at the engagement party. He was pent-up annoyed by my presence—I could tell by the way he avoided looking at me, his eyes shifting off hard when I made a single comment, and by the way he charged past me in the den to grab the remote control, then fixed way too much attention on the boxing. It was all so unnerving, well past the point of unkindness.
When Holden went upstairs to get waters, I braced for it. Here was Drew’s opportunity to pounce.
I was right. With his eyes beady and determined on the television screen, he cut right to it. “So does this mean we’ll be seeing more of you, Ember? Family dinners are usually pretty inner-circle.” By the flicker of the television light, it struck me that Drew did share some resemblance to Holden, only fattened up and with a melty chin. I’d never thought so before.
“Last I checked, it wasn’t a crime to hang out with your ex,” I answered lightly, resisting my urge to leave the room altogether. But part of me wanted to hear what Drew had to say.