by Lisa Henry
He shook his head at the waiter who offered him fresh champagne.
Elliott spoke to a few more people after that, and kept a careful eye on the level of champagne in his glass. He didn’t want to get drunk. Odette snagged him for photographs at one point, for both the gallery’s website and for some critics doing pieces on the exhibition. Elliott found himself in conversation with one of the critics after their photo op, and he told her a little about his dad’s determination to finish enough works to put on a final show.
“I met Henry a few times,” the woman said. “He loved openings. I deal with a lot of egos in this business. Henry was never one of those.”
“Thank you,” Elliott said, the familiar ache expanding in his chest. “He loved art, and he always wanted everyone to love it as much as he did.”
The woman gave him a sympathetic smile and brushed her hand along his forearm. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but then closed it again.
Maybe she had nothing to say. What was the appropriate thing to say to the person whose grief was laid out in the gallery around her? Pieces of it discreetly offered for sale. And downstairs, tote bags and magnets.
The woman squeezed his arm and then moved on.
Elliott, feeling suddenly unanchored, went and found Marianne again.
***
Hours later, the caterers were leaving, and Odette was striding back and forth across the gallery floor in bare feet. Her stilettos lay abandoned in the middle of the room. She jabbed at something on her tablet as she walked. Lucien was standing nearby, nodding along as she rattled names and numbers at him. Elliott didn’t recognize the names, and he didn’t know if the numbers were great or not.
“That’s seven pieces sold already,” Odette said. “Not too poor for an opening. And the exhibit’s open for another month. I can shift the rest by then.”
Elliott stooped to pick up a discarded napkin, unsure what response was required.
Odette watched him knowingly. “It’s good, Elliott. We did good.”
Elliott balled the napkin up, relief settling over him.
Odette tucked her tablet under her arm. “Now, I know that you’re probably anxious to drag Marianne back to that godforsaken town in California, but Lucien here has managed the impossible and secured us reservations at Five for tomorrow night.”
“At where?”
“It’s a restaurant. At the moment, it’s the restaurant.” She raised her eyebrows, leaving the question unasked.
Elliott sighed.
Marianne bounced over to him, her eyes wide. “Oh, Elliott! Let’s do it! Come on! I want to wear this gorgeous dress one more time!”
Marianne knew damn well that Elliott couldn’t resist her sad puppy-dog eyes. “Fine. I guess I can squeeze my balls into these pants for one more night.”
“That’s the spirit!” Odette said.
Lucien doubled over with laughter.
***
After the gallery was locked up for the night, Marianne headed to Odette’s apartment to watch Love Actually with her—a weird tradition of theirs that Elliott wanted nothing to do with—and Lucien turned up at the studio apartment with an unopened bottle of champagne. They sat around cross-legged on the bed and poured the champagne into plastic tumblers. Elliott drank a little too much a little too fast. A pleasant buzzing had filled his skull by the time he’d finished his second cup.
“What’s the deal with you and Ned Ferrars?” he asked suddenly. “Like, um, why does it have to be a secret?”
A part of him didn’t know why he even asked the question. Another part of him was afraid it was because he wanted to believe it was a sham, that whatever Ned and Lucien had, it wasn’t real. As though somehow that would make what had happened between Elliott and Ned at Norland Park something true. He hated that he still wanted that.
Lucien sighed. “His family is the worst, you know?”
“I know.” Elliott suppressed a shudder as he thought of Francesca. “Ugh.”
“Well,” Lucien said, “when I finished my shitty degree in business administration, I landed in the city with nothing but a debt the size of a small planet, and I managed to score a summer internship with the Ferrars Corporation. And let me tell you, the only thing I learned there was how much I hated the construction industry.” He grimaced. “Just, no.”
Elliott took another sip of champagne.
“But I met Ned.” A fond smile tugged at the corners of Lucien’s mouth, and Elliott felt a pang of hateful jealousy in his gut. “We started having these lunch dates. Except I didn’t really know they were lunch dates. Just, he would always be at the deli at the same time as me, and we ended up eating on the same bench in the park? I mean, I don’t think he knew they were lunch dates either?” His smile broadened. “He’s socially awkward, and super shy.”
Was he? A jolt of guilt rushed through him. If Ned was shy, then had Elliott pushed him in some way? He didn’t remember it like that. He remembered a sort of strange, almost magnetic attraction that neither of them had resisted. What if it hadn’t been like that at all though? What if Elliott had been the one who’d initiated things?
“So that went on for a few weeks, and then my nonna dropped dead.”
“Oh!”
“It was years ago.” Lucien waved his hand, slopping a little champagne onto the comforter. “Whoops. Anyway, I was a mess. Like, lost-metro-card levels of mess.”
Elliott smiled at that and held the bottle out to top up Lucien’s champagne.
“And Ned was really sweet, and really kind.” Lucien exhaled slowly. “He was . . . Wow. I don’t even know how to say it. He was everything I needed.”
Elliott’s chest tightened. Yeah. Yeah, he knew that feeling.
“So we started dating for real. Then, three years ago, he proposed to me on New Year’s Eve. Only his mother is still living in denial and wants him to bring home a nice girl, so it’s kind of . . .” He waved his hand again, and then snorted. “We don’t see each other much because he’s away so often. It’s like, we’re together, even if we’re not together. It’s complicated. It’s weird, I guess, but also, it works. It’s nice, you know? Comfortable.” His forehead creased in a frown. “I mean, I think it works?”
He made it sound like a question, and Elliott fought down the sudden rush of stupid hope. Because if Lucien wasn’t sure, then maybe . . .
Stupid.
Even if Lucien and Ned weren’t perfect, even if there was space between them . . . well, Elliott had no right to imagine himself in that space. No right at all.
“Opposites attract, yeah?” Lucien’s smile was tentative. “Like, even when he’s in the city he doesn’t like to go out and do things, but that’s okay, right? We don’t have to like the same stuff.” He picked at his thumbnail. “He’s sweet.”
Elliott had never heard the word sound so . . . lacking. He looked away briefly.
Lucien sighed. “You know, I always said I wouldn’t date anyone who was still in the closet, because I’m not here for that shit, but Ned’s not in the closet. His family just keeps trying to push him back in there. Ned wants to give them time. I think that maybe if they met me? I mean, I think I’m likeable?”
”You are,” Elliott said, his throat dry. “You’re likeable.”
“Stop trying to make me fall in love with you,” Lucien chided. He drew a deep breath. “So anyway, that’s my messy love life. What’s yours like?”
“Nonexistent,” Elliott said firmly.
“Aw, how can that be true?” Lucien patted him on the cheek. “You’re adorable.”
I’m a terrible person, Elliott wanted to tell him. I didn’t know, but I did a terrible thing.
“I guess I’m socially awkward and super shy too,” he said instead, and Lucien laughed.
“You and Ned would get on great!” he exclaimed, delighted, and Elliott hated himself just that little bit more.
***
Elliott stumbled out of bed and weaved his way toward the bathroom. It
was still dark. The middle of the night, probably. Marianne was snoring on the bed, and Lucien was sleeping on the couch, and somehow there were more empty bottles on the counter than they’d started with.
Elliott pissed, sighing with relief as he relieved the pressure on his bladder, and then washed his hands and headed back to bed.
Something was buzzing.
Elliott blinked around for a while, his still-drunk brain taking a moment to put the pieces together. Then he saw the cell phone sitting on the floor. He stooped to pick it up—it took two tries—and then squinted at the screen.
Ned.
His heart leapt, and his stomach fluttered with anticipation.
And then he realized.
This wasn’t his phone. It was Lucien’s. Ned was calling Lucien.
Elliott set the phone down on the small table beside the bed, and climbed back under the comforter with Marianne. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut and waited for sleep.
Five was exactly how Elliott had imagined. It was full of so much glass—mirrors and chandeliers and entire wall panels—that it felt more like a sideshow maze than an actual restaurant. There were candles on the tables. Everything shone and glittered ad infinitum. Or ad nauseam. Elliott wasn’t sure yet.
They wended their way through the tables, following their server and passing immaculately dressed diners who were picking at small meals arranged on large, square plates. Light bounced off wineglasses and silver cutlery and jewelry. The soft strains of a string quartet floated out above the low murmur of conversation broken only by the occasional braying laugh.
Heads turned here and there as they walked to their table, and Elliott didn’t flatter himself that they were for anyone but Marianne. She looked resplendent in her green halter-neck dress. She looked older than eighteen. A woman, not a teenager. She was, Elliott supposed, but he was unused to seeing her as these people must: a vision. Marianne was too loud, too outspoken, too invested in the world and the people in it to be something as shallow, as fleeting, as a vision.
Lucien pulled out her chair for her, and Marianne swept her hands under her ass as she sat.
Elliott pulled out Odette’s chair, and then sat beside her.
Their server introduced himself, handed out menus, and ran through the chef’s recommendations of the day. Elliott felt a sudden rush of homesickness for Russo’s, where the floor was a little scuffed and the décor was tired, but a man could live on a serving of carbonara for half a day.
“I’ll give you a few moments to decide,” the server said, and melted away again.
“You know, back when your father was just starting out and came into the city, I used to take him to dinner,” Odette said. She curled her crimson mouth in a smile. “People who didn’t know him used to assume he was my boy toy. Didn’t he love that?”
Elliott smiled at the thought. His dad would have loved that. He would have had fun with it, played it up, and then rushed home to tell Abby all about it.
“You look a lot like him,” Odette said. She patted his arm. “Of course, one thing Henry was good at was producing beautiful kids.”
Marianne smiled, delighted.
“Thank you,” Elliott said, reaching for the glass of sparkling water. “For . . . for everything you’ve done for us. Not just these past few weeks, but always.”
Odette raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I’m not done with you lot yet. I’ve already told you. In a few years I’ll be back to see what Greta’s doing. That girl is going to be something amazing, whatever she turns her hand to.”
“At this point we just hope it’s something legal,” Marianne said.
Their server returned to take their orders.
Elliott glanced around at the other patrons from time to time. He had been privileged to grow up in Norland Park, in all senses of the word. But they’d never been like their neighbors. They’d never been like the Family. There was a difference between privileged and elitist, wasn’t there? Elliott hoped there was.
Was it even fair to judge the other patrons like that? Maybe there were more Odettes in the crowd than Aunt Cynthias. Maybe making assumptions about them just for being wealthy was narrow-minded and unreasonable. Then again, maybe they were rich New York assholes and deserved as much judgment as Elliott could sling at them.
And this was why Elliott needed to get back to Barton Lake, get back to work, and get back to concentrating on his own life instead of anyone else’s.
He sipped his water and listened to Lucien talk about some new up-and-coming artist that Odette had discovered.
The art world was a strange intersecting point where wealth met poverty. Elliott knew from handling Henry’s business affairs for the past few years that even Henry—gifted but not a prodigy, known but not famous—barely made a living wage. If not for the grudging charity from the Family in the form of his monthly stipend and the house, their circumstances would have been very different. Sometimes Elliott had watched his dad paint, and he’d thought of all those other people out there, the people who had to kill their passion slowly and work their everyday jobs, because they didn’t have Henry Dashwood’s privilege. How odd that art was valued by the rich, but artists weren’t.
Yeah. Elliott needed to go home.
And Barton Lake could be home, if he worked at it.
Their meals arrived, and they ate. The food was fine. Elliott felt a little like he did when he walked around Odette’s gallery: out of his depth when it came to understanding the difference between the work of an artist and an artisan. He would have been as happy eating at the deli.
He was quiet, content to listen to the conversation float around him. He remembered Abby fretting about his shyness when he was a kid, but it had never really been shyness.
“He’s fine,” his dad had said, winking at Elliott. “Aren’t you, kiddo?”
“Yes!”
Henry had ruffled his hair gently. “You’re a watcher, Elliott. A thinker. A Thoreau in the woods, living deliberately.”
“Yes,” Elliott had agreed, although he’d been seven or eight and had no idea what his dad was talking about. He’d liked the phrase though. Living deliberately. He’d liked the idea that there was a purpose to the way he was, not a deficiency like his mom worried.
Elliott wanted to go back to Barton Lake and live deliberately. Practically. Purposefully.
He stabbed a spear of asparagus and smiled as Lucien made some joke. He was already halfway home to Barton Lake in his mind. Already letting New York go. Already thinking of that squeaky sofa bed and all his belongings stacked onto the bookshelf. The tiny little bathroom, the table that didn’t sit all of them at once. The store downstairs. The smell of incense. The battalions of tiny crystal figures. The yoga DVDs. Barton Lake wasn’t quite home yet, but Elliott felt it tugging gently at the core of him, urging him back.
The sudden clatter of cutlery pulled him out of his reverie.
“Mar?” He looked sharply at her.
Marianne ignored her dropped fork. She rose from her seat, eyes wide and mouth open. And then a sudden, brilliant smile lit up her face. “Jack!” A breathless laugh. “Jack!”
Elliott turned.
A server was navigating a couple through the tables. A pretty blonde woman in a red dress, and Jack. Jack Willoughby. He had an arm behind the woman, a hand on her hip, guiding her.
Elliott interpreted that, he thought later, long before Marianne did.
“Jack!” Marianne called, stepping away from the table to meet him.
No, Elliott thought. No, Mar.
He’d always been the pessimist, hadn’t he? Or the realist. Or maybe he’d always known that Marianne would one day fly too close to the sun, and that her wings would melt and she would fall. And she was. In this moment she was already falling, the earth rushing up too fast to meet her, except she didn’t even realize yet.
Elliott pushed his chair back and stood.
“Jack!” Marianne stood in front of him, in front of the woman he was with, and he
r smile didn’t even waver. Not then. Not yet. “Jack, I thought you weren’t in the city!”
Because she was so honest, because she was so open—because she was Marianne . . . Elliott’s heart clenched and he took a step before her. Because it would never occur to her to lie, Marianne didn’t see one when it was standing right in front of her, but Elliott saw it.
“I thought you were in Chicago!”
He saw it in the way the guilt flashed across Jack’s face. He saw it in the way his hand hovered above the blonde woman’s hip before settling there again decisively. He saw it in the way Jack squared his shoulders and looked Marianne up and down as though she were nothing more than a stranger to him.
“Marianne,” he said at last. There was no warmth in his expression. “What are you doing here?”
“Jack, what . . .” Marianne trailed off, her smile finally faltering as she glanced at the woman, and then back to Jack. “Who is this?”
“Charlotte,” Jack said, his expression cold. “My fiancée.”
“Your . . .” Marianne shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Jack’s mouth tightened into a thin line for a moment before he spoke again. “Lose my number,” he said, and ushered the woman past her.
Marianne turned to follow him.
Elliott caught her by the wrist. “Mar, no. Let’s go. Let’s just go.”
Marianne stared at him, her gaze searching his as though she were seeking understanding. As though she were begging him not to ruin her whole world. Elliott had only seen that expression on her face once before. It was when their dad had explained that his treatment was no longer working. That he was dying.
“Elliott,” Marianne had whispered then, and whispered now. “Elliott?”
“Let’s go,” he urged her in a low voice. “Let’s go outside.”
He led her through the tables, burning with hatred for Jack Willoughby and for every fucking person who stared at her humiliation. Tears slid down Marianne’s face as he drew her toward the exit.
