There he was, in a corner, wiry, tall, and tan, with a tattoo snaking up one arm, wearing a freaking baseball cap and T-shirt to his own opening. God, a woman could never get away with that, but if anything, it increased his appeal, judging by the gaggle of model-types jockeying for his attention. Raf was cute enough, but he wasn’t the kind of guy you’d stop to look at twice on the street. Now, though, he had status, so he could go home with any woman he chose. We all wanted to feel that we were special, and if a special guy wanted to sleep with us, that seemed close enough. I rolled my eyes at the machinations of the women around him (although I’d been that way too in my early to mid twenties, hadn’t I, jumping into bed with a visiting professor at my nonfiction graduate writing program and thinking that it made me unique). Then I walked toward him.
“Jillian!” he said, his eyes crinkling with relief to see a familiar face. He stepped away from the others and wrapped me in a bear hug. He was a little sweaty, uneasy at being the center of attention. “Oh, thank God, someone I know how to talk to.”
“Hey, Raffie,” I said into his chest, then held him at arm’s length. “Look at you, you’re such a big deal!” I leaned in and narrowed my eyes, all conspiratorial. “Tell me the truth, how much of a fuck boy are you being right now?”
His grin turned sheepish, and he tugged on his cap. “Not . . . you know . . . Maybe a little bit of one.”
I laughed, or tried to anyway, and he looked at me. “Hey, you okay?”
Well, I wanted to say. You know how I had to put my career on hold to take care of my mom while she slowly died of cancer? And how I just came back to work full-time, ready to write the zeitgeist-capturing journalism I’d spent the last couple years dreaming about? Today, the billionaire who owned my news website shut us down because he’d rather use his money to buy a second yacht. So I’m not okay at all, actually.
Instead, I waved my hand through the air and took another long sip of my drink. “I’m golden,” I said. The last time I’d seen Raf was at the funeral a couple months ago, when his family had sat with me in the pew. I’d sent my asshole father a few e-mails over the course of my mother’s illness to let him know what was happening to the woman he had once loved and left. But I hadn’t expected him to come back for her service, and he’d proven me right. Instead, the Morales family had stepped in as honorary relatives, providing casseroles and company. And during the years my mom was sick, Raf had regularly taken the subway all the way out to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to rake her leaves and shovel her snow, even after I moved home and could have done it myself. No way in hell did he deserve to spend his restaurant opening listening to my problems.
“Besides, I’m not the important one right now,” I said. “Don’t try to distract me from your amazing food.”
“Really,” he said, putting his hand on my arm, looking at me with such genuine concern it made a lump rise in my throat. “I know I’ve been MIA with the prep for the opening, but if you ever need anything, I’m here—” And for a moment the rest of the party fell away. It was just me and Raf on the couch in his living room, and I wanted to recite my misery to him like one of my old poems.
“So you’re Rafael Morales,” a voice said, close behind me, pitched at a husky, thrilling tone. Raf and I both turned at the same time to see her: Margot Wilding.
She was all Edie Sedgwick eyes gazing out from under dark brown bangs, her hair falling—shaggy and curly—halfway down her back, her skin glowing and smooth and like she’d just spent the summer out in the sun. If she’d been born fifty years earlier, she might have been a muse with a tragic end, a beauty who flamed out too fast, immolated by the power of her unused ambition. But now she was a maverick in a floral-print jumpsuit. Behind her, she left a break in the crowd, as if the unique force of her energy had parted the waves of partygoers. God, how were such perfectly made people allowed out in the world? Didn’t they know that the rest of us had to be out here with them? It was rude.
I felt an urge to shut myself in a cabinet. It wasn’t that I hated my body. I just didn’t love it. I never quite knew how to move it gracefully, how to sit comfortably. Growing up, I’d longed to be one of those compact girls who got to make an adorable fuss about how they could never reach things on high shelves. But I’d just kept growing, not quite tall enough to be a model (also not pretty, thin, or interested enough), until I gave off the vibe of a grasshopper trying to masquerade as a human. My mother had once told me that when I stood still for a moment, I could be striking. But she was my mother, so she had to say that. All in all, my body and I were like coworkers. I appreciated when it performed well, I got annoyed about all
