“You must be starving. Do you always work so late?”
“Of course she does. She’s Chloe!”
“Is chardonnay okay, Chlo? I think you were drinking pinot before, but really, what’s the difference?”
Minutes pass, or maybe hours. Every time I wander into a new section of the house, someone else walks up with a congratulations and a fresh glass, a different combination of the same questions flowing faster than the bottles piling up in the corner.
“So, does this count as drinks soon?”
I turn around and see Shannon standing behind me, smiling wide. She laughs and pulls me in for a hug, planting a kiss on my cheek the way she always does, her lips sticking to my skin. I think back to the email she sent me this afternoon.
PS—Drinks soon? Need to get the details on the upcoming BIG DAY!
“You little liar,” I say, trying to keep myself from wiping the lipstick residue I feel lingering on my cheek.
“Guilty,” she says, smiling. “I had to make sure you didn’t suspect anything.”
“Well, mission accomplished. How’s the family?”
“They’re good,” Shannon says, twirling the ring on her finger. “Bill is in the kitchen getting a refill. And Riley…”
She scans the room, her eyes flickering past the sea of bodies bobbing together like waves. She seems to find who she’s looking for and smiles, shakes her head.
“Riley is in the corner, on her phone. Shocking.”
I turn around and see a teenaged girl slumped in a chair, tapping furiously at her iPhone. She’s wearing a short red sundress and white sneakers, her hair a mousey brown. She looks incredibly bored, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Well, she is fifteen,” Daniel says. I glance to my side and Daniel is standing there, smiling. He slides up to me and snakes his arm around my waist, kissing my forehead. I’ve always marveled at the way he glides into every conversation with such ease, dropping a perfectly placed line as if he’d been standing there all along.
“Tell me about it,” Shannon says. “She’s grounded at the moment, hence the reason why we dragged her along. She’s not too happy with us, forcing her to hang out with a bunch of old people.”
I smile, my eyes still glued to the girl, to the way she twirls her hair absentmindedly around her finger, the way she chews on the side of her lip as she analyzes whatever text just appeared on her phone.
“What’s she grounded for?”
“Sneaking out,” Shannon says, rolling her eyes. “We found her climbing out of her bedroom window at midnight. She did the whole rope-made-out-of-bedsheets thing, like you see in the freakin’ movies. Lucky she didn’t break her neck.”
I laugh again, clasping my hand to my open mouth.
“I swear, when Bill and I were dating and he told me he had a ten-year-old girl, I didn’t think much of it,” Shannon says, her voice low, staring at her stepdaughter. “Honestly, I thought I lucked out. A kid-on-demand, skipping right through the whole dirty-diaper-screaming-at-all-hours-of-the-night part. She was such a sweetheart. But it is amazing how the second they become teenagers, it all changes. They turn into monsters.”
“It won’t be like this for long,” Daniel says, smiling. “One day, they’ll just be distant memories.”
“God, I hope.” Shannon laughs, taking another swig of her wine. “He really is an angel, you know.”
She’s speaking to me now, but she motions to Daniel, tapping him on the chest.
“Planning this whole thing. You wouldn’t believe the time it took him to get everyone together in one place.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I don’t deserve him.”
“Good thing you didn’t quit a week earlier, huh?”
She nudges me and I smile, the memory of our first meeting as sharp as ever. It was one of those chance encounters that could have easily meant nothing. Bumping into an exposed shoulder on the bus, muttering a simple excuse me before parting ways. Borrowing a pen from the man at the bar when yours runs dry, or running a wallet left in the bottom of a shopping cart to the car outside before it drives away. Most of the time, these meetings lead to nothing more than a smile, a thank-you.
But sometimes, they lead to something. Or maybe even everything.
Daniel and I had met at Baton Rouge General Hospital; he was walking in, I was walking out. More like staggering out, really, the weight of the contents of my office threatening to tear through the bottom of a cardboard box. I would have walked right past him, the box obscuring my vision, my eyes downcast as I followed my own footsteps to the front door. I would have walked right past him had I not heard his voice.