Do I Know You?(22)

Everyone roars with laughter. Except me.

“Sounds made up,” I say.

She raises an eyebrow. “Does it? I guess it would to you,” she replies lightly. “You’re probably too busy pulling long nights in the office to have wild dating stories of your own.”

I keep my cool, taking a sip of my drink. “It’s hardly prohibitive,” I say.

“Oh?” Now both Eliza’s eyebrows rise. I know what she’s going to say before she says it. “Well, tell us.”

While I shrug noncommittally, my brain fires into creativity. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to engineer a fast rebuttal or counter an unexpected request. I do the same in courtrooms or settlement negotiations, don’t I? It’s harder here, facing the high stakes of my marriage, but surely I can find some of the same finesse now. “When you leave the office at four in the morning but you’re too wired from closing a deal to sleep, and you go on Tinder to start swiping, you can meet some pretty interesting people.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, Eliza’s eyes sparkle, like stars made of fog. It is, for a distracting moment, stunning.

“Who’d you meet?” she asks.

Using years of story-spinning for juries, and the episodes of Succession I devoured over the summer, I start inventing on the spot. I register, distantly, how I’m, maybe, arguably, starting to hit my stride in this game. Not just the creativity—I like how it keeps Eliza asking me questions. How much more she wants to know about this version of me. “Once,” I venture, “it was the same woman I’d just spent the past four hours negotiating with. We closed out the final deal points, left our respective offices, and both happened to hop on Tinder . . . only to swipe right on each other.”

I let my demeanor shift, let myself occupy this new character more and more while he becomes someone less and less like myself. Louder, more comfortable living his life on the edge.

“We ended up pulling a different sort of all-nighter than the one I’d expected,” I boast. The group laughs in unison. I’m vaguely gratified, noting with curious pride how quickly Investment Banker Graham drew the table in. Even so, I can’t resist refocusing on Eliza, watching her reaction with interest I’m certain betrays me.

Her smile splits wide.

Caught in the rush of seeing her expression, I laugh with the group. Suddenly, the pressure I’ve placed on myself since I got into the Jacuzzi this morning melts off of me.

I can’t deny it—this performance is starting to be fun.





11


    Eliza


I EXCUSE MYSELF from the group to refill my drink, privately surprised. Whatever’s come over my husband, this was not the insecure Graham I left in his room when I went to fetch my shoes. I’ve seen plenty of uncomfortable, reluctant performers over the years—Investment Banker Graham from Santa Fe is not one of them.

Reaching the bar, I pass my glass over. I haven’t waited long when I feel Graham come up beside me. “Didn’t think I’d see you tonight,” I say, keeping the way my pulse picks up out of my voice.

“Disappointed?” he asks, and dear god, did he just wink?

I study him, the way he leans on the bar, the slant of his shoulders. He’s carrying himself differently. It’s slight, but it’s there, the way he takes up just a little more space. It would be a truism to say, No, I’m definitely not disappointed. “You sound like you lead a pretty interesting life,” I reply instead, still using the voice I put on for most of the romance novels I perform, which I knew Graham would notice. Right now, it secures this conversation within our game, the next scene in our intricate performance.

“You could say that.” Graham smirks. He knows exactly what he’s doing—leaving me to make conversation if I want to keep talking to him.

Which I do.

“What about the investment banker clichés?” I ask, in the way this Eliza would, half judgmentally amused and half innocently courageous. “Snorting illicit substances off of scantily clad women in limos? You’ve done that, I’m guessing?”

He forces out his next words. “Oh, yeah. I’ve definitely done that. Bunch of times.”

He’s fire-engine red. I laugh into my drink.

It is, I notice immediately, exactly the window Graham needed to recover. His posture somehow straightens while relaxing, and his lips flicker with a smile. “What about you?” he asks.

“What about me?”

The smile forms. “Are you the type of woman who’d take a total stranger to bed?” His voice is confident, calm, and even.

Now it’s my turn to fight my blush. My turn to lose. I square my shoulders to his, and his gaze dips for a moment to my chest.

Watching him war with the impulse, I let myself hope what I wouldn’t before. Graham is enjoying this game, even if he’s not eager to show it.

The subtext of his question is hot between us. It’s enough to hold us apart from the rest of the room, from the sea of singles making conversation over cocktails. The high tables, the warm hotel lighting, the well-dressed clamor—they cease to exist. The world becomes me and Graham and the strip of bar between us.

I set my drink down. “Not a total stranger,” I say.

Graham’s jaw tightens at my double meaning. Of course, he’s not a total stranger. Not at all. When his eyes dip once more, he’s no longer in a rush. If my blush was heat before, now it’s flame. Nevertheless, I keep my posture straight, my chin haughtily high.