The Reunion by Kayla Olson(30)

Millie’s chatting my ear off—running commentary on the flowers, the lights, the cheese, the wine—when my eyes lock with Ransom’s. I hadn’t even seen him standing across the way, but then someone shifted and he turned his head and his eyes were just… there.

I take a healthy sip of rosé, nearly flooding my lungs instead of swallowing. Steady, Liv. All these years, I’ve tried to convince myself it was for the best that we took a step back. That I could eventually get over him, that maybe in time my feelings would fade—that maybe I’d blended fiction with reality and my feelings for him were never real at all.

But of course they were real. He’s everything a person would be attracted to, and it’s no use pretending I’m somehow exempt. He’s beautiful, he’s intense, he’s funny and kind and sincere.

He’s headed this way.

“Ooooh, where’d you get the strawberries?” Millie says by way of greeting, plucking one straight off his plate.

Ransom laughs. “Petite redheaded server at six o’clock,” he says, and Millie’s halfway across the backyard before the words have even left his mouth. His eyebrows shoot up. “She’s got energy.”

“She’s been talking my ear off since the moment we arrived—girl must’ve had a vat of coffee this afternoon.”

He grins. “I wonder how different all of this feels to her,” he says. “She never went through it like we did back in the day.”

“I had the same thought yesterday,” I say. Millie definitely had a healthy fan following, but it was nothing like the unrelenting attention Ransom and I experienced. “She was absolutely swarmed by photographers when she arrived at our fitting. I got Tabitha, by the way. Or, rather, Tabitha got me—I’ve got the bruises to prove it!”

He winces but laughs.

“Nice outfit,” he says.

I blush, so distracted by the compliment that it takes me a moment to realize he and I look like we coordinated for tonight. He’s wearing slim-cut black jeans—which look good on him, might I add—with a gray sweater almost the exact shade as mine, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. It looks soft, and I suppress the instinct to reach out and touch it.

“Where’s a photographer when we need one?” I say, grinning. “You clean up nicely yourself.”

“Care for some bacon-wrapped figs?” a server interrupts.

“Those smell incredible,” Ransom says, taking one for each of us.

It’s a logistical challenge, eating an entire bacon-wrapped fruit in a way that’s both graceful and doesn’t require me to stuff the entire thing in my mouth like Ransom does. It turns out to be more than he bargained for, and he struggles to polish it off. I take a delicate bite—there’s honey involved, too, as it turns out, sealing the bacon to the fig—and now we’re both laughing, and sticky, too.

I take a long sip of rosé once it’s over with. “That,” I say, “was entirely worth the hassle.”

“We did not think those through,” he says, laughing.

“Nobody thought those through!”

I hear a howl of laughter across the yard, over by the fountain, where Sasha-Kate has managed to crack one of the stoniest Fanline execs.

“Only Sasha-Kate could get Bob Renfro to drop his guard like that,” Ransom says. “Did I ever tell you what happened when I first met him?”

No, I want to say, and we both realize at the same time that of course he hasn’t told me—Bob Renfro and all things Fanline only came into our lives this year, and until very recently, our text thread was silent. I might be imagining things, but I think Ransom’s cheeks look a little pink.

“I was all set up to do one of their original series,” he goes on, “a spy thriller that eventually fell apart, and Bob was sitting next to me in one of the meetings. I was shifting through some paperwork they wanted me to look over and accidentally spilled my water in his lap. Like, all of it. Ice included.”

I can’t help it, I laugh. “What did he do?”

Bob Renfro is the most prim, uptight man I’ve met in my entire life. A total silver fox—but an emotional vault.

“He was wearing these wiry little reading glasses, and he gave me this… this death glare over the top of them. It’s a miracle he gave us the green light for the reunion, knowing I’m involved.”

“I’m certain that man loves his bank account much more than he hated a pile of ice in his lap.”

And now we’re both laughing, and his eyes—his eyes, they are absolutely magnetic, all those shades of green—I can’t look away.

“It’s been really good being around you again,” he suddenly says. “And I wanted to make sure you’re okay—we haven’t really had a chance to talk, just us, since the Fanline dinner—and—”

He cuts himself off. He’s definitely blushing now—I’ve never seen him like this, nervous. Nervous around me.

“No, yeah—I’m good,” I say quickly, and his relief is visible. “Better than good.” We lock eyes. “Better than expected.”

He holds my gaze a little longer—a minute, an hour, who can say? “Has it been hard?” he asks. “The interviews, I mean. You haven’t done them in so long.”