Page 71 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

I didn’t blame him for trying to dig up information on me, but what did bother me were the unknowns of what Annalise could’ve told him. She didn’t know me well, but her judgment of me was like everyone else at Alderton-Du Ponte: nearsighted. They only saw what they wanted, never bothering to look further.

I didn’t want to care about what Aaron Astor thought about me, but the curiosity needled me anyway.

“I’d love to get lunch with you,” Aaron said as he dipped his head closer to me, his words tickling the skin of my throat. “Learn more about each other, talk about… our future. I hope I didn’t scare you off by calling myself your fiancé prematurely. I guess I was just hoping… we’d end up there.”

Straightforward. I almost said as much when a flute of champagne appeared at my side, and I traced the bubbling glass up to find Sumner holding it out to me. His blue eyes focused solely on me, almost as if I wasn’t in Aaron’s arms at all. “Your champagne.”

I dropped Aaron’s hand mid-sway, extracting myself from his loose grip. “Would you excuse me?” I asked him as I took the champagne flute. “I’m going to get a bitof air.”

“I could come with you?—”

I gave him a smile. “Let my mother talk your ear off. I won’t be long.”

When I glanced over, Sumner was looking at my lips and the way they tipped up, his own expression complicated and hard to read in the chandelier light. I didn’t examine it too closely.

When I headed toward the ballroom’s doors, I was relieved to hear Sumner’s footfalls following behind me. We both got out into the hallway, and without a word, I grabbed Sumner by the lapel and dragged him down the hall. As I walked, I tipped my champagne flute to my lips and drained the alcohol in three drinks, the bubbles burning the back of my throat.

“Margot,” he said as he stumbled along. “Where are you?—”

A girl in her late twenties manned the coat check counter and blinked at me when I approached the desk. “Miss Margot, can I?—”

I shoved my empty champagne flute into her hand, and she fumbled to catch it before it slipped from her grip. “Excuse us.”

“No one’s supposed to go back there—” the girl didn’t reach out to stop me, but cut herself off when I took no care in brushing past her, dragging Sumner into the large closet, where coat hangers lined the walls. Most hung empty—the burgeoning summer heat didn’t leave one needing a coat—and gave the room an empty feel.

I let go of Sumner’s lapel and turned on him, leveling him with a stare. “Did you know?” I demanded in a low voice, the words a tremble. “Did you know Aaron Astor would be here?”

Sumner slowly shook his head, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t know.”

“You expect me to believe that? That my parents didn’t warn you?” The frustration I’d shoved down earlier began fighting its way back to the surface. “You and my mother knew that if you told me, I’d—I’d sabotage it. I’d run away, I’d do something?—”

“No. You would’vewantedto, but you wouldn’t have.” Sumner’s chest gave a shaky rise and fall. “You said so yourself you never wanted to find out what a life outside of your parents’ wishes was like. You wouldn’t have wanted to come down here and meet him, but you would’ve anyway.”

My fingers curled into a fist at my side at how factually he spoke, and my resentment brewing only grew because he was most likely right. But he didn’t need to point it out. “You knew,” I repeated. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t know, Margot. If I had—” He stopped.

“If you had?”

In a sort of resigned way, Sumner lifted his gaze from the floor to mine. “I would’ve told you.”

I wanted to latch onto anger, since it was a safer emotion to feel, but the way he stared at me with his sad puppy-dog eyes, I couldn’t hold on to it. It hadn’t been that long since our last argument, but Sumner was vastly different now than he’d been then, kneeling on my floor with eyes snapping his own fire. He looked uncomfortable, as if being in this closet—at Alderton-Du Ponte—was the last place he wanted to be.

I stood still, trying to pinpoint and lock down theemotion in my chest. The pressure was suffocating, like how it felt when I wore a vest tailored too tightly, but the chiffon fabric of my dress wasn’t restricting now.

“You weren’t Aaron,” I said.

I didn’t want to look at Sumner to perceive his reaction, but I couldn’t turn away. Confusion swamped his already tense expression. “What do you mean?” Then the realization struck, because shock flooded in. “I—I told you I wasn’t. This whole time—thisentiretime, you thought I was Aaron?”

“No.” And it was honest for the most part. The errant thought had popped up now and then, like a mosquito buzzing around me, but my rationale had always been quick to chase it off. I looked into Sumner’s eyes, the next words slipping out. “But I was hoping you were.”

Sumner’s lips parted as he drew in a silent breath. The country club’s air conditioning was on, but not high enough—my skin seemed warm, too warm, as if I was growing feverish. Ifeltfeverish. My thoughts weren’t clear in the slightest. Sumner’s expression was far too guarded for me to tell if the confession made him uncomfortable. His eyes, though, were still very wide. “Margot?—”

“It’s just me, right?” I asked, my soft words threatening to get lost in the space between us. I thought about it all in a sort of clinical way, with no emotions attached other than curiosity. My stomach felt tight, as if someone reached into me and squeezed, but that was it. Just curiosity. “That feels this way?”

After meeting with Aaron, it felt important to clarify. The newfound festering collection of emotionsthat bloomed each time Sumner smiled at me, the ones that’d been ever-present in the seconds before Aaron came up to us. The look of fascination that always seemed to grace his expression whenever I laughed. The charged energy that ran in a gentle current underneath my skin, a TV turned on but muted. No sound, just feeling.

Sumner didn’t answer, but he closed his eyes. It gave me another selfish moment to study him, the slight curve to his shoulders as his head ducked down. He’d been all smiles moments before, on the dancefloor, almost awestruck in the way he looked at me.

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