Page 86 of The Seven Year Slip

I shrugged. “I dunno, I just picked it back up,” I replied, cleaning my brush out in a bottle cap of water, and choosing a rusty orange for the edges of the building, “and it makes me feel happy.”

Drew hummed in thought. “I can’t even remember what makes me feel happy...”

“Reading, babe—ooh,” Fiona held her belly, her face pinching. “Oh, that was interesting.”

Drew sat up straight in alarm. “Is everything okay? Something wrong?”

She waved her off. “I’m fine, I’m fine. It was just a weird feeling.”

I gave her a hesitant look. “Like baby-coming weird?”

“I’m not due for another week,” Fiona replied, as if that would stop it, but for the rest of the day she was fine—and she’d absolutelyscoffedat the idea of starting her maternity leave early. (“What, and futz around the house all day? No, thank you, I’d go insane.”)

So when Thursday rolled around, I brought a dress to the office and changed in the stall after work, and together with Drew and Fiona we caught a cab to James’s new restaurant. It was a soft opening, reserved for invites-only, to celebrate the launch of hyacinth—all lowercase, by the way, in a loopy handwriting script.

We met Juliette outside, dressed in a stylish cream blouse tucked into baggy brown trousers, a belt at the waist. Her hair was done up into two buns, a knockoff Prada bag on her arm that looked so real I couldalmostbelieve it if she didn’t tell me exactly where to get one myself. Beside her, I looked... a littleunderdressed and casual, in a pale purple knee-length dress with a bow at the collar, and for the first time since my last date with Nate—

“Heels?” Juliette gasped. “Oh my god, you’re wearingheels! And you’re sotallin them.” She quickly dug out her phone and snapped a photo of them. “This is going right into my Stories! We have to remember this occasion.”

I groaned. “I wear heels sometimes!”

“When you want to impress someone,” Fiona noted.

“Our future author, obviously,” I volleyed back.

Drew put her hands on her hips and practiced her calm breathing. “Speaking of which, if any of you make me look bad tonight...”

Juliette said, with a salute, “We’ll be on our best behavior! Though someone might have to tell me which fork to use if there’s more than one...”

I looped my arms through Drew’s and Fiona’s and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be wrong too.”

And together we opened the heavy wooden door and walked inside.

On the ride over, I imagined what his restaurant would look like—maybe it looked like the one he talked about over cold noodles. Long family-style tables and crimson-red walls, comfy and warm, the leather chairs broken in. Local artists would be on the walls, the chandeliers this amalgamation of sconces and candelabras.

A table set aside for a woman he met over some far-off weekends in a distant memory.

“Set aside for you every night—best table in the house,” I remember him saying.

A conversation I was sure he’d forgotten, even though I kept the same travel guide tucked into my purse as we stepped into his restaurant.

It was bright—that was the first thing I noticed—almostimpeccably so, with polished white marble tables and off-white sconces with the slightest blue hue. The chairs were stools at best, the ceiling bare to new silver plumbing, somewhere between a warehouse and a half-finished department store. It felt like a place where if you made a mistake, it’d be on a pedestal for all to see. My heart sank a little because this wasn’t Iwan’s dream at all.

It was James’s.

The hostess quickly recognized Drew from a photo on her clipboard and ushered us to a special table. A few other familiar faces were already here—Benji and his fiancée, Parker and his wife, and two other editors who had been at the cooking class. We sat down at one of the larger tables, the chairs uncomfortable and cold, and I felt so out of place it made my skin itch.

Pretend like you belong here until you do, I thought to myself.

“This place is so fancy,” Fiona said, as our server brought out our menus—which were all the same, detailing a list of seven courses. Fiona had a special menu for her dietary restrictions as a pregnant person. Our server also brought us a bottle of wine—

“Compliments of the chef,” the server said, uncorked the red, and poured us each a glass.

When she was gone, Drew picked up her glass and held it up. “To a good evening, whether or not we get the book.”

The rest of us clinked our glasses to hers. The wine was dry and a little sour, and suddenly it felt like I was back at that first lunch at the Olive Branch, feeling out of place, swinging my arms wildly to find my footing.

My friends commented on the restaurant, the menu, the other people seated at the tables. I was half listening to Juliette talk about a new campaign she was putting together with the social media coordinator when a familiar face walked into hyacinth—Vera Ashton.

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