I made a noncommittal noise rather than answer, taking a drink.
With a huff, she turned to leave. “You’re exhausting.”
She’d just disappeared from the threshold when she swore under her breath, reappearing to snatch her purse off the island, tear open the fridge for a bottle of wine, and grab a wineglass before flying off again.
“I’m taking a bath and drinking this,” she called from the stairwell. “Do not disturb.”
Again, I said nothing, but a smile tugged at my lips. She hated when I said nothing, though I didn’t do it to upset her. I just found that I didn’t have the chance to say the wrong thing if I said nothing at all.
With a shift, I looked out over the dark patch of Central Park inside a frame of shadowed buildings. This was the house we’d grown up in, the house I’d inherited when our parents died. I remembered Georgie riding her tricycle around the terrace. Thanksgiving meals at the dining table. Georgie and I lounging in the library on rainy days—me sneaking into Dad’s comics and Georgie raiding Mom’s romance shelves.
I remembered the night of the call about the accident, but other than that flash of memory, everything else was a blur. By the time we got to the hospital, they were gone. The drunk driver had injured three other pedestrians when he blew through the crosswalk. He’d been apprehended and ended up in jail without much effort. I remembered getting Georgie home, the two of us sitting silently in the living room until the sun came up. And then it was a different kind of blur.
Lawyers and funeral plans, informing distant relatives and friends. And I’d done it all without blinking, without thinking, without feeling. Georgie felt enough for both of us.
Neither of us wanted to be alone, so we took to sleeping in the living room without ever agreeing to it. It was a month before we slept in our beds and well over a year before we touched their room. It was Georgie who suggested it was time, and though it was unbearable, I helped her go through their clothes and things. We packed things away, stripped it of linens and furniture, spreading pieces throughout the house and putting the decor in places where we could admire them and remember. And then Georgie redecorated it for me, moved me in, and claimed my old room.
Their empty room had been a void in the house to reflect the void in our lives until then. And when we filled it, we were finally able to move on. Or start to.
So I finished college and started at De Bourgh. Georgie finished high school and started at NYU, joining me when she’d gotten her bachelor’s. And that, as they said, was that.
I knocked back the end of my drink and poured another, taking it upstairs with me as I pulled at my tie. Laney Bennet appeared in my mind without preamble or warning, as she was in the habit of doing. Georgie had given me the final directive before what I was sure would be an ultimatum, and she was right. I had to figure myself out before it was too late.
But when I stopped and looked for the why of it all, I knew.
Laney was one of very few people who called me out with such ferocious truth. She was unafraid of me, unaffected by me, unlike most people, who sputtered and stammered in my presence. Georgie said I had two expressions—frowning and scowling—and the result didn’t endear me to many people. I’d told her not to take me to that mixer at Wasted Words. Because if there was one thing I couldn’t do, it was fake it. I couldn’t pretend to be amused by their party or even to understand it. I couldn’t feign a good time and drink and laugh with a bunch of strangers in a hot, crammed bar. I couldn’t take a bartender seriously who wore a loincloth any more than I could give my blessing to a shirtless bookstore manager who had his eye—and hands—on my sister.
But there was something else about Laney. I saw something in her that I’d never seen before, some spark of rarity beneath her hard exterior. And I supposed Georgie was right again. Laney and I were much more alike than I wanted to admit. But rather than contain herself like I did, she bared it, exposed herself in a way that although was defensive, was vulnerable too.
It was foreign to me. And a quality I found not only merit in, but envy. I only wished I could be so free. But I was incapable. Ask anyone who knew me, and they’d agree without hesitating.
I left the lights off in my room, crossing the space to stand in front of the tall windows overlooking the park as a thought dawned on me with such heat, it burned through the fog of unfamiliar feelings she evoked.
I admired her. Inexplicably, she roused something in me, like a beast asleep for a thousand years, shaking off the dust of time. She saw me, and though she didn’t like what she’d found, she challenged me to answer. To rise to the occasion and meet her as an equal. Because despite our many differences, when it came to the fabric of our characters, I had a suspicion we were much the same.
And though I didn’t know what exactly that meant, I gathered a plan to find out.
8
Party Like It's 1813
LANEY
Regency nights were my favorite.
Two or three nights a year, we partied like it was 1813. And our regulars went all out.
Five-dollar wells for everyone in costume inspired people to participate, and it expanded our regulars to reenactment groups, of which there were far more than I imagined there would ever be in Manhattan. Ruby sewed as a hobby, and we added her services in our announcement newsletters for costumes. She’d made a killing on dresses and velvet overcoats, even taking to reselling top hats and bonnets and gloves—a one-stop shop for all your regency needs. And since we threw these parties regularly, people invested.
Honestly, people loved an excuse to dress up. They were just as eager to put on spandex for our superhero or villain parties as they were to don a corset and cravat.
They would also do anything for cheap drinks.
I sighed, smiling at the fantasy of the evening. Rather than use our dim bar lights, battery-operated candelabras and a massive chandelier lit the dance floor and bar. Although not authentic, our regular DJ knew how to keep people happy, playing songs that kept bonnet feathers bobbing and everyone singing along, throwing the occasional slow song in to encourage people to get into each other’s personal space for the good of love.
I’d spent the last few days avoiding the Darcys and thinking about Wyatt, looking forward to tonight like a teenage girl anticipated prom. It’d been a long time since I’d met a guy I liked. New York wasn’t really a place to meet somebody outside of Bumble or Tinder or whatever the app of the minute was. I had access to men at the bar, and though I’d talked to more than a few, none of them went beyond a date, if they even went that far. But Wyatt had charmed me. And I scanned the crowd again for him, trying not to be disappointed when I didn’t find what I was looking for.
The bartenders were decked out in breeches and beautiful coats with tails, cravats, and vests, and once again, groups of tittering women in empire-waisted dresses fawned over them.
Cam slid up next to me with Annie, Greg the bartender’s fiancée, on her arm. It was impossible to dislike Annie—she was sunshine in a bottle, her skin peaches and cream and her hair the color of wheat. She had those eyes that drank up the world, big and wide and sparkling green. You couldn’t not to look at the long purple scar down the center of her chest that disappeared into her neckline—one of many battle scars, courtesy of her heart condition. She wore the scar with such pride, it was more a badge of honor than a reminder of pain.