Gorman and Henry exchanged a glance that indicated Savannah’s innocence was something they’d already come to believe. “How are you?” Gorman’s voice was gentle. “Really?”
Liv lifted her hands in tired bewilderment. “What do you want me to say, Gor? Shocked. Sad. Angry, hurt, humiliated, just really… blargh!” She slumped over the table. “Is this really still something I want to do? Be a wedding planner? I am a feminist, you know, and somehow, I’ve ended up in this archaic industry that forces women to do even more unpaid emotional labor while worrying about being too fat. The whole system is designed to equate spending with happiness, and it honestly makes me sick! Maybe I should become a communist and move to the mountains! Get some goats. Goats are easy to keep, aren’t they?”
Henry and Gorman traded another look. Liv-the-commie-goat-farmer had made her appearance in a few other conversations since the funeral.
Henry went first. “Sure, the wedding industrial complex is a hysterical money pit designed to emotionally manipulate couples—we all know that. But the way you plan weddings helps people realize what they actually want. To put a sensible budget first and everything else second. You’ve always kept your prices market rate, and you never upsell couples on things they don’t need.”
It was true. If clients wanted to custom color match the table linens to the bouquet, or ride in on a bucking white bronco, Liv would make it happen. But she also made it clear to couples who had concerns about throwing the now-standard three-day wedding extravaganza that a wedding was to a marriage what a birthday party was to the year ahead: you could skip the party and still have a fabulous year. More than once, she’d talked couples out of hiring her, knowing the resentment and panic of the final bill would not be worth it. Liv also understood that many couples in love in New York (especially Brooklyn) didn’t want a normative, traditional wedding, they wanted a fun, classy party where two people happened to be legally wed. As such, In Love in New York had garnered a healthy reputation for being the city’s best alternative-wedding planner.
“You always plan events that are authentic to the couple,” Gorman said. “Plus, for better or worse, people are always going to get married and hire wedding planners. Why not you?”
Liv harrumphed. But she was listening.
“Besides, don’t you want to go back to work?” Gorman speared an olive from the jar. “You love work. They’d barely cut Benny’s umbilical cord and you were running out for a site visit.”
“For Chrissake, she’s my husband’s girlfriend!” Liv slapped the table, sloshing half a glass of gin.
“Not to sound crude, but he’s not technically your husband anymore,” Henry delicately pointed out. “You can’t be married to someone who’s been deceased for three months.”
“And barely his girlfriend,” said Gorman. “She was a fling! You were his wife. And from what you’d been saying to me for the past few years, he was your husband in name only. Things weren’t exactly thriving, were they?”
Liv made a petulant face—no, not exactly.
“So be the bigger woman,” Gorman continued. “Transcend all that female competitive bullshit.”
“Besides, maybe E really did know something you don’t,” Henry mused. “He must have had a reason, as weird as it all is.”
Liv slurped the rest of her martini, the liquor bitter in her mouth. The truth was, she wanted to want to work. As ludicrous as the meeting with Dave and Kamile had been, it’d given her a taste of her old life. She missed ambition. That invisible, powerful impulse that guided and goaded and gave a day meaning. Liv Goldenhorn had no idea how to get her lust for life back.
But that’s because she hadn’t yet met Sam.
4
Jammed into a subway car so crowded she couldn’t even check her phone, Savannah Shipley was beginning to think she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
Giving up everything in Kentucky had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Not to mention the fact she’d basically—okay, she’d definitely—lied about the origins of her new “dream job” to her loving, trusting parents, Terry and Sherry. Her parents’ devotion to their only child was as unwavering as their Sunday church attendance. If they knew their daughter had once purchased a vibrator, let alone carried on an affair with a married New Yorker, Terry and Sherry would have twin heart attacks.
Savannah’s extended circle of friends had been excited for her move to Brooklyn, but her best friend, Cricket, took the news as a betrayal. Savannah tried to make it sound like an exciting, short-term opportunity for both of them—Come visit me! I won’t be there forever!—but she wasn’t surprised to see something crumble behind Cricket’s eyes. It was essentially a nonsexual breakup.
Her internship, her best friend and the apartment they shared, her proximity to clean air and wide streets and place in the order of things: all gone.
At first, that all seemed worth it. As represented by her New York vision board, Savannah’s future in the greatest city in the world was one of bright lights and laughter, yellow cabs and pink cocktails. The words she’d placed at jaunty angles—Love! Success! Adventure! Romance!—felt like certainties. As did the image in the center of her vision board, the one that held the most mystery, the most promise: a gorgeous man in a tux. A twinkle in his piercing blue eyes.
Who are you?
Where do I find you?
Savannah Shipley hadn’t just moved to work for In Love in New York. She had moved to find this person, and in the meantime, fall in love with New York itself.
But so far, it was no romance.
The city was cold, dark, and confusing. Home was now a matchbox-size room in a grotty loft with three strangers in a neighborhood where no one said hello to one another and everything was three times more expensive than it should be. When Savannah finally pushed her way off the sardined subway and onto the chilly, wet streets of her new neighborhood of Bushwick, raw, painful thoughts formed in her mind: Was she in the right place?
Living the right life?
How did you find love in a city that, so far, didn’t seem to believe in it?
Shivering, she turned a corner and stumbled across ’Shwick Chick. A down-home fried chicken joint. The restaurant’s cheery neon sign shone through the cool, misty rain enveloping the city. Even though she was living on her savings and on a budget, Savannah pushed open the door. The warm, salty-sweet smell almost brought her to tears.
Home.
It was late on a rainy Monday, but customers filled the dozen tables, which were decorated with red-checkered tablecloths and vases of daffodils. She didn’t mind waiting. The energy—of the patrons, the hip-hop playing, and four staff members doing the work of ten—lightened her dark mood. Finally, a seat opened up at the bar. Savannah’s mouth pooled in anticipation of a plate of her favorite food in the world. As Cricket always said, “Fried chicken is like sex. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.” Savannah had laughed in agreement with this, but now, as she studied the small, handwritten menu, she realized it wasn’t true… when it came to sex. In her experience, sex was often just bad: awkward and unromantic, less magical, more mechanical. Even Eliot was a better conversationalist than he was a lover.