Page 21 of Anything For You
“Is there any chance Grace will be there?”
The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. Elizabeth’s jaw tightened before she could stop it, the familiar clench behind her molars.
“It’s possible. She worked with James for years. But the wedding is a week out.” She kept her voice level, measured. The voice she used when a judge asked a question she didn’t love. “I’d imagine she’s buried in final details. Seating charts, florist emergencies. The things that consume people before weddings.”
Hopefully.
“Can I see a photo? Just so I’m not caught off guard.”
The request landed like a deposition question Elizabeth hadn’t prepared for. Simple, reasonable, and completely disarming.
Her thumb hovered over the search bar in her photos. She hadn’t deleted them. She’d told herself it was because bulk-deleting hundreds of images was tedious, that she’d get to it eventually.
She typedGraceinto the search field and the phone did what phones do. It surfaced everything.
Grace at a firm gala in that burgundy dress, her hair pinned up, laughing at something Elizabeth had said. Grace on the balcony of the Amalfi rental, backlit by sunset, wine glass dangling from her fingers. Grace asleep on the couch with a brief half-covering her face, one shoe still on.
Elizabeth’s thumb hesitated over the screen, the familiar ache of nostalgia pressing against her ribs. She couldn’t show Kelsey the ones that mattered—the ones where Grace’s laughter was still for her, where the wine glass in her hand had been poured by Elizabeth, where the couch they shared wastheirs.
She scrolled further, past the Amalfi sunset, past the gala dress, past the quiet domestic moments that now felt like artifacts from another life. Her finger paused on a photo from their last vacation together, a ski trip to Vermont. Grace stood infront of a fireplace, cheeks flushed from the cold, holding a mug of something steaming. Her hair was down, slightly wind-tossed, and she was smiling at the camera with that easy, practiced warmth that had once been Elizabeth’s alone.
She turned the screen toward Kelsey.
Kelsey’s gaze lingered on Grace’s face, her eyes tracing the contours of her features. “She’s pretty,” she said, her voice neutral, but Elizabeth detected a flicker of curiosity beneath the surface.
Kelsey’s gaze stayed on the photo a beat longer than necessary. Then she straightened, and something shifted in her expression. Not jealousy, exactly. More like a recalibration.
“Okay. So I know the guest of honor, I know what Grace looks like. What about the rest? If this is a work event, I assume you want us to be subtle. No overt displays of affection.”
Elizabeth locked her phone. The screen went dark, taking Grace’s face with it.
“Yes and no.” Elizabeth set her phone down on the counter. “These are lawyers. They read subtext for a living. We can’t be too distant.”
She crossed to the window.
“What we need is…” She paused, searching for the right legal framework. “Plausible intimacy. The small things couples do without thinking. Standing close. A hand on the small of my back when we’re talking to someone. Me touching your arm when I’m making a point.”
Behind her, Kelsey’s reflection appeared in the darkened glass. The emerald jumpsuit made her look so much more sophisticated. It was disorienting.
“Eye contact,” Kelsey added. Her voice was quieter now, thoughtful. “People in love look at each other differently. Like the other person is the most interesting thing in the room.”
Elizabeth turned. Kelsey stood with her wine glass cradled in both hands, backlit by the kitchen’s recessed lighting. Her expression was open, earnest in a way that made Elizabeth’s chest tighten.
“Exactly.” The word came out rougher than intended. She cleared her throat.
“So we don’t force it.” Kelsey set her glass down with a soft clink. “We just… be natural. Like at the bar with Scott.”
Natural. Elizabeth almost laughed. Nothing about this situation was natural. She was forty-eight years old, standing in her apartment with a thirty-one-year-old barista, preparing to parade her as a girlfriend to convince a room full of legal professionals that Elizabeth had successfully moved on from her ex-wife.
But Kelsey was right. At O’Neill’s, when Kelsey had put her hand on Elizabeth’s knee, when she’d leaned in close and whispered that instruction to check her out, it had felt… easy. Disturbingly so.
“Natural,” Elizabeth echoed. She picked up her wine glass, drained the last swallow. “We should go. Don’t want to be late.”
Kelsey smiled at that last comment, and Elizabeth had a strange feeling that this was all going to work out.
10
Kelsey stepped into the brownstone behind Elizabeth, the door closing with a solid thunk. She’d been in nice places before. Friends with Brooklyn lofts, that one girlfriend senior year whose parents had a brownstone in Park Slope. But this was different. The rooms stretched wide enough that people clustered in small groups without crowding each other.
