Just One Night 1_ The Stranger(36)

These are not the best of circumstances.

I see Simone standing in the corner, her normal effervescence nowhere to be seen. She and I share the secret, my secret, and it hurts her as it demolishes me.

My mother’s arms are around my neck, her tears against my cheek. “We’re so proud of you!”

“I didn’t do anything, Mom,” I protest. “This dinner, the proposal, it’s all Dave.”

“And who chose Dave? You!” She laughs. “Honestly, I look at you and the choices you make, and I know we made good choices with you.” She pulls away, looks me in the eye. “This is good,” she says. “We are good.”

I hear what’s not being said. The life I lead, at least the one the world knows of, is a vindication. It excuses a failure that none of us talk about. My rational and responsible choices are an announcement to the universe that anything that happened with Melody wasn’t my parents’ fault. It was her, not them. After all, look at Kasie! Kaise is perfect.

My mother takes my hand in hers as my father shadows her, smiling his approval.

“An odd selection,” she says, looking at the ring. “Why not a diamond?”

“It’s not what she wanted,” Dave answers, pulling himself away from his colleagues.

“It’s not, but you said you wouldn’t offer me what I wanted,” I remind him. “Just yesterday you refused to hear me.”

Dave grows serious for a moment and then with a gentle excuse to my parents pulls me aside. “Up until tonight I haven’t handled our engagement well.”

“No,” I agree. “Neither have I.” I flush as I think of what an enormous understatement that is.

“I never actually proposed. I didn’t say the words. I took all the surprise out of it.”

I glance around the room. “Surprise” can mean so many things. There’s the surprise of fortune and then there’s the surprise of miscalculation.

“I wanted to correct that,” he explains. “So I led you to believe I wasn’t getting you this ring so you would be all the more excited when I did. I brought our family here to surprise you to make up for not surprising you with the proposal itself. Otherwise, to propose after the fact . . . after we had already been ring shopping . . .” He shrugs. “It would have been a formality. I wanted to give you romance.”

I see his point. I get it. I look back at my parents. They’re hugging. My traditionally stoic father is as teary as my mother.

They’re proud of me. They’re proud of themselves. I’m living the life they want me to live.

Because really, somebody has to.

* * *

MORE HANDSHAKES, MORE toasts, the champagne is flowing. . . . I can’t grasp the moment. Dylan Freeland approaches. He embraces Dave and gives me a more formal kiss on the cheek. “I trust you’ll take care of this young man,” he says. “He’s like a son to me.”

The grin on my face feels ugly and misshapen. I don’t like this meeting of worlds. It’s an unsettling reminder that my personal life is loosely tied to my professional prospects. The tightrope I’m walking isn’t as strong as it’s supposed to be and only now do I fully realize that there is no net.

I excuse myself. I need air. I press my way through the crowd. Every step I take brings another congratulations from a new voice. I quicken my pace. I feel nauseous and dizzy as I look for the door, the exit that will lead me out of my nightmare.

I finally reach a patio but it’s not empty. Asha stands there, a thin cigarette in her hand. “We’re not supposed to smoke,” Asha says in lieu of a greeting. “Not even on the patio.” She takes a long drag and lets the smoke out through the side of her mouth. “But sometimes you just have to break the rules. Don’t you agree?”

I stand on the other side of the patio putting as much distance as I can between me and the smoke that carries the promise of cancer.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” I say.

She shrugs. “Dave called the office. He wasn’t sure if there was anyone you were close to there, anyone at all who he should invite. Funny he should have to ask. Anyway, I told him there wasn’t . . . just me.”

“We’re not close.”

“No, but I was curious.”

I try to maintain my focus. She’s wearing a tight-fitting black dress with a cutout back revealing a half circle of smooth, brown skin. We’re like cowboys in a Western except we wear our white and black hats in the form of dresses and we’ve traded our guns for other deadly but less tangible weapons.

But then perhaps my white hat should be colored light gray.