Talking to my mother was nowhere near as taxing as it used to be when Julian and I were kids, back before we’d practically fled across the country to go to school and never came back. It wasn’t that it was easy to have a conversation with her—though she was as kind to me as she was to anybody, she still had the tendency to slip insults and jibes into the conversation with little effort. She hadn’t changed over the years, but I had, and I was finding it easier to tolerate her than it had been when I was eighteen and desperate to be gone.

I sat up talking with her for about an hour before she went to bed, then told her goodnight and made my way upstairs to my room. She had given us our old rooms—the ones we used to have when we were kids, and I was almost excited to see mine again, to be surrounded by childhood memories. It was part of the reason I had come back; Julian and I hadn’t grown up in what I would consider a warm environment, but there were moments that I missed and wanted to remember, even if just for a few weeks.

I heard a soft voice as I went upstairs and paused on the landing. I could tell that it was Ella and that she was crying, her voice trembling as she spoke. Despite telling myself that I shouldn’t, I crept quietly toward her voice. The door to the room was slightly ajar and I peeked in to see Ella sitting on the bed with her back to me, sitting next to an old woman who I recognized as her grandmother. Ella’s body was trembling and she was holding her grandmother’s hand.

“I just don’t know how I’m going to get through it,” she said, her voice just loud enough for me to hear. “I don’t know how I’m going to deal with having them here. I can barely put up with their mother.”

I realized then that she was talking about Julian and me, that we were the reason she was crying. I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen when I thought about it. Julian and I had not been kind to Ella when we were teenagers and I had been able to tell from the way she responded to me at dinner that she had not forgotten, but I hadn’t been able to tell that she was so upset.

I heard Ella’s grandmother respond to her in a soothing voice, although I couldn’t hear the words.

“I know,” Ella said, sighing. “I know it’s just a few weeks, but I just don’t know if I can take it, Gran. They’re such horrible people. I just want to get out of here.”

I chewed on my lip, watching as Ella stood up and gave her grandmother a kiss on the forehead. I darted away from the door, moving a couple of feet down the hall so that it wouldn’t look like I had been spying as Ella came out of the room. When she saw me in the hallway, she jumped, her hand fluttering to her chest in surprise.

“I’m sorry,” I said, putting my hands up to show that I meant no harm. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay,” she said, not looking at my face. She started to move past me but I took her arm gently in my hand for some reason, stopping her. She froze on the spot and looked up at my face, not with fear but with determination.

“Let go of me,” she said, snatching her arm away. Then she started to make her way down the hall again.

“Wait,” I said. “Ella, wait.”

“What?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. There was a look of cool anger on her face that was as beautiful as it was forbidding. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her then, off of her features, and I found myself staring into her eyes as I spoke.

“I just wanted to say that it’s good to see you.”

She gave a sharp laugh, one that had no humor in it.

“Right,” she said.

“I mean it,” I said. “You look good.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m great.” The sarcasm was impossible to miss.

“I just mean—you look healthy.”

“Okay,” she said. “So what? Are you going to eat me?”

I raised my eyebrows, my face spreading into a grin. “Eat you?”

“Because I look healthy—never mind. Thank you.”

“I have to say, eating you wasn’t exactly the first thing I thought about doing, but now that you mention it—”

“What do you want, Eric?” she asked, looking me in the eye again. She had flushed pink, the words taking on more than one meaning in her mind just as they had in mine. The thought made me uncomfortable but I couldn’t help it; Ella was undeniably beautiful, and that hot look in her eye was radiant, though I knew that it came from anger and not from anything resembling desire.

“I wanted to apologize,” I said.

“For what?”

“For being a dick.”

She laughed then, a real laugh. “Oh, okay.”

“I was young. We were young.”

“I was young, too,” she pointed out. “And I never treated you like that.”

“I know,” I said. “Although you weren’t exactly friendly.”

“What did you expect?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

I sighed, running my hands through my hair. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Right,” she said, then turned around to go to her room. “Goodnight, Eric.”

“Goodnight, Ella.”

She disappeared around the corner into her room and I sighed again, then went down the hall to mine. I fell asleep thinking about Ella, wondering if there would be a way to make it up to her. I didn’t want our whole trip to be like this—for her to be miserable and afraid of Julian and me. We were both different now, both changed since we’d moved on and left our mother’s influence. I would be the first one to admit how terrible Julian and I had been as young men, but we’d grown out of it once we realized what the real world was like.

In the morning, I woke up early as I usually did and went down to the kitchen to get something to eat. We’d had a cook when I was younger, before Mom had married Rick, and I was used to going down early before anybody else got up. When I got to the kitchen, Ella was already there, and I almost didn’t go in. I hesitated outside the door but pushed through anyway, going over to the refrigerator to search through it.

“Good morning, Ella,” I said.

“Hi.”

I looked over my shoulder at her and shot her a smile, wondering how I could get her to lighten up, if there were any way to make her relax around me. She didn’t respond to my grin other than to roll her eyes.

“What are you up to today?” I asked her.

“What does it look like?”

“Cleaning. Being Cinderella.”

“I’m sure that’s funny to you, but—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, bowing my head at her. “Just a joke. A bad joke.”

“Right.”

I shook my head, grabbing some butter and bread and carrying it into the dining room and away from Ella. I needed to think of a game plan, a way to get her to change her mind and see that I wasn’t going to hurt her as I used to do. I would talk to Julian about it when he woke up and see if he had any ideas. In the meantime, I had a few calls to make. There were some friends and people I wanted to reconnect with now that I was back in town and I knew that Julian didn’t plan to stay for long. He would without a doubt want to go back sooner than the two weeks we’d planned to be here.

When I was finished with breakfast, I picked up the phone and called one of Julian and my oldest friends, a man named Jared we’d gone to school with when we were growing up. I hadn’t spoken to him for five years but I had a feeling that nothing would have changed—Jared was the kind of friend you were always close to, no matter how far apart you were.

“Eric?” Jared answered. “Is this really Eric fucking Price?”

“Jared,” I said, grinning. “How are you?”

“I’m doing great, man. How are you? How’s Julian?”

“We’re great. We’re actually in town right now.”

“No shit?” Jared said. “And you’re just telling me now?”

“We just got in last night,” I told him.

“It’s perfect timing. The masquerade party is this weekend. You and Julian need to be here.”

“What party?” I asked him.

“It’s this whole big thing. I’m throwing a birthday party for Xavier Hayes. Remember him?”

“Yeah, I remember Xavier,” I said. Xavier had been a year above us in school and had gone on to start a multi-billion-dollar tech company after we graduated. He had made a fortune by the time most of us had finished college and was by far the most successful person from our graduating class. “When did you become friends with him?”

“I work for his company now,” Jared said proudly. “Senior associate.”

“That’s so great, Jared, congratulations.”

“Hey, thanks. Listen, I’d better go. I’ll text you the details about that party. Do you want to meet up for a drink before then?”

“Definitely,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Later,” he said, and then hung up the phone as Julian walked into the dining room and sat down, looking like he was still half-asleep.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey. Who was that on the phone?”

“Jared Polk,” I told him. He wrinkled his face up.

“Oh.”

“He invited us to a party.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Where?”

“At his place. It’s a birthday party for Xavier Hayes.”

“Xavier Hayes,” Julian snorted. “That guy’s a prick.”

“He’s not that bad,” I said.

“Are you going?” he asked.

“Yes, and so are you.”

He shook his head. “There’s no way you’re going to get me to go.”

“I have a plan,” I told him. “Did you see Ella in the kitchen?”

“No. Why?”

“I want to bring her with us to the party.”

“What?” he asked, his mouth hanging slightly open. “Are you serious?”

“She’s terrified of us, Julian. Because of the way we treated her.”

My brother took a deep breath. “I know.”

“So I say we get her out of the house, show her a good night. We can at least do that for her.”

“What makes you think she’ll come with us?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “Hope?”

He laughed. “When was the last time hope got you anywhere with a woman?”

“That’s a good point. But I think we can convince her.”

“Are you kidding? Did you see the way she was looking at us last night?”

“We have to try,” I said. He paused, then nodded.

“But if she says no, I’m not going to the party.”

“That’s fair,” I said, and he shook his head.

“You are way too optimistic.”

I grinned at him. “One of us has to be.”