American Queen

I jerked myself out of his hold, stepping back and twisting away, and I ended up twisting right into Ash’s fiancée, who seemed to be returning from the bar, a martini in each hand. We collided and cold gin splashed onto the front of my dress, soaking the raspberry fabric and turning it into a deep maroon.

“Oh my God, I’m such a klutz!” she exclaimed as I blinked, unable to process this new development as fast as I needed to. “I’m so sorry, oh my God, here, here,” and she set the glasses on the ground and started trying to mop at my dress with her own, fussing over me with that big sister behavior that all women nearing thirty have towards younger women.

I know now that her name was Jenny—Jennifer Gonzalez, soon to be Jennifer Gonzalez-Colchester, a family law lawyer and amateur sharpshooter—but in that moment, I only knew what I saw. I saw that she was lovely, with large brown eyes and skin the color of rich amber. I saw that she was kind, with the way she apologized and worriedly sponged at my bodice with the hem of her own fluttering dress. I saw that she was happy, and it was Ash that made her so.

I saw that you can be hurt—mortally wounded, in fact—and it doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault. Sometimes the world is just cruel that way, and it wasn’t fair to grudge them their happiness even as it tore down my own.

Tears burned hot at the back of my eyelids, and I pushed Jenny’s hands away. “Thank you, I’m fine,” I said thickly. “I have to go, though. Excuse me.”

And I pushed past her to get to the elevator. My only thought was of escape, my only feeling was the desperate, clawing need to be alone, and so I ignored her concerned voice, the hesitant murmurs of the people around us.

But I could not ignore Ash’s voice. I was almost to the elevator, almost to freedom, when I heard him call my name. “Greer?”

I didn’t want to look back and yet it was the only thing in the world I wanted. My head swiveled of its own accord, and I glanced at him over my shoulder. He was looking back towards Merlin in the far corner, and as he turned back to face me, confusion and a dawning realization were written all over his face. He took a step toward me, his eyes begging me to stop, but I couldn’t. Not even for him would I draw out this public gutting.

I turned around and stabbed at the elevator button several times in quick succession. Luckily, it opened for me right away, and I stepped inside. I refused to look up, kept my eyes only on the door-close button, and jammed it in so hard that the knuckle on my thumb turned white. Out of my periphery, I could see him say something to Jenny and then walk toward me, and panic flared in my chest.

By the grace of God, the elevator doors slid shut then, leaving me all by myself. With a gentle lurch, the elevator started going down, and I slumped against the mirrored wall and finally allowed myself to cry.

When the elevator doors opened to the hotel lobby, I was still crying. In fact, my tears had escalated into very loud, very embarrassing sobs, the kind that leave you sucking for air, the kind that contort your face into something ugly and wrung out. And my phone was buzzing insistently in my coat pocket, and I was fumbling for it as I exited the elevator, trying to hold in my sobs and failing, trying not to make eye contact with any of the hotel guests in the lobby, and then I pulled out my phone and saw texts from Abilene on the screen, coming in almost too fast to read.

Abilene: r u okay?

Abilene: did you just leave the party

Abilene: like, it looked like you were running for the door

Abilene: maxen *is* here but fuck he’s with some girl

Abilene: some lawyer

Abilene: r u coming back up? come back up so we can figure out what do about this lawyer girl with max

Goddammit, Abilene. I tried to wipe at my eyes so I could see the phone’s screen to type an answer, but there were too many tears, and then I was jostling against a stream of people walking into the lobby, and for the third time tonight, I walked right into another person.

“Fuck,” I swore, already swerving to push past him and reach the door.

“My favorite word,” said a smoothly pleasant voice, and that voice was hypnotic in its charm. Almost against my will, I looked up into the face of one of the handsomest men I’d ever seen. Maybe the handsomest on purely looks alone, since so much of Ash’s attractiveness came from who he was as a person. But this man, with his ice-blue eyes and cheekbones even God would be jealous of, he’d be stunning no matter what kind of person he was.

I was halfway to smiling at him through my tears when I realized I’d seen those blue eyes and those cheekbones before, and my smile froze in place.

He was Embry Moore, and he was Ash’s best friend. And that association was enough to jump-start my body again, if not my mind, because the last thing I could handle was a protracted interaction with someone close to Ash.

“Pardon,” I mumbled, the tears coming out thick and hot and garbling the word. I moved around him and reached the wide revolving door that led to the sidewalk outside, and then I was free to the warm evening air and the impatient honks of taxis and the sound of sirens somewhere in the distance.

I took a deep breath, trying to stave off the tears for long enough that I could come up with a cogent plan. There was Abilene to think about, of course, and also questions from my grandfather I wanted to avoid, which he would certainly ask if he came home from his meeting and found me home early, crying into a pillow.

I could fake sleep, though. And there was no way I could stay here.

I would just have to tell Abilene I was going home, and then I would hide until I could find a way to lie about what happened tonight, or at least hide it. But when I reached for my phone, I couldn’t find it anywhere—not in either of my pockets or the inner pocket of my jacket—and that’s when I heard the footsteps.