And that hurts too, somehow. Maybe it means they trust her judgment, that they know she wouldn’t just randomly marry the first guy that asked, but . . . maybe it also means they don’t care enough to question it. That they’re just ready to accept it at face value and check the boxes that go along with the things you do when your friend gets engaged.
It takes a minute and then another before she can extricate herself from the mob and she feels bad abandoning Xavier to her friends, but she needs to talk to Lexi, right now.
It’s easy enough to find her. She’s in the kitchen, plating some cheese and crackers to pass around.
“No moussaka?”
Lexi snorts, her mouth quirking up into a half grin. “Sorry, you’ll just have to go without.”
“This is . . .” Bianca starts and stops, because with her sister looking up at her now, that half grin turning into a full-blown smile, she can’t quite bring herself to lie or to come clean, so she settles for a middle ground. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Of course I did. It’s what you did for me when I got engaged.”
And that’s true. She’d flown cross-country from New York back to LA to set up a party in this very house, back when her parents still lived here, to throw Lexi a wild blowout after Chris texted her to say he was proposing. To hell with the fact that she had to fly back only a day later, on no sleep with a massive paper half-finished and due just a few hours after she landed.
They should be even now, not that it works that way, not that it should, but instead Bianca’s stomach twists.
She flew three thousand miles to be there to celebrate with her sister, and last night Lexi wouldn’t even drive across town.
This party?
It just . . . hurts.
“Go,” Lexi says, pressing a drink into her hands, a vodka and cranberry – not her favorite, but it’ll do – and shooing her out of the kitchen, “mingle, talk to your friends, show off that gorgeous ring and that gorgeous man.”
Bianca doesn’t know what else to say, so she takes a sip from her drink and steps back into the throng, getting swept up into it easily. Xavier’s across the room, chatting with a tall Black man who towers over most of the crowd. Erik, her former colleague from back before she decided to get her PhD, when she was stuck in a teaching job she hated. He was one of the few people who didn’t call her crazy for going back to school. A quick scan of the room and she sees Erik’s husband, Adam, just as tall as his husband, his red hair and freckles marking him out in the crowd. He’s with Chris, her brother-in-law, phone out, definitelybombarding him with pictures of the babies. When she looks back though, Xavier’s cheeks are flushed and Erik’s eyes are narrowed, eyebrows lifted in what could generously be called skepticism.
Shit.
She crosses the room quickly and approaches from behind him, sliding a hand over his shoulder. For a split second he freezes, but almost immediately relaxes into her touch, as her fingers run down his arm and press against his before she twines their fingers together.
“Okay, interrogation over, my friend,” she scolds Erik, who lifts his hands in mock surrender.
“We were just getting to know each other.”
Bianca scoffs her disbelief and presses closer into Xavier’s side. He’s so warm and solid and her body reacts to the proximity, her skin prickling with awareness, her heart fluttering in her chest at the simple touch, one she’s never felt before. Last night doesn’t count, not really. She was drunk and emotional and definitely not thinking clearly. But she remembers one thing from before they spiraled away from each other months ago – being around him hasalwaysfelt like this. Back then she chalked it up to an academic rivalry turned friendship with a heavy dose of attraction, at least on her part. Now? Now she doesn’t know what to call it. All she knows is that she doesn’t want it to end.
He leans down and buries his face against her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple, and it shouldn’t affect her as much as it does, but she can’t help the way her breath catches.
It’s so much, too much. She tilts her face up toward him. His eyes flicker down to her mouth and then back up to meet hers again and for a wild second she thinks he might close the distance and kiss her.
“Ugh, y’all are kind of gross,” Erik complains, breaking the moment, and they both turn back toward him.
“Please,” she says, trying to keep her voice normal and failing, the words breathy and high-pitched as she protests, “as if I didn’t have to put up with you and Adam being disgustingly in love for years.”
“Fair enough. Friendly advice from someone who’s been there, do one more lap and then get out of here and go be gross in private instead. That newly engaged high only lasts so long, take advantage of it while you can.”
Bianca starts to protest, but he’s already gone.
“Sounds like good advice to me,” Xavier says.
“Yeah?” she asks, shifting in front of him, and he winds his arms around her waist, pulling her in closer. She smiles up at him. It would be so easy to get used to this.
“How about you, me, my couch and some pizza since my sister completely reneged on the food we were promised?”
“You really want to cut out early? They all came for you.”
“Yeah, well, serves them right if I bail after last night’s no-show.”
