She’d gotten it from her brother Levi, she meant, because I was willing to bet that she didn’t know the owner of the party store or any of my other work clients. I doubted that any of the doctors I’d visited would have given it up or the bill collectors, either.
“I was wondering if you’re free later today,” she sent next. “We’re having a cocktail party at six at my house and I’d love for you to come.”
Well! Who needed Levi? I could make a friend in another way.
“I know this is last minute,” Ava continued, “so don’t worry if you have other plans.”
When she’d gotten my number from her brother, he must have kept to himself all the things I’d told him about being desperate and pathetic, which I had been sorry to reread in the transcript. I’d admitted to being sad and lonely, too, in need of relationships and human bonds, and here was my chance.
I waited a beat, though, before I replied. “Sure,” I told her, “thank you. I’d love to come.” Was that too eager? I sent it anyway, and she wrote back immediately that she was glad and also gave me her address. Then she told me that Levi no longer lived with her—actually, she conveyed that information a lot more casually.
“I’m spending the day cleaning,” she said. “Now I can put all the toys down in the basement again. It’s back to being a play space for the kids and not a temp apartment for my brother. I’m sure you already know that he moved into his own place.”
I hadn’t heard that but again, I hadn’t heard much from him lately. She said she’d see me soon and that was it, no additional information about Levi or where he’d gone.
I had a lot of time before the party was supposed to start, and I occupied myself with cleaning my apartment, working to open the window, planning my outfit, and finally, taking a walk around the neighborhood. I wanted to get just the right amount of exercise so that I was loosened up but not tired out. I wanted my outfit to be just right, too, so I tried to replicate what the wife of Grant’s best friend would have worn. He’d always told me how great Vivienne looked, how she knew exactly what looked good.
“Why don’t you dress like that?” he often asked me after we’d seen that couple, which had been all the time. Lance came from a very wealthy background, which meant that he had cool stuff. For a wedding present, his parents had given him and Vivienne a house with a big back yard and a pool (although it wasn’t really necessary because he also had a job with their company, so he could have bought it for himself). They also had free use of all the family vacation homes and Grant and I had tagged along on many trips to those, as well as on excursions on their yacht. They were the reason I’d needed to get my first passport, which had involved a major issue with my birth certificate.
Anyway, I picked out what I thought Vivienne would wear, as close an approximation as I could get because all her clothes had been designer stuff and mine weren’t. The dress I chose didn’t fit exactly right when I tried it on, mostly because I’d lost weight after the car accident and my breasts had suffered. I looked kindof scrawny and as if I was wearing hand-me-downs, but I could do a little stuffing to improve the bust area. Unfortunately, there were more issues…like my skin. It was pale and tinged with grey, the same problem I’d noticed with my hair.
I searched in the boxes I’d recently opened on my hunt for makeup and I found a bottle of self-tanner that was almost totally full. I’d only used it once before, and I vaguely remembered being pleased with the results. Were the expirations on these products real? The makeup had been ok, despite having dates were well outside the time frames listed on the packages.
I still had a few hours until the party, so I carefully applied the tanner and when it seemed dry enough, I put on the dress. Hernán, of course, heard me leaving, and he came out to see what I was up to.
“¡Qué bonita!” he said, squinting a little to offset his poor eyesight. “I like that dress and I’m glad you left your hair down. Do you want me to send a picture to Lucía for confirmation?”
I was aware of his daughter’s great fashion sense because ninety percent of his phone’s memory was filled with images of her, and I’d seen all of them. “No thanks, but I appreciate the offer.” She would probably have spotted the padding in my bustline and might have mentioned other improvements that I needed, which I couldn’t attempt now because the car was arriving and I didn’t have any more time to play around. I was going to a party and it was funny to feel excitement again. I realized that I’d felt the same way a few times over the past couple of weeks since I’dbeen to the doctor’s office. That app therapist had been right about trying to make connections.
Ava lived in a pretty house with not too many stairs leading to the front door, which I was happy to note when the rideshare dropped me off at her address. There were a few cars parked on the street but it didn’t seem like it was going to be a very big gathering. I had scheduled my arrival to be a little late, which I’d learned was the appropriate strategy for a party. Maybe everyone else was planning to get here even later.
Ava answered the door when I rang the bell, and she grinned as if she was extremely pleased. “Emerson! I’m so glad you could make it. Come on in.” She let me walk at my own pace into her living room where she introduced me to her husband Jeff and two of her three kids, and they were all as good-looking in person as in the pictures she’d shown me. Her parents were there, too, and a small group that she introduced as a friend from high school, that woman’s husband, and their children.
Besides them, there weren’t any other guests. Nicola, her old friend, seemed to be almost like family—and most of the other people actually were. I wondered for a moment about why I might have been asked but then I decided that it didn’t matter. I was here to form relationships, and maybe Ava wanted the same thing from me. Could she also need a friend? But there was plenty of food and drinks, so maybe more guests had been expected and had no-showed, or more were coming later.
I did my best to be a person they would want to like, but as usual, I found it easiest to talk to the kids. Gradually, I was talking onlyto them. They invited me to play and that was what I was doing when Ava came to find me.
“Emerson? Why are you down here in the basement?” she asked. She was frowning. “Weren’t the stairs hard for you? Levi said you struggle with them.”
“He told you that?” I put down my plastic teacup and mini backhoe. It seemed odd that he would have mentioned anything about me, since we hadn’t really been in touch since I’d told him that his good friend August was likely a criminal. Afterwards, I’d texted him a few times before remembering what Grant had always said about how I bothered him too much.
“Leave me alone,” he’d ordered, and I’d told him that if he would just answer my questions about when he planned to come home, I wouldn’t have to bother him. After all, when someone was gone for a whole weekend with zero communication with his live-in girlfriend, wasn’t it normal that she would worry and also get mad? That was just one of the times he’d told me to get off his case.
Due to those past experiences, I’d recognized what was happening when Levi had only answered me with a word or two: he was also signaling that I should leave him alone, and I had listened.
“My brother told me all about you. He’s definitely interested,” Ava said, smiling.
“That means he likes you and wants you to be his girlfriend,” her daughter advised me. “Thea explained,” she next answeredher mom’s question about how she’d garnered that information about boyfriends and girlfriends.
“Thea and I will be having a talk about oversharing,” Ava stated, but I wasn’t paying much attention to this side conversation.
“Why do you think he’s interested?” I asked.
“I’m his big sister. I can tell,” she explained. “Why don’t you come back upstairs and see him?”
“Levi’s here?”
“He mentioned that he might stop by,” she said, her voice very nonchalant.
