"You need to get out."
Oliver stands in my doorway like he owns the place, which is typical. We've known each other since Exeter—two fifteen-year-olds thrown together as roommates, him on scholarship with something to prove, me with a family name that felt like a millstone.
Seventeen years later, he runs his own venture capital firm and remains the only person alive who can walk into my office unannounced.
"I'm working," I say.
"You're hiding." He crosses to my desk and drops into the chair across from me. "It's Valentine's Day, James. Even you can't work through Valentine's Day."
"Romance is a commercial invention designed to sell greeting cards and overpriced dinners. I'm doing the economy a favor by abstaining."
Oliver laughs—warm, easy, everything I've never been able to fake. He stands and moves toward my window, looking out at the city lights.
"Lucy's been dead a month. Your father's trying to marry you off to a stranger. And you're sitting here in the dark because you think grief is a weakness you can't afford."
The mention of Lucy hits like it always does—sharp ache followed by shame.
I miss her. But threaded through that grief is relief I can't escape.
"One drink," Oliver says. "Two hours. You look like hell, and I'm not leaving until you agree."
I should refuse. But Oliver has that look, the one that says he's genuinely worried, and guilt prickles at the back of my neck.
"Fine. One drink."
The club is upscale, the music tolerable, the crowd performing romance for an audience.
Heart-shaped decorations assault me from every surface. Couples press close on the dance floor, and I watch them with the detachment of a man observing animals in a zoo.
A woman near the bar throws her head back laughing, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, and my chest tightens unexpectedly.
Not her.
Of course not her.
The stranger from three weeks ago had auburn hair, not dark. Had eyes that looked through me like I was glass. Had listened to my rules with an indifference that still burns when I think about it.
Loneliness is a choice, she said.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about her. That's the problem. My rules exist precisely to prevent this—the lingering, the wondering, the way her face surfaces in my mind at inconvenient moments.
"You're brooding," Oliver observes, returning from the bar with drinks and two women in tow. Tall, polished, interchangeable. "James, meet Sophia and Margot."
The women look at me like I'm a prize and I feel nothing.
One of them—Sophia, I think—touches my arm and asks what I do. Her perfume is too sweet, nothing like the woman from the club who smelled like vodka and grief and something underneath that I couldn't name.
"Finance," I say, and offer nothing else.
Oliver shoots me a look. He raises his glass with exaggerated cheer. "To love. In all its messy glory."
"To efficient transactions," I counter. "Far less collateral damage."
The women exchange glances, and within fifteen minutes, they've migrated toward warmer company.
"Impressive," Oliver says. "You've scared off two beautiful women in record time."
"I saved them the trouble of discovering my personality."
He snorts and signals for another round. On the dance floor, a couple sways cheek to cheek, and I think again of auburn hair. Of empty eyes that saw too much.
I don't control women's bodies, I'd told her.
A lie. A well-practiced, perfectly delivered lie.
Victoria Carrow's face surfaces before I can stop it.
Three years ago. Her hands were shaking as she told me the pregnancy test was positive. The envelope I'd handed her—cash, a list of clinics, the number of a doctor who didn't ask questions.
I never told her exactly to get rid of it, but I didn't have to.
The money said it. The clinic addresses said it. My silence when she asked if I wanted her to keep it said it loudest of all.
The decision would be hers. It’s her body, her baby, her decision.
What a convenient fiction.
The decision was mine too. I just made her carry it out.
She called me afterward. Two in the morning, her voice raw from crying, asking if I would come see her.
I told her our arrangement was concluded and ended the call. Sat in the dark of my apartment for hours, wondering when exactly I had become the kind of man who hands a woman an envelope and calls it a choice.
Oliver found out eventually. He always does.
He didn't lecture me. Didn't tell me I was a monster, though I saw the disappointment in his eyes. He just said, "You can do better than this, James."
And I'd wanted to believe him. I still want to believe him.
The stranger had almost smiled when I gave her my progressive answer. Almost. And then she'd reached for her toast and moved on, as if we'd been discussing tax policy.
She'd believed me. Or maybe she hadn't cared enough to question the lie.
"Where'd you go just now?" Oliver asks.
"Nowhere."
"Liar." But he doesn't push.
That's the thing about Oliver—he sees more than he says. Knows when to press and when to let silence do the work. The bartender slides fresh drinks across the bar.
Oliver takes a long swallow before speaking again. "So this Ellsworth girl. Do you know anything about her?"
"Nothing relevant. She's been living in Europe. Some minor role in the family business." I swirl my drink. "The spare, apparently."
"The spare is marrying the spare. That's almost poetic."
"There's nothing poetic about it. It's a transaction. A merger of assets disguised as a wedding."
"Most marriages are, if you're honest about it." He finishes his drink. "At least you'll both know the terms going in."
A woman crosses my line of sight—wrong height, wrong coloring, wrong everything—and still my pulse stutters. Three weeks, and I'm still looking for her in crowds.
Still wondering who she was, what broke her, whether she made it through whatever darkness sent her to that club.
This is precisely why I have rules.
This is precisely why one night means one night.
"You know," Oliver says, watching me watch the crowd, "for someone who claims not to believe in connection, you spend an awful lot of energy looking for something."
"I'm not looking for anything."
"You've checked the door four times since we sat down." He tilts his head, curious rather than accusing. "Who is she?"
"No one."
"Must be some kind of no one to have you this distracted."
I set down my glass. "I'm tired. I should go."
"James." He catches my arm before I can stand. "Whatever's eating at you—and something clearly is—you don't have to handle it alone. That's what friends are for."
"I'm fine," I tell him.
"You're a terrible liar."
"And yet you keep believing me."
I retrieve my coat and step into the February cold.
The city spreads before me in lights and shadows. Somewhere out there is a woman I'll never see again—auburn hair, gray-green eyes, a voice that cut through my defenses like they were paper.
And somewhere else is the woman I'm supposed to marry. The Ellsworth daughter. Another stranger, another transaction.
And I wonder why the prospect feels less like a beginning and more like a loss.