Sixty hours ago I was mopping locker room floors. Tonight I'm standing in a house full of people who think I'm in love with a man I can barely tolerate, wearing a dress that costs more than my annual rent, with a diamond on my finger and a lie in my mouth.
Caterers in black weave between champagne towers that catch the light like crystal staircases. Flowers I couldn't name if my life depended on it spill from vases on every surface, and the warm lighting makes even the air look expensive.
Coach Harrison's production. His guest list, his caterers, his champagne. Sponsors, media, players, investors — all packed into rooms I've only been sleeping in for several nights, drinking wine that costs more than my monthly grocery budget.
The bathroom mirror shows me a stranger.
Claire sent a woman named Keiko who spent ninety minutes turning my face into something editorial. Cheekbones I didn't know I had, lips that look like they belong to someone who's never bitten them bloody during a panic attack. Eyes striking blue contrasting with the eyeshadows.
The dress is navy and fitted, the kind of thing that moves when I breathe. My blonde hair falls in waves I couldn't replicate with a gun to my head.
Jared appears in the mirror behind me in a tailored suit, no tie, top button undone. His eyes travel over my reflection and something crosses his face that he smothers before it fully forms. "Ready?"
"No."
"Perfect. Let's go."
He offers his arm and I take it. We descend the staircase together, his hand warm against my waist, both of us smiling for the crowd below like we've been doing this for years instead of hours.
Halfway down he stops, turns me toward him, and kisses me. Deep and sudden, his hand sliding to the back of my neck.
My fingers grip his lapel and the room erupts in applause with champagne glasses chiming and I kiss him back. Because that's the job, that's the contract. That's why I'm wearing a dress that costs more than William's breathing monitor.
At the bottom of the stairs, Coach is waiting. His smile is the satisfied kind — the one that counts money. He leans close to Jared's ear. "Ratings are through the roof. You're the golden boy again."
A journalist appears at my elbow with a microphone and a recorder. "Mia, the whole country is in love with your story. Tell us — how did you two meet?"
My brain empties and for one half-second I'm standing at the bottom of a staircase with a microphone in my face and nothing in my head. I can feel Jared beside me and Coach behind me, both staring, both waiting to see if the investment pays off.
"We actually knew each other in high school. Jared was the star quarterback, and so attentive even then."
I force a shy smile and a light laugh, the kind I've heard women do at parties when they're selling a version of their life.
"Life took us in completely different directions after that. Years went by and I became a janitor at the football club, not exactly where I pictured myself." I glance at Jared with something I hope reads as tenderness. "And there he was. Standing right in front of me, like no time had passed at all. I guess some things are just meant to circle back."
The reporter's face is glowing. "High school sweethearts reunited? A cleaning lady and a quarterback? That's a real Cinderella story!"
The headline writes itself, I can practically see it crawling across the ticker at the bottom of a screen. Jared wraps his arm around me and steers me away from the microphone.
His mouth is smiling but his whisper hits my ear like a cold wind. "You're adding chapters to a story that doesn't exist."
"You wanted convincing," I whisper back without breaking character, "I'm convincing."
Coach catches up, falls into step beside us, and nods once. "Well done, Mia. Now everyone will want to know about your relationship."
He says it like a compliment, but it lands like a leash.
An hour of handshakes and champagne-cheers and strangers touching my arm asking to see the ring, and by the time I slip through the garden doors my lungs are burning for air that hasn't been breathed by fifty investors first.
I carry my heels in one hand, untouched champagne in the other. The grass is cold and wet under my bare feet and it's the most honest thing I've felt all night. The bass from the party thumps through the glass behind me like a heartbeat that doesn't belong to me.
"Nice speech in there."
I turn around and see Luke standing by the stone wall at the garden's edge. Beer in hand, suit that doesn't quite fit him the way Jared's does. A little tight across the shoulders, the sleeves a fraction short, and the body underneath too real for the fabric to contain.
The look on his face is something I haven't seen before. Not the easy warmth, not the steady patience. Something exposed, like a nerve the suit can't cover.
"High school sweethearts," he says. "Very touching."
I hear everything underneath it. "Luke…"
"He didn't even know your name at that party." His voice is quiet, steady, a scalpel instead of a hammer. "I was there, he looked at you like you were furniture." He takes a sip of his beer. "I knew more than just your name. I always knew you."
The words land in the garden like something dropped from a great height — no crash, just the dull, irreversible sound of impact. He doesn't say anything else, and he doesn't need to.
The garden lights catch the jaw he grew into, the shoulders that weren't there before, and I think about Rosie's diner and the hug that lasted a beat too long. The car that smells like pine. The way my ribs tighten when he's near and I still can't tell if it's safety or want or something in between that doesn't have a name yet.
"Luke, if things were different…"
"But they're not." He finishes his beer and smiles — the real one, the one that reaches his eyes and makes them soft in a way that costs him something I can see. "Congratulations, Mia. I mean it."
He walks back inside and the glass door catches the party light when it closes behind him, leaving me alone in the garden. Holding champagne I haven't touched, the ring heavy on my finger, the grass cold under my feet.
Somewhere inside, someone laughs and a champagne cork pops and the celebration continues without me.
I wonder what my life would look like right now if I'd turned left instead of right ten years ago. If the boy who saved me a seat, who supported me and laughed with me, who always was my friend had ever said what he just almost said. Before the world got in the way.
I stay until the cold pushes me back in. Upstairs, away from the noise, I slip into the bedroom and close the door. Heels dropped by the closet, phone pulled from where I left it charging on the nightstand.
The screen lights up and my stomach hits the floor — six missed calls from Dr. Martinez.
I press play on the voicemail and her voice fills the dark bedroom, steady and clinical in the way that means nothing is steady. "Mia, this is Dr. Martinez. William's fever spiked to 103.8 in the last hour. We've moved him to the ICU as a precaution — his breathing is labored and we want him on continuous monitoring. I need you to come in as soon as you get this. Drive safe, but come now."
I'm already unzipping the dress, stepping out of it, pulling jeans off the chair and a sweatshirt over my head. My fingers are shaking so badly I can barely tie my shoes when the bedroom door opens and Jared fills the frame, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled, the noise of his party rising up the stairs behind him like a tide.
"I saw you leave." His eyes drop to the dress on the floor, the heels kicked sideways, me half-dressed and vibrating. "What happened?"
"William's in the ICU." The words come out flat. Factual. If I let any air into them I'll fall apart. "I have to go."