"You're telling me the man who hasn't touched you in two years suddenly turned into a romantic poet overnight?"
Tessa leans back in the worn leather booth of Rosie's Café, one perfectly arched brow climbing toward her honey-blonde bangs.
At thirty-four, she carries herself like a woman who's survived too much to tolerate anyone's nonsense—sharp cheekbones, sharper tongue, and warm brown eyes that miss nothing.
The afternoon light catches the silver hoops in her ears as she crosses her arms over her vintage band tee.
I slide the gold card across the sticky tabletop.
"I know how it sounds."
"It sounds insane."
Tessa picks up the card, turning it over in manicured fingers.
"Saturday. Midnight. Wear the mask." She snorts, shaking her head slowly. "This is either the most romantic thing he's done since your wedding or the opening scene of a true crime documentary. I genuinely cannot tell which."
"Tessa, please."
"What? I'm being supportive."
She signals the waitress for more coffee—our usual Thursday tradition, same booth we've claimed for over a decade, same cracked vinyl seats that have witnessed every crisis of our adult lives.
"I just need you to hear yourself right now. Caspian Voss, the man who treats emotional vulnerability like a communicable disease, sent you roses and a mysterious invitation to a masquerade ball."
"He's trying. Maybe he finally heard what I said at dinner. Maybe something clicked."
Tessa sets the card down and fixes me with that look—the one she's perfected over fifteen years of friendship, the one that says she loves me too much to lie.
"Elara, I held your hair back when you got food poisoning in Cabo. I sat with you through that god-awful movie marathon after your father's funeral. I drove six hours in the middle of the night when you called me at three a.m. after the miscarriage because Caspian was too busy to leave his conference."
"He was closing a deal," I say quietly. "The merger was months in the making, and if he'd left—"
"You were bleeding out and crying alone in a hospital bathroom." Tessa's voice goes sharp as glass. "You lost your baby, Elara. Your baby. And your husband decided a business deal was more important than holding your hand while you fell apart."
My coffee has gone cold.
I stare at the dark surface, watching my distorted reflection ripple when I breathe.
The memory still lives in my body—the cramping that started during lunch, the blood that wouldn't stop, the way the fluorescent lights buzzed while I sat on that cold tile floor and prayed for someone, anyone, to come find me.
I called Caspian seven times.
He texted back once: Handling it. Will check in later.
Tessa had burst through those emergency room doors at dawn, mascara smeared, still in her pajamas, smelling like the lavender candle she always burned while reading. She held me so tight I thought my ribs might crack, and she didn't let go for hours.
"I will never forgive him for that night," Tessa continues, her voice softer now but no less fierce. "And honestly, sweetheart, I don't think you should either."
"Maybe this is him trying to make up for it." I hate how desperate I sound. "Maybe he's finally realized what he's been doing, and this is his way of starting over. It's exactly the kind of thing he used to do when we first met."
"When you first met, he showed up at your apartment with a picnic basket and convinced you to have dinner on a random rooftop because he said the stars looked better from high places."
Tessa's expression gentles slightly.
"That man was trying to win you. This man has already got you. Those are two very different creatures."
"People can change."
"Can they?"
She reaches across the table, squeezing my hand with a warmth that makes my eyes sting.
"Honey, I've watched you shrink yourself into nothing for that man. You stopped painting because he needed the spare room for his home office. You apologize for existing in your own goddamn house."
"That's not—"
"The girl I met in my bookstore twelve years ago, crying over some loser boyfriend who didn't deserve her tears—she had fire in her. She argued with me for forty-five minutes about whether Wuthering Heights was romantic or toxic. She wore bright colors and laughed too loud and took up space like she had every right to be there." Tessa's grip tightens. "Where did she go, Elara?"
The question cuts deeper than anything Caspian said last night.
"She's still here. Somewhere. I think."
"Then prove it."
Tessa slides the card back across the table toward me.
"If Caspian has finally pulled his head out of his designer ass and decided to remember he has a wife, then fine. Let's find out. But you're not walking into whatever this is looking like a woman who's been beaten down for two years."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we're going shopping."
A familiar spark lights up her brown eyes—the same spark she gets before dragging me into some adventure I'll regret and treasure in equal measure.
"If this really is your husband trying to make things right, we're getting you a dress that makes him forget his own name."
"Tessa, I don't know if—"
"No arguments."
She's already pulling out her phone, typing rapidly.
"I know a place. Very exclusive, very expensive, and they owe me a favor from that thing with the stolen Monet. Don't ask."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
She grins at me, and for a moment I see the girl I met all those years ago too—the one who handed me tissues and told me I deserved better, the one who's been in my corner through every disaster since.
"Saturday night, you're walking into that masquerade looking like a woman who remembers her worth. And if Caspian Voss isn't on his knees by midnight, begging for another chance, then he never deserved you in the first place."
She throws cash on the table for our coffees and grabs her jacket.
I follow her out into the gray afternoon.
Maybe this is our second chance.
The thought blooms in my chest, equal parts hope and terror, as Tessa hails a cab with the confidence of a woman who expects the universe to bend to her will.
She's been wrong about Caspian before—convinced he was too cold, too closed off, too married to his work to ever really love me.
But she's also been right more times than I want to admit.
The cab pulls up, and I slide in beside her, watching the city blur past through rain-streaked windows.
Somewhere across town, my husband is probably sitting in his glass tower, signing contracts, commanding rooms, never knowing that his wife is about to bet everything on a single night.
But as the cab turns onto Fifth Avenue, a small voice whispers in the back of my mind.
What if Tessa's right?