I hadn’t planned on staying long. It was one of those things you tell yourself to justify going at all — that you’ll just pop in, show your face, drink one beer, and disappear before anyone notices. But the truth was I’d been sitting alone in my apartment for three days, a half-finished report glowing on the screen and a silence that was beginning to weigh more than it should. When Daniel’s invitation came, I recognized a weakness in myself that I didn’t like. Not for the party. For her.
It was one of those evenings in late July when the day refuses to die. The sky above the garden was a deep, saturated blue — someone had held a flame beneath the horizon and forgotten to put it out. String lights were strung between the old apple trees, casting golden, dancing flecks on the freshly mowed grass. Grill smoke hung like a thin veil over everything, mixed with the smell of charred marinade and sunscreen and something sweet from the hedgerow. There was a steady cacophony of clinking glasses, muted laughter, and conversations that blended into the distinctive sound of a summer party just large enough that you can hide, but just small enough that someone will find you.
Daniel met me at the gate. He placed a hand on my shoulder, firm and warm, and steered me into the garden with a sense of ownership that made me wonder whether it was me or the lawn he was proud of. “Leo! Finally. I saved you a seat at the table.” He smiled broadly, and there was something in the way he said it — a seat, not just a chair — that I only understood the significance of afterward. He led me straight there, between Petter, his buddy who always told jokes no one laughed at, and an empty chair. “Maria will be here any minute,” he added, in a tone that implied this was a foregone conclusion. Then he disappeared toward the grill.
I should have reacted to that. To the empty chair. To the small, calculated precision of the arrangement. But I didn’t, because in that moment, Maria arrived.
She moved through the garden with an effortless elegance that made everything around her seem slightly too try-hard by comparison. A simple white sundress that hugged her curves without clinging. Bare shoulders with a stripe of sun. And a gaze — intelligent, warm, and with a wicked spark deep in those dark eyes that promised serious trouble for anyone who let themselves get caught by it. She was here with Daniel. Her husband. My friend. And I hated him for it, with a quiet, shameful intensity I’d never have admitted to anyone.
“There you are,” she said as she sat down beside me. As if she’d been looking. Maybe she had. The scent of her hit me first — citrus and warm skin — and I registered a cramp deep in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
“Where’s Daniel?” I asked, mostly to have something to say, and to remind myself that he existed.
