I hide my face behind my hands. “I’m not.”
“I love it,” she cries. Volume, I’m realizing, is Ashleigh’s primary indicator of emotion. That and the surprising bark-laugh that occasionally jumps out of her before she’s even cracked a smile.
“What do we love?”
I open my eyes to find Miles arranging wineglasses in front of us.
“Your fake relationship,” Ashleigh says.
“Well, I don’t,” I say. “Now there’s no good way to get out of it. I mean, when we ‘break up,’ Peter will get to feel smug and superior about that.”
“That’s no problem,” Miles says, pouring a taste of white wine for each of us. “All we have to do is get married, and then stay together until they split up. And if they have kids, just have one more than them. If they get a dog, we get a cuter dog. If they buy a new house, we get a mansion.”
“A perfect plan,” I say. “Why didn’t I think of it?”
He pushes the wineglasses toward us. “Pinot blanc. It’s crisp and citrusy, with a little bit of pear, and it goes well with poultry and seafood. I’m kidding about the marriage, by the way.”
“You don’t say,” I reply, taking a sip.
“What do you think?” He leans forward, eager, focused.
I let the taste roll across my tongue before swallowing it. “It tastes like springtime.”
He smiles. “Exactly.”
“I think there’s something wrong with mine,” Ashleigh says. “It tastes like wine.”
“Here.” Miles pours more. “Try again.”
Ashleigh sips, then smacks her lips. “Oh, yeah. Big spring vibe.”
Katya, with the curtain fringe, calls for Miles then. He glances over his shoulder. A middle-aged guy with slicked-back hair, eyes disappearing into his face, is drunkenly leaning across the bar demanding something of the bartenders.
Miles pushes off the bar. “I’ll be right back.”
He beelines toward the drunk guy, a calm and polite smile fixed to his face though something about his eyes has flattened out, changed. Like he’s peering out from heavily tinted windows.
Ashleigh angles toward me. “Do you think if I keep being ignorant, he’ll keep pouring more, or was that a onetime thing?”
I watch him exchange a few words with the man. Miles nods, then bends his head toward Katya’s, the two of them quietly conferring, her hands braced lightly against his shoulders as she pushes up onto her tiptoes to reach his ear.
They both glance our way at the same time, and I spin back to Ashleigh, downing my drink. “I think you can just ask for more,” I say, “and he’ll probably give it to you.”
“I feel like a celeb,” she says. “I’ve never had this kind of in before.”
“Well, if having my heart shattered in the single most humiliating way imaginable can be of service to someone, I’ll take it.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Ashleigh says, swirling her glass, “but if Peter was going to break your heart now, he would’ve done it eventually.”
“So, what?” I say. “Peter and Petra are soulmates, and it was going to happen sooner or later?”
“Soulmates?” She laughs. “No. I’m saying your ex is the little boy looking over someone else’s shoulder, trying to figure out if the kid next to him has a better lunch. Only, the lunch box is shut, so even though he knows what his parents packed for him is pretty good, he’d still trade it just to open up that rusty little Batman lunch box.”
“What is this metaphor, Ashleigh,” I say.
“It makes perfect sense,” she says. “He’s a lunch swapper, and whether it was the rusty metal Batman lunch box or a Cars 2 zip-up one that’s filled with mold, at some point, he was going to trade in the sack lunch.”
“Just to be clear, I’m the sack lunch here?” I say.
“It ain’t about the bag, babe,” she says. “It’s what’s inside.”
“So I’m a paper sack with a heart of gold.”
“You could be a three-course balanced meal with a cute little Hostess dessert, and it wouldn’t matter. He knows you, and the lunch he doesn’t know is going to catch his eye. I’m sorry, I just realized I’m really hungry, so that probably explains some of the—oh, thank god.”
Miles is back, unloading our order in front of us: a board with three local cheeses, a variety of pickled vegetables, and some Waning Bay preserves, along with a basket of bread from a bakery in town.
“So,” he says, “a bit of a snag.”
“What, you ran out of grapes?” I say.
His eyes flick down as he lifts the next bottle from beneath the bar. “Katya, my coworker . . .” He clears his throat as he pours our next taste. “She heard from Petra. About my new girlfriend.”
“Oh no,” I say.
He grimaces. “I am . . . really sorry, Daphne.”
“She just asked if it was me, didn’t she,” I say. “If I’m the new girlfriend.”
