“Great,” Celeste says. She is patient as Merritt gradually reveals the particulars of her relationship with Tag. They meet at her apartment. They once went out for sandwiches. Tag paid, pulled her chair out, emptied her trash. Tag is refined, he’s mature, he is smart and successful. She knows it’s cliché but she is a sucker for his British accent. She wants to eat it, take a bath in it. Tag is jealous of Robbie. He showed up outside Merritt’s apartment building in the middle of the night because he was so jealous.
“Does he ever t-t-talk about Greer?” Celeste asks. She pours herself another glass of wine. She is getting drunk. Their food has been cleared and so Celeste attacks the bowl of peanuts.
“Sometimes he mentions her,” Merritt says. “But we tend to stay away from the topic of family.”
“Wise,” Celeste says.
Merritt tells Celeste that, just a few days earlier, Tag asked Merritt to show up at a hotel bar where he was meeting clients for drinks. They had sex in the ladies’ room, then Merritt left.
It’s like a scene from a movie, Celeste thinks. Except it’s real life, her real best friend and her real future father-in-law. She should be horrified! But in an uncharacteristic twist, she is almost relieved that Merritt is doing something even worse than she is. She’s in love with Benji’s best friend. But she has exercised willpower. Willpower, she now understands, is an endangered species. Other people conduct wildly inappropriate affairs.
“I have to get home,” Celeste says, checking her phone. “Benji lands in twenty minutes and he’s c-c-coming over for dinner.”
“You can’t tell Benji,” Merritt says.
Celeste gives her friend a look. She’s not sure what kind of look because her face feels like it’s made of Silly Putty. The air in the bar is shimmering. Celeste is so drunk.
“Obviously not,” she says.
Merritt pays the bill, and Celeste, for once, doesn’t protest or offer to pay half, nor does she refuse when Merritt presses thirty dollars in her hand and puts her into a cab headed uptown. It’s bribe money, and Celeste deserves it.
Somehow, she makes it up the stairs and into her apartment. She can’t imagine sobering up enough to have dinner with Benji, but if she cancels he’ll think she’s upset about his weekend away.
She cannot tell him about Merritt and his father. She can’t let anything slip. She has to act as though everything is fine, normal, status quo.
She sends Merritt a text. End it! Now! Please!
Then she falls asleep facedown on her futon.
She wakes up when she hears her apartment’s buzzer. The light coming through her sole bedroom window has mellowed. It’s late. What time? She checks her bedside clock. Quarter after seven. That will be Benji.
She hurries to the front door and buzzes him in, then she rushes to the bathroom to brush her teeth and splash water on her face. She’s still drunk but not as drunk as she was and not yet cotton-mouthed or hung over. She’s even a little hungry. Maybe she and Benji can walk down to the Peruvian chicken place, she thinks. It’s Sunday night, so Benji will sleep at home and Celeste can be in bed by ten. She has two all-school field trips coming to the zoo tomorrow; it’s the curse of June.
Celeste is immersed in these mundane thoughts when she opens the door, so what she sees comes as a complete shock.
It’s not Benji.
It’s Shooter.
“Wait,” she says.
“Hey, Sunshine,” he says. “Can I come in?”
“Where’s B-B-Benji?” she asks, and an arrow of pure red panic shoots through her. “D-D-Did something happen?”
“He took a cab straight home from JFK,” Shooter says. “Didn’t he call you?”
“I d-d-don’t know,” Celeste says. She hasn’t checked her phone since… since before getting in the taxi to come home.
Shooter nods. “Trust me. He called you and left a message saying he wanted to go home to bed. There wasn’t much left of old Benji when we got off the plane.”
“Okay,” Celeste says. “So what are you d-d-doing here?”
“Can I come in, please?” Shooter asks.
Celeste checks behind Shooter. The stairwell is its usual gray, miserable self. She thinks to feel embarrassed about her apartment—Shooter lives in some corporate condo in Hell’s Kitchen, but even that must put her place to shame.
She isn’t supposed to care what Shooter thinks.
“Fine,” she says. She’s doing a good job at sounding nonchalant, even a bit irritated, but her insides are flapping around like the Bronx Zoo’s hysterical macaw Kellyanne. Benji has been diminished by his bachelor adventure, and Shooter doesn’t look so hot either. His hair is messy and he’s wearing a New York Giants T-shirt, a frayed pair of khaki shorts, and flip-flops. He looks younger to Celeste, nearly innocent.
She steps aside to let him in, then she closes the door behind him.
“So how was the bachelor party of the century?” she asks.
Instead of answering, Shooter kisses her, once, and it feels exactly the way Celeste dreamed it would: soft and delicious. She makes a cooing sound, like a dove, and Shooter kisses her again. Their mouths open and his tongue seeks out hers. Her legs start to quiver; she can’t believe she is still standing. Shooter takes her head in his hands; his touch is gentle but the electricity, the heat, the desire between them is crazy. Celeste had no idea her body could respond to another person like this. She’s on fire.
Shooter’s hands travel down Celeste’s back to her ass. He pulls her against him. She wants him so badly she could weep. She hates that she was right. She had known if this ever happened, she would become delirious and lose control of her senses.
Don’t stop, she thinks. Don’t stop!
He pulls away. “Celeste,” he says. His voice is husky. “I’m in love with you.”
I’m in love with you too, she thinks. But she can’t say it, and suddenly her good sense kicks in the way it should have a few moments ago. This is wrong! It’s wrong! She is engaged to Benji! She will not debase that, she will not cheat on him. She will not cheat on him. She will not be like Merritt or Tag. They may think that the intensity of their desire justifies their actions, but that is morally convenient. Celeste isn’t religious but she does have an immutable sense of right and wrong and she also believes—though she would never say this—that if Merritt and Tag continue, something bad will happen. Something very bad.
This will not be the case for Celeste. She can’t falter like this or her mother will die. She’s sure of it.
“You have to leave,” Celeste says.
