Odette

19

" W ho are these women we're meeting?" Britton asks as I pull into the parking lot of the bar I've rented out for the night. It's a burlesque club, and it was highly recommended for a girls' night venue.

"You already know Vanessa," I say. Britton has been a friend for long enough that she and my bestie have crossed paths on more than a few occasions. "The rest are mostly wives and girlfriends of Seattle's NHL team."

"How do you know them?"

"Someone I grew up with is on the team."

"Oh? Oh! Look at your face! This is not just a someone , this is a someone you've done naughty things with." She narrows her perfectly lined eyes at me. "You dirty slut, how dare you keep this information from me?"

"Oh, fuck off." I laugh at her mock outrage. "You went to Saint Barts for an entire month with that Javier guy and didn't tell me until a year later that you weren't there for filming."

"Only because he turned out to be a drug lord. How embarrassing." She sighs with the dramatics only a great actress can deliver. "Besides, I was so young."

"You were thirty-one," I remind her.

"Which is very young when you plan to find your way into immortality before you die. Which I do, thank you very much."

"Well, when you find that Lestat or whoever, send him my way. I swear I saw a frown line this morning."

"Bullshit! You still look the same as when I met you, you're like that Price is Right guy, you age backwards," she says, getting out of the car.

"You need an eye exam."

"You need to get laid, you'd frown far less," she snaps. This is always how we've been. While Vanessa is my classy conspirator, Britton is a wild spirit always looking for fun and adventure. "Oooh, you have been getting laid! It's written all over your face. Woman, you telegraph too easily. I need to teach you some tricks."

"Stop looking at me," I grumble, and she laughs louder.

"You and I are going to have a long talk later, my friend."

"Yes, we are. You need to fill me in on what happened with you and that southern hottie who co-starred with you in that last movie."

"Ah, Miles Jameson," she says wistfully. "I think I could have made myself a wife for that man. If only I was the one he wanted."

"Don't I know that feeling all too fucking well," I mumble, opening the door and ushering my friend in ahead of me. Seems we really do have some catching up to do.

The space is romantically lit with dim overhead chandeliers and candles on the tables. Its décor reminiscent of the twenties and thirties with perfectly draped crisp linens and dark wood. A few rope swings and acrobat bars hang from the ceiling so the performers will be seen from the entire room.

Everyone else is already here, because, of course, the Hollywood starlet is always fashionably late, even though I showed up at her hotel twenty minutes earlier than planned. Vanessa greets us with two glasses of pink champagne.

"Hey, thanks, Vanessa," I say, air kissing her.

"Of course! Britt, great to see you, it's been far too long."

"Not since our girls' trip to Dominican Republic, we should do that again soon."

"That was three years ago, and I still haven't recovered. I'm convinced you don't know the meaning of the word relax," Vanessa says.

"I do know," Britton argues. "It means party until five in the morning, nap for five hours, and then start again."

"If five hours is only a nap, I haven't had a night's sleep in eight years," Isla says, stepping up to the three of us. "Hi."

"Hi, thank you for your help with all this," I tell her. "Britton Macy, this is Isla Wylder."

"Wylder? Oh shit, you're married to Cillian. I didn't put it all together when said NHL wives. You, my new friend, are a very lucky lady."

"You know of him?" Isla asks, grinning like she knows exactly how lucky she is.

"My director for this film is a gay Canadian man with an obscene infatuation with your husband."

"How obscene?" Isla asks.

"Simon has worked with the most famous A-listers in the game, but he'd faint on sight if your husband walked up to him. Who can blame him, though, right? You've married a very pretty man."

"As long as he keeps his teeth, anyway," Isla teases. "Come on in and meet the others."

Two hours later, the show is done, and we're all teetering the line between buzzed and on-our-ass drunk. Except Isla, who passes on every alcoholic drink but has a second helping of the dessert being passed around.

"How did you two meet?" Willa asks Britton and me.

"I'll never forget it," Britton starts. "I could have ruined my entire career before it had ever really taken off. I was cast as Claire in The Brownstone , fresh on the scene at only twenty-two. The studio had pushed a stylist on me for my red-carpet debut event. I was sent to the event to be introduced and first impressions matter, you know? Except the stylist was trying to dress me like some sexy sixteen-year-old straight out of a Britney Spears video or that movie Clueless . Short plaid skirts and thigh-high stockings. I argued and said I refused to be infantilized. The studio was pissed at me for being ‘bratty and problematic'. Anyway, I searched for up-and-coming stylists and found a video of ."

"I was barely older than she was," I add. "I'd made a few videos with styling tips and put them up on YouTube in the hopes that someone might see them. They were so poorly made and awful, but this was before we had the technology to make cutesy little cuts for TikTok."

"They weren't awful," Britton admonishes. "They were insightful, and you had a style I could relate to. Anyway, I got in touch, hired her to find me an outfit for that red carpet and another for the afterparty. The press ate me up and the studio never said another word."

"What did you dress her in?" one of the other wives asks. I've only just met her tonight and can't recall her name. Madison, maybe? Or Mackenzie. I've had too much champagne to recall.

"I dressed her in something very reminiscent of an iconic Brigitte Bardot red dress from the fifties. Everyone at that time was dressing as scantily clad as they could get away with, looking more like they should be stepping on stage at a rock concert rather than walking the same sidewalks as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn," I say. "I wanted Britton to stand out as classic and classy, because she is, so long as her mouth is shut."

"Oh my god," she laughs. "I can't argue it, but how dare you say it in front of a room of strangers."

"You just showed this room of ‘strangers' your whole ass a few minutes ago," Vanessa reminds her. One of the performers had offered to teach Britton some tricks on the overhead bar and she eagerly accepted despite not being dressed quite right for it.

"Also true." She shrugs and drains the remnants of her glass. "What can I say? I'm nursing a heartache."

That's met with a round of sighs, and someone says, ‘do tell'.

"Yes, Britton. Spill some tea," I say.

"It's a tale as old as time. Girl falls in love with a boy whose heart was taken by another a long time ago. She's practically a ghost to him now, they haven't spoken in years. But he holds a sense of responsibility and devotion to her that I can't crack through," she says, with a sad smile. "Honestly, it would make the best movie."

"Would it have a happy ever after?" Willa asks, sympathetically.

"We'll have to wait and see, I guess. But I have hope."

"He's an idiot if he doesn't see how great you are," someone else adds.

"That's the thing," Britton says, resting her elbows on her knees and placing her face in her hands. "I think he does. The way he looks at me tells me he does. The small things he does for me; be it checking in to make sure I've eaten, or that my stress level isn't too high after a long day. He makes sure I relax and laugh, that it isn't all work all the time. He's protective of me, wary of some of the studio big wigs that stand too close and expect too much attention. And maybe that's who he is with everyone, but it felt special."

I can't help how her words conjure a picture of Gavin in my own mind. He does those sorts of things for me. It's been two weeks since we had sex, but he hasn't pressured me since. In fact, that morning after breakfast, he left as if we hadn't shared anything but a friendly meal, and he's been nothing but friendly since. He checks in with a call or a text every couple of days, making sure I feel well, have eaten, gotten sleep.

We've become oddly amicable, and I find myself concerned for him most days, too. Wondering how beat up he is after a game, which I've been watching all from the comfort of my own house. I haven't braved going back to the arena, though he's offered tickets. The worry that it sends the wrong kind of signal lives in the back of my mind like a lead weight chained to my ankle.

Or it's because of the signal it sends to me. I want to be there, to experience the ride with him as much as I can before I lose the chance. Every day, I lie to myself that I don't care about him as something more than just a guy I know. Every day, I pretend that I don't want him back in my bed. Every day, I remind myself of how much it hurt to watch him say I do to Caroline. How I sobbed in my backyard until my parents came home to find me and my father had to carry me inside.

Then I see Tori at school and am reminded of why. The more I grow to know her, the more I don't hate that my heartache was part of the price to raise her, because she's exceptional in so many ways. There's no way to know if she'd be who she is today if Gavin hadn't made the decision he did. Am I so selfish that I can't see that? No, of course not.

When he calls, I often steer the conversation to her, and I've learned how great of a life they gave her. Now that she's not some faceless, nameless kid, I'm thankful for her in ways I couldn't have expected.

But then there is Preston. He takes me out a night or two every week. We go to fancy restaurants that remind me of my life in New York. We have intellectual conversations about art and travel that remind me of my life back in New York. We sometimes have sex, and that, too, reminds me of my life back in New York, and the way I sought men who weren't exactly available.

It's probably why he's attracted to me. Preston is easy; not exciting or challenging, but I know what to expect with him and there's comfort in that.

"Maybe the best way to get over him is to get under a hockey player. Who on the team is single?" Britton asks.

"Blom, if you like hot goalies with a side of strange," Isla says. "He's a sweetheart, though. Then there's Letty, Axel, Vaughn."

"A side of strange sounds mildly intriguing, but who is this Vaughn guy," Britton asks, looking directly at me with a shit-eating grin.

"Gavin, he's the one I grew up with."

"What's the story there?" she asks.

"We graduated high school and went our separate ways," I say, trying to sound very unattached and casual. "Didn't see him again until I moved here and met his daughter at work."

"You teach his daughter?" she asks.

"Mentor," I correct. "I'm not a professor."

"Are you dating?"

"Yes, but not him."

"So, he's a free agent?"

"I didn't say that," I say, taking another long sip of my drink and not looking up to see the various women laughing.

My defenses are lowering with Gavin, I can admit that. He's not as far off the table as I've kept him before, but he's not part of my place setting yet, either. The week between him telling me he was marrying Caroline, and the day of their wedding, shaped the person I am. It's not so easy to set that aside. I live by the rules that hurt girl made for me. They've protected me well, so far.

Willa quickly shut the conversation down by saying there's nothing wrong with a woman going after what she wants if the man is single and willing.

Maybe Gavin isn't willing and that's why he hasn't been back at my door. Or maybe he's who he says he is and I just don't know how to trust him.

And that's exactly why I keep going back to Preston. Because he doesn't cause this mental turmoil. He also doesn't cause the same explosive orgasms or the knot of anticipation in my tummy when I'm about to see him.

"There's some piping hot tea there," Britton whispers to me. "Isn't there?"

"Scorching hot."