Chapter 3

Mel stood in a hallway so plush, she was certain Bebe and Kade would open the door to find her ankle-deep in the carpet. The trains had been a mess due to weekend construction, and she worried her arrival was too late to be polite or fashionable. Behind the door, she could hear the faint sounds of a party already in progress: soft instrumental music, the murmur of voices, the clink of glass stemware on a marble surface (a sound Mel heard in her sleep, she was so familiar with it), and cutting above it all, Bebe's loud laughter.

Knocking would be a good, normal thing to do. The doorman had already called up to announce her arrival, so Mel couldn't stand in the hall forever. She hefted the old plastic milk jug full of mandarin cordial in her arms. It had been the only container in her apartment big enough to transport it. Maybe she should have bought a case of mason jars, something classier than a rinsed-out gallon of Cream-O-Land.

Screw it. She knocked.

The door swung open to reveal Kade. They were wearing what Mel could only describe as a costume of loose black trousers topped with a sweeping wrap cape the color of an arctic sea. A large geometric pendant hung from their neck. Their feet were bare and pale, their red hair pulled back into a short ponytail with a few curls framing their face. The overall effect was that of a time traveler from the future, if the future had been imagined by someone in the 1950s. Mel really dug the look, actually. She felt out of place in her ripped jeans and steel-gray sweater, but she resolved not to second-guess her fashion choices.

"Oh hello. Mel, right?" Kade said, their gaze falling to the jug Mel held clutched to her chest. "And you brought… liquid."

"It's cordial," Mel said.

Kade nodded, their sharp chin bobbing exactly once. "It's certainly a very friendly gesture."

The joke was so at odds with Kade's stony demeanor that Mel gave a shocked laugh. Then she noticed that Kade was staring at her like she'd grown two heads.

Okay. Not a joke.

"That's not— I mean it's, uh—" She shook the milk jug a bit, hoping the slosh of the bright orange liqueur would explain itself. It didn't; Kade kept staring. "Literally cordial. The kind you drink?"

"Ah." Kade's eyes flicked over her once more. They opened the door wider and gestured for Mel to enter. Mel gave a half smile, half grimace and stepped inside. So much for endearing herself to Bebe's wife.

She let Kade take her jug and her winter coat and watched them spirit both away.

Mel took stock of her surroundings. Daniel had demanded a complete rundown of her hosts' condo, after all, and he'd be pissed if she skimped on the details. The place was, as suspected, ridiculously swanky. The front door led directly into an expansive kitchen/living room/dining area with high ceilings and an entire wall of windows overlooking the river. This one room alone could probably fit Mel and Daniel's whole apartment inside it, and if the floating staircase was any clue, there was a lot more to see. Mel tried to take in what she could from her spot, noting an eclectic mix of paintings on the walls and sculptures displayed on various pieces of furniture. If she squinted, she could be inside some high-end SoHo gallery.

The brunch guests were as artsy as the surroundings, with a range of ages and styles and accents. They all looked perfectly at home among the expensive finishes. Mel overheard someone by the breakfast bar say something about Munich in the winter. Everyone nodded knowingly and made noises of commiseration.

What the hell was she doing here? These weren't her people. They'd never worked for tips a day in their lives; she would bet her last hard-fought dollar on it. They likely never even considered the existence of people like her. There was no fucking way she could fit in with this crowd, let alone become friends with Bebe and Kade.

As she stood there contemplating a strategic retreat with some excuse (sudden onset migraine? Daniel texting from the ER? She'd left the stove on?), Bebe came barreling toward her with a huge smile on her face. She was wearing a canary-yellow sundress. In the middle of winter. Clearly, she had no plans to leave the comfort of her home today. Mel didn't blame her; if she lived in a place this nice, she'd never leave either.

"You made it!" Bebe raised her arms, then stopped short. "Are you a hugger?"

The question wasn't really a surprise, coming from Bebe. She had texted Mel the day before to ask if she had any dietary restrictions and what her pronouns were.

"I'm not opposed," she said, trying to sound chill.

"I'll take it." Bebe threw her arms around Mel's shoulders. The embrace brought her mouth alongside Mel's ear. "So glad you came," she said right into it. She smelled like cinnamon. It made Mel feel slightly feral.

She squeezed Bebe around her soft waist, wanting to return the gesture. Should she say something complimentary, too? "I like your perfume," she said as they broke apart. "It's nice."

"Oh, it's not perfume. Kade's sensitive to artificial scents, so none of that for me." Bebe's smile made her nose crinkle. "It's the coffee cake. I always get messy when I'm in the kitchen. There's probably a metric ton of spices in my hair." She shook a hand through her loose blond waves, laughing.

Mel felt a little better knowing that, at least in this respect, her hosts were down-to-earth. No caterer or maid service at this party. "Well, you smell great."

Cool. And normal.

If Bebe thought it was a weird thing to say, she didn't show it. Her smile only grew as she grasped Mel by the wrist. "Come on, let me introduce you to everyone."

The group consisted of a handful of people, not counting Bebe and Kade. Bebe strode right into their little circle to disrupt the current conversation.

"Everyone! This is Mel," Bebe announced in her booming voice. "She's a wonderfully talented mixologist and she was kind enough to bring us a replacement for our boring old orange juice." Bebe nodded over to the open-concept kitchen, where Kade was already dutifully measuring out the cordial into champagne flutes.

A murmur of excitement went through the group. Mel felt her face heat; she hadn't felt this on display since winning a spelling bee in third grade. Being the center of attention, even the positive kind, tended to make her skin itch.

Bebe threaded their arms together and led Mel around the circle, introducing her to each person in turn. Mel was terrible with names and worse with faces—at work, she could rely on guests' credit cards and seat locations to provide her with the relevant info. In a real-life party, she was adrift.

The only thing the guests seemed to have in common was an unreasonable level of attractiveness. There was Callen, who was Bebe's financial adviser (okay, fancy), and his husband, CJ, who was in ceramics, whatever that meant. (Did he make them? Import them? Mel didn't ask.) Both were white, older, light-haired, and had names that started with C, which was really unfair. CJ had a small scar through his upper lip, though, which Mel noted as he shook her hand and declared himself charmed.

"Are you here all on your own?" Callen asked. "No plus-ones?" He craned his neck as if looking for some invisible partner who might be standing behind Mel.

She tried to take the nosiness in stride. "Yep, flying solo. Totally single."

Callen looked pointedly at Bebe. "I see."

"Ignore him. He's an incurable gossip," Bebe said, and led Mel to the next guest in the rotation.

Dez was a white woman with a career in academia and an accent of vaguely European origin. Next was Cilla, who was so gorgeous they could have been a model, but who actually worked in the mayor's office doing something with small-business outreach. They had several pieces inked onto their forearms, the whorls expertly shaded onto their dark skin. Mel felt a surge of relief at not being the only tattooed person at this party.

Last was Sawyer, who was just—some guy.

"Sawyer is a visual artist," Bebe said while Mel searched his face for a birthmark or piercing or literally anything to distinguish him from any other white guy. No dice. "He and Kade shared studio space once upon a time."

"Kade is an artist?" Mel now knew more about the other guests than she did Bebe's partner, apparently.

"You weren't aware?" Sawyer gestured with his water glass at the paintings and sculptures arranged around the huge room. "They're pretty prolific. You must have seen a Kade St. Cloud piece at some point, unless you're living under a rock."

This one was kind of judgey. At least that was a memorable trait. Mel forced a brittle smile onto her face. "No rock, just the LES. Guess I don't dip my toes into the art world much."

"Everyone has their bubble," Bebe said diplomatically. She unhooked her arm from Mel's to pat Sawyer on his pale, featureless cheek. "That's why I still invite you to these things, Sawyer: to get you out of that studio. Otherwise, you might start to think that's all there is to life, hm?"

The admonishment, though subtle, was not lost on Mel.

Sawyer seemed to pick up on it, too. He ducked his head, his shoulders rounding forward in classic chagrin. "Sorry, Mel. I shouldn't have talked down to you. I love Kade's work so much, it's hard for me to imagine someone not knowing about it."

Bebe nodded in approval, then cut her eyes to Mel. It seemed some kind of response was in order.

"Uh. That's okay," Mel said. There was some kind of power dynamic going on here, she thought, one she didn't totally understand. She'd never received such an apology for a small slight. Was Bebe an actual wizard at negotiating these kinds of things? This was the second time in their short acquaintance that Mel had witnessed her take control of a situation where someone was behaving badly. Maybe it was a lawyer thing.

Whatever it was, probably best to keep the conversation moving. Mel turned to one of the sculptures perched on top of a mid-century cabinet. "So Kade made all of these?" She didn't know much about fine art, but she had an eye for aesthetics that came in handy when crafting a cocktail that was as visually striking as it was drinkable. (Fucking Instagram, everything had to make a good photograph these days.) The piece on the cabinet, a jagged shard of plaster about the size of a coffee mug, looked like an abstract knife caught in a downward slice, the point of it balanced on its plinth. It looked totally badass, though Mel was pretty sure that wasn't a word people used for high art. "What's this one called?"

"?‘Lovers Number 12.' It's a series," Sawyer said helpfully.

Mel was taken aback. She had assumed the shape was meant to evoke something interesting like movement or violence, not love. That was the blandest thing in the world. She realized with a quick look around the room that many of the other sculptures were built along the same lines, and probably belonged to the same series. "I like it," she said, "but what's it supposed to mean?"

Sawyer opened his mouth, but Bebe beat him to the punch. "I imagine the artist themself is the only one who can truly answer that. Darling?"

Kade appeared with a mimosa in hand. Their gaze was fixed on the sculpture, cool and aloof. "Please don't make me talk about my pieces," they said with a sigh. "It's so tedious."

Mel had the distinct impression she'd made a misstep. "Sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot."

Bebe laughed, her hand coming up to catch Kade's arm. "They're just embarrassed," she said to Mel. "If I were a genius, I'd be inviting people to fawn over me left and right, but not Kade."

"If I'm a genius," Kade said, "then no one would need me to explain my work. It would speak for itself. The fact that it doesn't shows I still have a long way to go." They sipped from their flute but said nothing about the flavor of Mel's cordial. The only reaction Mel could perceive was a slight raise of their brows when they swallowed.

Maybe her work spoke for itself, in their view.

"How is it?" Sawyer asked, reaching out and taking Kade's glass. Mel watched as he took a sip. Must be close friends, she thought, if they were cozy enough to share drinks like that. Sawyer smacked his lips, then looked over at Mel. "You made this yourself? Bebe said you were talented, but this is beyond." He handed the glass back to Kade, who nodded as they took it.

Mel could feel her cheeks getting warm. No one thought her skills were anything out of the ordinary when she was behind the bar and charging twenty bucks a glass. The guy was probably trying to play nice after that initial snafu. "It's nothing really. Some mandarin—stuff. Whipped it up at home."

Bebe gave a put-upon sigh. "Why am I such a magnet for self-effacing geniuses?" Before Mel could protest—she wasn't a genius; she was barely a real adult—Bebe floated off toward the kitchen.

Sawyer also drifted away, sitting right next to CJ on the sofa and snuggling into his side with the kind of familiarity that surprised Mel. CJ paused in saying something to Dez, turned, and placed a brief, tender kiss on top of Sawyer's head before returning seamlessly to the conversation at hand. Mel looked at Callen, who was standing right there, but if he noticed the gesture of affection his husband had bestowed on someone else, he didn't seem bothered.

They were all old friends, Mel reminded herself. Very old friends. Not to mention kind of—artsy. It was just a touchy-feely crowd. A little kiss on the head wasn't anything but paternal. Probably.

She prayed no one noticed her reaction; the last thing she wanted was Bebe thinking she was too uptight to hang with these folks.

Where was Bebe, anyway?

Bebe clapped her hands, drawing everyone's attention to her in the kitchen. "Time to eat!" Bebe recruited Callen and CJ to assist her in transporting the food to the table, while everyone else meandered to a dining table that sat under a satellite-looking light fixture. There were four chairs on each long side of the table. Kade had evidently mixed everyone a mandarin mimosa, leaving a flute at each place setting, save one, which Mel assumed would be theirs. Sure enough, Kade took that seat as the guests claimed the others. Mel lingered and watched, trying to figure out where she was supposed to sit.

There was some nominal chaos and appreciative gasps while Bebe and the husbands delivered food to the table: pans of fresh biscuits, a tureen of sausage gravy, a vegetable-studded frittata, slabs of coffee cake arranged in a towering pyramid, a fruit platter that could sink a battleship, and more crispy bacon than Mel had ever seen in her life.

"Wow," Mel said, adding to the awed murmurs of the guests. "This looks amazing." She reached for an unclaimed chair at the end of a row, but Bebe stopped her with a light touch to the small of her back.

"Oh, that's CJ's seat," she said brightly. "Why don't you sit over here by me?"

Mel let herself be led around the table, confused as to how, as a complete newcomer, she had earned a spot next to the Empress of Brunch. "Don't you want to sit next to Kade?" she asked, even as she dropped into the chair.

Kade, she now saw, was seated opposite her, eyeing her coolly and sipping at their drink. Mel couldn't decide if they were bored or plotting a murder; both seemed equally likely.

Bebe waved a hand through the air as she took her seat on Mel's right. "I see them every day. Much as I love them, dinner parties are about mixing it up." She pointed out Callen, who was on Mel's left, far from his husband, CJ. "See? It's fine."

Well, if that was a Bebe Murray dinner party—brunch party, whatever—rule, then Mel would comply.

Bebe swept her gaze up and down the table. "Don't bother with formality, people! Dig in, dig in." She reached for a plate of bacon and its accompanying pair of serving tongs. "Do you eat meat?" she asked Mel.

Mel's stomach rumbled so audibly that she felt compelled to respond loud enough to cover it up. "Yeah! I mean—please." She lifted her plate so that Bebe could load it up with way more bacon than was sane. The strips looked magazine-perfect, wavy and glistening and crisp.

"I do it in the oven," Bebe whispered, leaning in like she was sharing a secret. "Perfect every time. No spatter. Plus it cooks while the biscuits bake. Bacon infusion, yum." She plonked one of the fluffy country-style biscuits on Mel's plate as well, this time without asking.

"Wow, you're like Martha Stewart or something," Mel said. "Once in a while I'll throw a handful of frozen vegetables into some ramen; that's about the extent of my home cooking."

"Really?" Bebe boggled at her, gravy ladle frozen in the air. "But you have such an amazing palate! Those drinks you make— I would think you'd be a force of nature in the kitchen, too."

"Some skills don't translate, I guess," Mel said with a hint of sheepishness. She moved her plate under the ladle, which was in danger of dripping thick peppery gravy, and Bebe finished topping off her biscuit. The sausage gravy flowed over its side, pooling around it in homey luxury. "Besides, I spend most of my waking hours behind the bar. When I get off work, I'm so beat I usually grab whatever's easiest. Not a lot of time to be domestic."

Bebe served herself a piece of frittata, humming in thought. "Domestication is overrated, anyway. That's why I tend to collect feral strays." She looked across the table at Kade and winked.

Mel followed her gaze. Kade was sitting placidly with a chunk of melon speared on their fork. The only acknowledgment they made was a wry lift at the corner of their mouth in Bebe's direction. Cilla asked them something that Mel couldn't make out over the hum of chatter. CJ and Dez spoke to each other from across the table about their favorite brunch spots in Brooklyn, and Sawyer roped Callen into a debate on local taxes, of all things. Mel was left with Bebe as a conversation partner.

Before she'd left for the party, Mel had coached herself on a few topics that she was pretty sure normal people would deploy in a situation like this. "So, Bebe, you do legal work, right? What kind of law do you practice?" She popped a piece of bacon in her mouth.

Bebe laughed and cut off the tip of her frittata slice with the edge of her fork. "Employment law. Mostly representing employees who've been screwed over by their companies. Contract breaches, wage theft. On a good day, I take the bad guys to court and make them pay. But most of the time there's no good or bad, and it all comes out in the wash. Very dry stuff, you don't want to hear about that."

"No, please, it sounds interesting," Mel said. She wasn't even lying, really. Office jobs were exotic to her; she'd never worked a nine-to-five. Some folks weren't meant for fluorescent lights and PowerPoint presentations. And Mel wanted to get to know Bebe, which meant she had to get to know her work—that's what friends did, right? Learned about each other's lives and commiserated?

Bebe put down her fork and turned in her seat to face Mel more fully. She wore a warm smile that matched her sundress. Mel was once again overwhelmed by the sensation of being alone with this woman, despite being surrounded by people. There was something about her attention that made Mel feel like she was the most special person in the world.

"I promise you," Bebe said, low enough that Mel had to lean in a little to hear her better, "the only person who finds my job fascinating is me. Even Kade can only take it in small doses, and they adore me. If I get on a roll telling you about my cases—minus confidential information or identifying details, naturally—you will be bored to tears. And that's the last thing I want." She toyed with the stem of her flute, twisting it between her fingertips. "Can I make a suggestion?"

"Of course." Mel ate a bite of the biscuit and gravy. Then she stopped and stared down at her plate, her hand coming to shield her mouth to stop any happy screams from escaping. It tasted heavenly, the homemade biscuit flaky and buttery, the gravy rife with nuggets of sausage. Forget law; Bebe should hang it all up and make brunch for a living.

"Let's do a lightning round, get the boring stuff out of the way in under twenty seconds," Bebe said. "That way, we can move on to the more interesting questions."

Mel, still in rapture over the biscuit, could only nod. She swallowed and immediately began forking up another bite. "What counts as boring? Work? Family?"

"Bingo. ‘Where you from? What was your childhood like?' The basics."

"That last one isn't basic," Mel pointed out. "Most people go to therapy for years trying to cover that ground."

"Have you?" Bebe asked.

Mel refused to blink. She would not let this fast-talking, biscuit-making beauty railroad her. "Is this the lightning round? Are we already in it?"

"Oh! Here, this will help." Bebe took a cell phone from a pocket in her dress and set it face up on the table between them, swiping to a timer app. "So we're agreed on twenty seconds? I probably only need eight, to be honest."

"How about the fastest time for covering the boring stuff wins a prize?" Mel said. This felt good. Bold and fun, but friendly. She was making friends.

"Yes!" Bebe's eyes sparkled. "Winner gets to ask the first real question. Deal?" Her fingertip hovered over the timer button.

Mel licked her lips, already thinking about what she'd ask. Because she had no intention of losing.