Complete silence on the other line.
“Mr. Winter, I’m not sure if that would… I mean. Huh.” A cleared throat. “What is this event?”
“It’s a charity auction, hosted by Exciteur Consulting at the Halycon Hotel. There will be canapés. An open bar.”
Her chuckle sounds nervous. “An open bar?”
“Is that a key selling point?”
“No. If I go, Mr. Winter…”
“Anthony.”
“Anthony,” she repeats, her voice soft. “It wouldn’t absolve either of us from the bet. I’d still be looking for a third perfect date for you.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
Her voice strengthens. “Okay, then. I’ll go. It’ll be professional, right?”
Her fears make sense, and I curse myself for being another form of asshole, too. Three for three. It really isn’t my day, and it’s not even noon yet.
“Yes. You work at Opate Match, Summer. I’m not asking anything more than some company at a function.”
“I’ll be there,” she says. “Will you text me the address?”
“I’ll pick you up,” I say, my strides lengthening as I head through the lobby. Back out to the beckoning New York streets, the place I’d grown up, and the city that would one day become a deadly obstacle course for me.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m the one asking you for a favor,” I say. The words flow easily, following a script I’d once known intimately. “Let me send a couple of dresses over to your apartment.”
“Mr. Winter, I can’t possibly accept that.”
“I’m the one who asked you,” I say. For someone who worked at a matchmaking company priding itself on catering to the elite, she seems unaware of its trappings. “I’d do the same for any woman I’d personally invited to a function.”
“Okay then,” she murmurs. “I’ll text you my address.”
“And your dress size.”
“Um, yes. Okay.”
We click off the call and I find my feet steering me in the opposite direction of my apartment, toward Bergdorf Goodman. I’d meant to make a phone call. Tell them to pick out three dresses.
The way I’d often done for Shelby, once. She’d always liked it when I did that.
But I’d never set foot in the store myself. Savoring the light of the New York summer sun on my face, illuminating the world to a brilliance that makes my eyesight feel normal again, I wonder why I hadn’t.
Picking out the colors and shapes that would look good on Summer doesn’t seem like a nuisance at all.
7
Summer
When I come home, there’s a delivery man waiting outside my apartment building, shifting from foot to foot like he’s waiting for the chance to bolt.
“Do you live here?” he asks, hoisting up three garment bags on his arm.
“I do, yes. And I—”