Chapter 11: The Green Dress

I wore the green slip dress.

Roxie did my eyes in the dorm bathroom with a pencil and a lot of swearing.

She made them sharp and long at the corners, the way the tutorial said.

She stepped back and looked at me.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, they are going to hate this."

I looked in the mirror at a woman with a sharp jaw and dark almond eyes.

She had cheekbones I'd spent four years hiding under hoodies.

She looked like Zara's cousin. She also looked exactly like me.

Quincy was waiting at the foot of the gangway at Pier 62, in a black suit with no tie.

He didn't say a word when he saw me.

He just held out his arm, and I took it.

The dinner cruise was exactly what I had written.

A long white table sat at the stern, with candles and the light going gold over the water.

Eighteen people were seated. Zara sat at the center in a pale blue dress with her hair pinned up.

When she saw me, her smile went stiff.

Two seats at the far end had been left for us.

Every head turned as I crossed the deck.

A guy near the front said, "Is that the roommate?" and another one said, "Holy hell."

Brett sat at the head of the table with a glass already in his hand.

He saw the dress, and his face did what it had done on the practice field.

He couldn't look at me, and he couldn't look away.

Zara saw that too.

I watched her eyes go from his face to my shoulders, and back, and her mouth thinned.

Quincy pulled out my chair and sat down so close our knees touched.

The food came in the order my document said. The raw bar first, then the lamb.

Brett stood up at the third course, tapped his glass with a fork and took out his phone.

I knew the toast by heart.

"Zara," he began, warm and practiced. "People say you can't know someone from their words alone."

Under the table, Quincy's hand found mine.

"But I knew who you were the first time I heard you," Brett said.

"You don't have to be brave. You just have to be on time."

I leaned forward a little, and my lips moved along with his on the next line.

"I keep thinking about the way you laugh at your own jokes before you get to the end of them."

Brett's voice cracked.

He looked down the table, straight at my mouth, which was shaping the exact words he was about to say.

He lost his place.

"I... uh," he said. "I have more. I'll just. To Zara."

He sat down hard.

The table clinked glasses, a little confused.

Zara didn't lift hers.

She looked at me, then at Brett, then at me again.

For the first time since I had known her, her face had nothing arranged on it.

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