I walk inside into warmth and a confusion of scents—hot wax and lilies and women’s perfume. A girl at a desk takes my coat and gives me a ticket, then I make my way down an elegant hallway toward the ballroom, willing my hands to stop shaking. They refuse.

Music and laughter from around a corner. The sound of clinking ice. I pass myself in a mirror but don’t look, knowing that critical voice is too ready to pounce.

I arrive at the large double doors leading into the ballroom. I take one final deep breath, then go inside.

THIRTY

As if I’m having an out-of-body experience, I see everything around me all at once, including myself.

Cocktail tables softly glowing with votive candles. Dinner tables surrounding a large white dance floor. Centerpieces of white branches dripping in strands of faux jewels that catch and reflect the light. A ten-piece band in tuxedos on a riser. People mingling, talking, laughing with drinks in their hands.

Me, standing alone at the door, wearing a drop-dead gorgeous red dress that cost half a month’s pay, a pair of glittery sky-high heels that make my legs look fantastic, and my cheap everyday glasses with the black plastic frames.

Because I’m fucking perfect, that’s why.

On her way toward the bar in the corner, Shasta walks right by me without batting an eye.

“Shasta.”

She turns and looks around, then does a double take that might have caused whiplash. “Joellen? Is that you?”

“It’s not like I’m wearing a disguise.”

She walks nearer, gaping at me. “You might as well be, bitch! You da bomb. Who knew you had those titties stashed away under all those ugly sweaters?”

I can’t help it: I have to laugh. “Let’s get a drink.”

I take her arm, and we make our way to the bar as I note who’s in attendance and who has yet to show. Portia’s deep in conversation with someone from marketing over by a stand of potted palms. Sue Wong is holding court around a cocktail table with a bunch of the junior copy editors who hang on her every word. A group of guys from accounting have commandeered one of the dining tables and are fighting over who’s going to sit with his back to the dance floor.

Michael is nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll have a glass of red wine, please,” I tell the bartender, who looks homeless. When he gives me my drink, I put a twenty into his tip jar even though the drinks are free. He needs it more than I do.

“Vodka rocks,” Shasta tells him. With a little smile for me, he pours her a serving of vodka that could tranquilize a bear.

I watch, alarmed, as she chugs it. “Easy, killer! The night’s young.”

“Broke up with the boyfriend,” she says, taking a breather. “Walked in on the son of a bitch with another girl.”

“Oh, Shasta, I’m so sorry!”

She shrugs. “I knew it wasn’t going to last when we went on vacation to Bermuda over Thanksgiving and he clapped when the plane landed. No self-respecting woman can marry a man like that.”

I hold up my glass of wine. “To being single.”

“To being single,” she echoes. “Next I think I’ll become a lesbian.”

“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”

She shrugs again, and we both drink. As I’m swallowing, I spot Michael.

He’s standing across the dance floor with three people. One of them is his father, who retired as CEO a dozen years ago. One of them is the current chief operating officer. The third is his wife.

His tall, beautiful, elegant wife, who has her hand on his arm and is smiling at him.

My stomach clenches to knots. I set my glass of wine on the bar because I know if I don’t, I’ll drop it. Shasta is talking, but all I can hear is a high-pitched noise in my ears, like someone is screaming. I wouldn’t be surprised if that someone is me.

“I have to go to the bathroom.” I don’t wait to see if Shasta has heard me—I simply bolt from the room as fast as I can.

Once outside, I run down the hallway in search of a ladies’ room. Luckily in places like these, they’re always nearby. I fall on the door, panting, and stagger inside. I lock myself into a stall, wrap my arms around myself, and sit on the toilet, staring at the grout between the tiles until the worst of the pain passes and I can breathe again.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper, shaking. “I don’t understand.”

He said he was getting divorced. He said we’d talk tonight, that I could let him know what I’ve decided about us. How can he be here, now, with his wife?

Simple, says the pragmatic voice in my head. He lied.

The door creaks open. Footsteps echo hollowly off the floor. Then a voice says, “Joellen?”

I leap to my feet, scalded with fury. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is the ladies’ room, asshole!”

Michael’s loud exhale seems even louder as it bounces off the tile walls. “You’re angry.”

“And you’re here with your wife. I wonder how the two could possibly be related?”

“Can you please come out? I don’t want to have this conversation through a toilet stall door.”

I’m grateful to whatever guardian angels are helping me be more mad than brokenhearted right now, because anger will help me get through the next few minutes, just long enough to save my dignity until I can shatter into a million pieces in the cab on the way home.

I unlock the door, yank it open, and glare daggers at him from inside the stall.

He looks beautiful, of course. Not a hair out of place. The suit is gorgeous. The shoes are buffed to a mirror shine. I’d like to light his face on fire and put it out with a shovel.

“Please.” He gestures for me to come out of the stall. Then he watches warily as I emerge, breathing flames from my nostrils.

I stand near the sinks and fold my arms over my chest. “You have exactly ten seconds to say your piece, and then I’m going to kick you in the balls. Go.”

A ghost of a smile lifts his lips. “It isn’t what it looks like.”

I throw my hands in the air. “Seriously? You expect me to believe that?”

“Just hear me out. I told you our divorce was amicable—”

“No. No, you did not tell me that. You said she was living in the house and you got a new place while the attorneys were working out the details. That was the extent of your explanation.”

He holds up his hands as if in surrender. “I apologize. I should’ve made it clearer. Our divorce is amicable.”

“Yeah, we’re past that. Get to the important part where you’re attending the company holiday party together, looking all married and happy.”

His expression is pained. “My father thought it would be good for morale. You know, for the staff to see that things are calm and friendly between us. Many times in cases like ours, family companies are broken up in bitter divorces.”

When I stare at him, still unsure if he’s telling the truth but definitely sure I’m unimpressed that he’s taking daddy’s advice about his personal life, he adds wearily, “We don’t have a prenup. If Elizabeth wanted to, she could insist on the sale of the company so the proceeds could be evenly split between us.”

That punches a good-size hole in my outrage. “But the company’s been around for a million years! Way before you two were married!”

Michael nods. “Yes. It has. But since I took over as CEO, we’ve tripled in size, and so have our profits. She could argue in court that those profits are marital assets. I’d fight it, of course, but if I lost, I’d have to buy her out to the tune of more than one hundred million dollars. I don’t have that kind of cash. The only way would be to sell.”