The ballroom’s warm, flickering light bathes everything in a honey-gold haze, and I’m halfway through a story Clarissa’s telling about her boss’s failed second wedding when the crowd parts like a scene from a romcom, and there she is.

Vivian Kingsley.

She’s wearing black. Of course she is. Sleek and sculpted like it was made for her body alone, the kind of dress no one else could pull off without looking like they were trying. Her hand’s tucked around her boyfriend’s elbow—some tall guy in finance with teeth too perfect to be real and the permanent smugness of someone who’s never lost anything that mattered.

And yet.

The second her eyes land on me, she stumbles. Not in a dramatic, everyone-gasps way. Just the soft clip of her heel against the marble, a stutter-step like her body forgot how to move for half a second. I don’t even realize I’ve stopped talking until Clarissa squeezes my hand.

Vivian bites her bottom lip and gives me a smile—small, shy, like we didn’t spend three years being so in love it made people uncomfortable. Like we weren’t the couple you didn’t make eye contact with for too long because we might start slow dancing in the kitchen or argue about nothing and make it look like foreplay.

She looks away first, and I feel it in my chest. The exhale of a moment that still doesn’t know it’s over.

Clarissa is still smiling, but I can feel the shift in her. Her fingers loosen in mine. Her posture straightens, like she’s holding her breath.

I love her. I do. Clarissa is light and bright, kind in ways that sneak up on you. She brings me chamomile tea when I’m working too late and memorizes my mom’s birthday without being asked. She makes life easy in a way I didn’t know I needed.

But life with Vivian? It was never easy. It was perfect in a different way. Fast and hot and full of moments so sharp they bled. She made me laugh until I cried and fight until I was winded. I’ve never loved anyone like that. I’m not sure I ever will again.

People are watching us like it’s Wimbledon. Heads bouncing back and forth, whispering behind wine glasses. It’s not subtle.

And then, by some cosmic cruelty, we end up in the same conversation circle ten minutes later.

Vivian’s boyfriend makes a joke—something bland and inoffensive about everyone suddenly being into sailing—and I laugh, probably too loudly. She looks at me with that gleam in her eye that used to mean trouble, and I see it before it happens. The banter. That invisible cord tugging between us.

“Didn’t you try sailing once?” she asks, lifting her brows.

“Once,” I nod solemnly. “You were there. You laughed so hard when I fell in, you dropped your phone.”

“Correction,” she says, tilting her chin. “I laughed so hard you dropped my phone.”

“Right. Because you insisted I hold it so it wouldn’t get wet.”

“And then you got wet.”

“Tragically,” I say, over-dramatic. “Some say I still haven’t recovered.”

Her lips twitch. “Some say you never had balance to begin with.”

A couple of people laugh, including Clarissa, but it’s the kind of polite, uncertain laughter people do when they know something isn’t really theirs to watch.

Vivian’s boyfriend shifts beside her, trying to cut in. “Viv’s not really the outdoorsy type anymore.”

She straightens slightly, opening her mouth—but I beat her to it.

“She still hikes,” I say casually. “And camps, if you bribe her with the right kind of snacks.”

She blinks at me, lips parting. For a second, I forget anyone else exists.

Clarissa touches my arm—barely—and I remember. Everything.

I glance down at her, noticing the tightness in her jaw, the way she’s gone quiet. And I hate it—that look on her face. That tension. That comparison. I shift closer, casually tugging her in by the waist like it’s second nature, letting my hand rest there, grounding her. Like a quiet reminder: I’m here. With you.

She leans into me just enough for it to register. For the others to see.

The topic changes. People relax.

But Vivian bites her cheek, turning toward her boyfriend like she didn’t just feel the shift in me and hated it.