CHAPTER 6: THE MORNING AFTER

Mira woke up. She could still taste the champagne she didn't finish last night.

And the kiss she very much had.

She laid in bed for a full ten minutes, trying not to think about last night and failing miserably. She remembered the charity dinner. The string quartet.

Most of all, she remembers Adrian's hand finding hers under the countdown of music neither of them realized.

On the way home, she kept telling herself it was adrenaline. The dangers of being so near each other.

She didn't believe herself one bit.

She started to make coffee, but her phone buzzing beat her to the punch. It was Adrian, a single line:

"Are you alright?"

He didn't ask are we okay. Not even what does this mean.

It was Adrian asking her, just her. First, before anything else.

"I'm fine." She started typing it into her phone but decided to delete it. She then typed:

"I'm still deciding if we broke clause nine or completely obliterated it..."

His reply came in so fast that she could imagine him smiling at his phone.

"Completely obliterated. I'll have my lawyers draft something new."

"Or maybe nothing at all..."

Mira set the phone down before she could read too much into the last sentence. Or maybe nothing at all...

She went to take a shower, choosing to skip coffee, deciding that she needed to go to the office and work.

Because staying home alone with her thoughts sounded very dangerous right now.

She stood in front of the mirror, putting the final touches on her makeup. She then took a moment to look at herself.

Once there was a version of Mira Santos who controlled her life, carefully, professionally and uncomplicatedly. The version of her who would have set firm boundaries within the first call with Adrian.

That version was no longer staring at her in the mirror. It was a whole different woman. And it scared her just a little.

***************

Cass noticed it in ten minutes.

Without looking up from the Alvarez blueprint, she said:

"You're doing the thing."

"I don't do a thing." Mira replied, shifting her gaze to the blueprint they were working on without looking up.

"You do several things but this one is new." Cass finally looked up and met her eyes directly.

"You're smiling at your phone like it gave you a sweet compliment."

"I'm just reviewing vendor invoices."

"You're reviewing something, alright, but it's not invoices, boss." Cass is now grinning, letting Mira know that she knows a lot already.

"Should I start planning your seating chart next? I have amazing ideas for the centerpieces."

"Absolutely not."

"Copy, boss. I'm filing that under 'not yet.'"

Mira threw a stress ball at her; Cass caught it without looking up, and this irritated Mira much more.

Cass then slowly looked up from the pile of blueprints and said in a softer, less teasing voice:

"For what it's worth, you've planned two hundred and twelve happy endings for other people..."

"I am rooting for you to get one too."

Mira didn't know what to say. She didn't have a response ready. Instead, she went back to the invoices and tried to hide how much that comment landed.

******************************

By lunchtime, Mira started to convince herself that the whole thing could be filed away as a contained and lovely anomaly. It was just a kiss that happened; it could have meant something, but now it could be filed away neatly.

Then a text came in from Adrian.

"Dinner tonight? No contract. No board. Just us."

She smiled at her phone a little longer than she would like to admit. She typed:

"Yes."

Her whole afternoon was spent in a distracted way that had nothing to do with the Alvarez wedding or a missed vendor deadline. It had everything to do with the fact that she was counting down the hours, pretending to work until seven.

She caught herself checking her reflection, twice. She wasn't adjusting anything; she was just checking how she looked.

She suddenly felt alarmed; she was behaving like the brides she spent her whole career reassuring. The brides who would check their phones every four minutes and pace.

Mira hoped that the same promise she gave them applied to her too...

********************

Adrian canceled two hours later.

"Something came up. I'm sorry. I'll explain when I can."

There was no warmth in it. No explanation, either.

It was the same tone he had when they were sitting across from each other the very first day. It was that stranger reciting the terms of their contract.

Mira continued to stare at her phone until the screen dimmed.

"It's nothing. Boards have emergencies. He is the CEO, after all. They constantly put out fires. This has nothing to do with me."

This is what she told herself, but her gut said that this wasn't a scheduling conflict. And her gut was often right; she would bet the 211 weddings' worth of last-minute disasters she'd fixed.

She typed, "Okay," and hit send.

Nothing more. She felt like if she said anything else, it would reveal how disappointed she was.

Mira tried to call Bea, but she didn't pick up, and her call went to voicemail. She gave up and tried to distract herself with the Alvarez wedding, but found she kept reading the same line without realizing what it was for.

At nine, she gave up. She pretended to work for hours and it didn't result in anything.

Instead, she stared into space and imagined the evening she wanted, the one with Adrian, a quiet one, just the two of them...

Mira's phone stayed silent for the rest of the night.