The fundraiser

“Do you remember Alina?” Priya asked over coffee that Saturday. “Law review, two years above us?”

“Of course,” Naomi said. “She used to save me a seat in evidence.”

“She’s chairing a fundraiser tonight for the legal aid coalition. Black tie, downtown hotel. She heard about you and Julian and wants you there.” Priya set her mug down. “You don’t have to talk to anyone. Just show your face.”

Naomi didn’t want to be around people. But Priya had that particular patience she used exclusively on Naomi, the kind that outlasted every objection.

“You need air that isn’t this apartment. We can spend the whole night making fun of his tie if he shows up.”

Naomi actually laughed, surprising herself. “Fine.”

They dressed that evening, Priya insisting on the green dress Naomi hadn’t worn since before the wedding. In the car, Priya admitted she was mostly hoping there’d be decent company at the open bar.

There was decent company at the open bar. Just not the kind Naomi wanted to see.

The ballroom was crowded, maybe two hundred guests, the usual mix of donors and firms angling for goodwill photos. Champagne glasses caught the light everywhere she looked, and the string quartet in the corner was playing something she almost recognized. She and Priya found their table, greeted Alina, and Priya wandered off toward the bar within minutes.

Naomi sat alone, nodding politely at strangers.

Then she saw them.

Theo Calloway first, laughing with two men from Julian’s board. Then, a moment later, Julian himself, walking in beside Selene, her hand resting on his arm like she’d rehearsed the placement.

They looked exactly like the photograph. Effortless. Naomi’s chest tightened before she could stop it.

They hadn’t noticed her yet.

Selene leaned in close to Julian’s ear, said something, and laughed. From across the room it read like more than conversation.

“Get a room,” one of the board members called out, grinning.

Selene straightened, color rising in her face. “He just had something in his eye. Honestly.”

Naomi pushed her chair back. It scraped against the floor loud enough that Julian’s eyes found her across the room.

Something shifted in his expression the second he registered who he was looking at. For half a second his hand lifted slightly from his side, an old reflex, the start of some motion toward her that he stopped before it became anything at all. Naomi noticed. She hated that she noticed. He took a small step away from Selene without a word.

Alina appeared at Naomi’s elbow, apologetic. “I completely forgot my co-chair had already invited half of Calloway’s board. We’re all adults, I hope that’s fine.”

Naomi picked up her clutch, and that was when Julian crossed the room toward her, alone, Selene left standing with the board.

“You didn’t have to leave,” he said, low enough that only she could hear it.

“I wasn’t planning to stay.”

He studied her for a second too long. “You look well.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re doing exactly what you always do,” she said. “Saying something that sounds like it means one thing so I’ll spend the drive home deciding whether it meant another.”

Something flickered across his face, gone before she could name it. He didn’t deny it. His throat moved once, like there was a different sentence sitting behind the one he’d actually said, and for a moment he looked like a man deciding whether two years of silence had earned him the right to say it out loud.

He didn’t.

She walked straight for the exit.

She was nearly at the doors when she reached for her phone to text Priya.

It wasn’t in her bag.

She turned back, retracing her steps toward their table, and that’s when she heard voices near the second bar. Julian, Theo, and one of the board members, backs mostly turned to the room.

“Be honest with us for once,” the board member said, voice low. “Did you feel anything real for her? Any of it?”

Naomi stopped walking.

“No,” Julian said. Flat, immediate, like the question barely deserved an answer. “It was a means to an end.”

“I always thought you actually loved her,” Theo said quietly.

“He answered you,” the board member said.

“That’s enough,” Julian said, harder now. “It’s finished.”

A pause.

“For what it’s worth,” the board member said, “Selene fits this world better than she ever did.”

Theo’s voice dropped. “I just wish you’d found a way to do it without using her like that.”

A longer pause.

“She was innocent,” Julian said. “I knew that from the start. But stopping would have meant letting my father’s death mean nothing all over again.”

Naomi’s hand closed around her phone, forgotten on the edge of the table beside her.

She stood completely still. The quartet kept playing somewhere behind her, absurdly pleasant, like the room hadn’t noticed anything had happened at all.

She was innocent. I knew that.

He had known the entire time.