Page 100 of All These Beautiful Strangers

He was too close to me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“You look very pretty tonight,” Teddy said. He reached out and ran a finger down my bare forearm. My skin erupted in goose bumps. “Look how you still respond to my touch,” Teddy whispered. He came even closer, so he was whispering into my ear. “I remember the way I used to play your body like an instrument, the way I’d make you moan. I bet he doesn’t do that, does he?”

I stood very still. I glanced behind him, down the dark and quiet corridor to the ballroom, the bright white lights of the chandelier, the clatter of dinner plates being laid out.

“You should get back to your wife, Teddy,” I said. “She’s probably wondering where you are.”

“My wife,” Teddy said with a laugh, and took a sip of his drink. “My wife. Your husband. Look how grown-up we sound with our permanent attachments.”

“You’re drunk,” I said.

“Yes,” Teddy said. “I am. But that doesn’t make any of it less true. Just a tad more pathetic maybe.”

“Yes, it is pathetic.”

Teddy turned. There was Alistair, standing behind us in the dark hall, his hands in his pockets, watching us.

“Like I’ve told you time and time again, pace yourself,” Alistair said, coming toward us. He casually took Teddy’s glass of scotch. “You don’t want to end up making a fool of yourself.”

“Always playing big brother,” Teddy said dryly. “You should take a night off. You look tired.”

“Go find your wife,” Alistair said, his voice like ice. “And leave mine alone.”

For a moment Teddy just stood there, looking at Alistair with all the malice he’d accrued over the years, his shoulders squared. Teddy was taller than Alistair; he had at least six inches on him. But Alistair was broader in the shoulders, more sturdily built. I could feel the tension between them and I wondered for a moment if this would be the point where things boiled over and Teddy unleashed that hatred he never tried too hard to hide. But after a moment, Teddy seemed to think better of a fight and retreated back toward the ballroom. We watched him go.

“What was that all about?” Alistair asked me pointedly, as if somehow it were my fault.

“How should I know?” I said.

“Do I have to worry about the two of you now?” he asked. “Sneaking off to whisper to each other in dark hallways, all alone?”

“I didn’t initiate it,” I said. “I was getting my coat.”

Alistair raised his eyebrows, and I realized I was still coatless.

“I was trying to get my coat,” I amended my statement. “I was trying to leave and he cornered me.”

Alistair looked hurt. “You were leaving?” he asked. “You weren’t going to stay for my speech?”

“I don’t feel well,” I said.

“That’s convenient,” Alistair said.

“It’s not convenient,” I snapped, louder than I’d meant to. My voice carried down the hall and people seated at the nearest table turned to look. I lowered my voice to a fervent whisper. “It’s not convenient to be dragged to an event you don’t want to go to when you’re dizzy and nauseous and tired. And it’s not convenient when the person you came with abandons you at said event, and the only time he speaks to you is when he’s accusing you of something you didn’t do. None of it, Alistair, is convenient.”

I couldn’t go back in that room and sit with those people and pretend like everything was fine. I turned and stumbled down the hallway toward the lobby, my coat be damned.

Alistair followed me out onto the cold New York sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” Alistair said. “I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

“I know,” I said. “You never mean to.”

The late nights at the office, the conference calls on the weekends, the way his attention was always on some new project, none of it was done to purposefully hurt me.

“You knew this was who I was when you met me,” Alistair said.

“It’s not just about you anymore,” I said. “And it’s not just about me, either.”