Page 47 of All These Beautiful Strangers

I passed him the books I was holding and as I did, my hand grazed the bare skin of his forearm, and I felt a little buzz of electricity where we touched.

“What are you doing tonight, Grace?” he asked as he stacked the books back on the cart and I stood.

I fingered the pendant that hung at the end of my necklace. It was the necklace Jake had bought me off a vendor’s cart on the boardwalk in West Haven the last summer that we were together. The pendant was his zodiac sign and birthstone: a ruby crab clutching two diamonds in its claws.

I brushed my hands on the thighs of my jeans and looked up at Teddy, biting my lip.

“I don’t know,” I said brazenly. “What are we doing tonight?”

Teddy picked me up at my apartment at eight, and he took me to an old mom-and-pop shop in town. He did old-fashioned things like hold the door open for me, and pull out my chair at the dinner table, and put his jacket around my shoulders when I was cold.

Two weeks after we went on our first date, he took me to his family’s charity ball at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City.

This was my first foray into Teddy’s world. In Trenton, we mostly hung out in my world—Teddy would come by the library, or he would hang out at my apartment, or we would go see a movie. I never met him on campus, never went by his eating club, never met his friends.

I had always known that Teddy and I were different, that we came from different worlds. But it wasn’t until that night at the Carlyle Hotel that I felt it. When I walked into that ballroom for the first time, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. The crisp suits and the glittering evening gowns and the crystal wineglasses and the seven-course dinner. And there I was, in my simple gown that I had found while sifting through racks at the thrift store down the street from my apartment. People kissed one another on the cheek in greeting like fancy Parisians in a movie, and they talked about restaurants and chefs and designers and hotels and cities I had never been to before, like they were speaking some foreign tongue. And all the while I just stood there, trying to smile, and wondering what to do with my hands.

The only okay thing about the evening was meeting Teddy’s brother, Alistair. Seeing him was like seeing a familiar face in a crowd of strangers, which was odd, because I’d never actually met Alistair before—I had only seen his picture and heard Jake talk about him. But, I don’t know, he felt familiar to me, like we were old friends picking up where we had left off after a long time apart. It felt easy, comfortable, dancing with him, even talking to him about Jake.

I got through the rest of the evening the same way I had gotten through those last two years in Hillsborough after Jake died: I drank more than I should have until I felt a little bit brave, I laughed at things I didn’t understand, and I smiled when I really wanted to cry. I was who I thought everyone around me wanted me to be, and I hated it.

After it was all over, a car drove us from the city back to New Jersey and Teddy leaned over and put his head in my lap in the backseat. He was the slightest bit drunk himself. I ran my fingers through his hair and I tried to memorize the lines of his face even though it was nearly too dark to see.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked, looking up at me.

“Yes,” I lied.

“My mother really liked you,” he said.

“I could tell she really loves you,” I said. And that was true.

If it were just me and Teddy all the time, like it had been, I could do this, I thought. There wouldn’t be a doubt in my mind about us. But it wouldn’t just be me and Teddy in our own little world. There would be his world, too, sooner or later, and I didn’t think I could do that—feel so out of place and small all the time. I couldn’t go back to the very thing I had run from in the first place—pretending to be someone other than who I was, pretending to feel a way I didn’t really feel, to make other people comfortable. There was a gap between us I didn’t know if we could overcome.

When we got to my apartment, Teddy walked me to my door. He leaned against the door frame as I searched my purse for my keys.

“Can I stay over?” he asked. “I’m a little drunk.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes.

“I probably shouldn’t drive myself home,” he said with a sloppy smile. He took my glove off and kissed the bare skin at my wrist.

“You’re not driving yourself home,” I said, tugging my wrist away. “You have a driver.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, taken aback that I wasn’t playing along like I usually did.

I bit my lip and forced my eyes up to meet his. “I just don’t think we should prolong the inevitable, that’s all,” I said.

The backs of my eyes stung and I hated myself. I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

“Prolong the inevitable?” he said. “Grace, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Come on,” I said, my voice hitching and betraying me. “I know you see it, too.”

“See what?” he asked.

“We’re just—we’re different. Too different.”

“Is this about tonight?” he asked. “I thought you said you had a good time.”