While they shook, Evelyn measured Oakley in a single glance—no rudeness in it, just carefulness—then turned back to Grace, mouth lifting. "When did you get married? Why didn't you tell me? You never tell me anything. When you said you were coming with your wife, I nearly fell off my chair. Do I mean nothing to you?"
Her tone was light, a teasing lilt at the edges.
Grace frowned. "I didn't tell you?"
"Nope. When would you have told me?" Evelyn lifted her tea and traced the rim with her lip as if the porcelain soothed thinking.
Grace thought. "Then I misremembered. I could've sworn I'd said it."
Maybe she'd confused her with Sabrina Myers. And it was true—Evelyn hadn't floated to the top of her chat list in a long while.
Grace's phone lit. A call. The room was loud, the clatter elastic, the voices heavy with heat. "I'll take this outside. Order first," she said, already standing.
"Go," Evelyn said, her smile holding.
When she'd gone, Evelyn slid a menu to Oakley. "Pick what you like."
"Thanks." Oakley read it with frank interest. "Have you been here—any favorites?"
"Let me think." Evelyn tapped a finger against the page. "The barley-cream soup is good. The sherry-cured crab. The salt-cured duck. And the pan-seared beef. All lovely. Want to try?"
Oakley had always thought of herself as feminine, but Evelyn recalibrated the scale. If Oakley was a red rose—confident, a little sharp—then Evelyn was a white camellia, soft to the touch, bruiseable. Even her voice seemed feathered, made of air more than sound. The kind of girl who called out a particular instinct in people—the wanting to shield, to lift.
In Oakley's experience, girls like that were worshiped in love and didn't always know it.
"Alright. Let's do those." Oakley handed the menu back.
Once both had chosen, Evelyn waved a server over and placed the order.
"Oh—we forgot to ask what Grace wants." Oakley noticed it as she spoke and laughed at herself. "We'll add more when she's back."
"It's fine," Evelyn said, lifting her tea. "She always wants the sherry crab and the silky greens soup. Those two are her cornerstones. I already ordered them."
"Oh." Oakley drank, the thought settling, a small pebble in a still pond.
It hit her in that stupid, slow way that truth sometimes does: she knew far less about Grace than Evelyn did.
How could she not? They'd known each other how many years? Oakley and Grace… how long had it even been?
She put the cup down and glanced toward the door. No sign of Grace. She turned back. "You two have known each other since… middle school?"
"First year." A star-shaped stud winked on Evelyn's lobe, its mild light perfectly matched to her. Graceful—impossible to counterfeit.
A kind of poise Oakley would never own, not in this lifetime.
"That is a long time," Oakley said softly. "Have you always stayed around here?"
"Yes." Evelyn's smile was gentle. "I run a flower shop nearby. Come by whenever."
"A flower shop?" Oakley had daydreamed about opening one, years ago, before life steered her elsewhere. "That must be… peaceful."
"It is," Evelyn said. "Plants don't demand. Being among them quiets me."
A thought set down, another picked up. Evelyn rolled the stud between finger and thumb, then asked, curiosity finally spilling over, "So—how did you and Grace meet? To be honest, it felt sudden. She used to say she was done with dating. Then—blink—married."
Oakley wasn't good at lying—lying made her skin sit wrong on her bones. She kept it hazy. "We added each other through a matchmaking forum."
Evelyn blinked. Somehow it didn't feel like something Grace would do. Months ago, when Evelyn had nudged, Grace had been firm about staying single. How had that stance melted so fast? And with Grace's slow-to-warm nature, meeting someone, falling, signing papers—it didn't fit the pace Evelyn knew.
And yet. Paper doesn't lie.
"Didn't expect those forums to work," Evelyn said, lips flattening, then tilting. "Lightning speed."
She'd been busy: the shop, her sick mother. She and Grace had barely traded more than a few lines here and there. The marriage news had arrived today and still felt like a trick of the light.
They ran out of words for a minute.
Oakley didn't often orbit girls like Evelyn. If she did, they rarely intersected. She searched and found one safe, square topic. "Grace said you were good to her, back then."
Evelyn let out a breath. "They were cruel. You remember how kids can be. I just couldn't watch it anymore."
"Either way," Oakley said, smiling, "thank you. For being kind to her."
"You don't need to thank me." Evelyn tilted her head, thought, and smiled again. "She was good to me too. Any real bond runs both directions."
Oakley's eyebrow lifted, a quiet twitch. "I see."
"I still remember," Evelyn continued, voice softened to water, "once I accidentally kicked over a potted plant in front of someone's door while we were playing. The owner stormed out. I was so scared I forgot how to swallow. And Grace—she stepped forward and said she'd done it. That's who she is."
Oakley didn't know why the words grated as they slipped past her ears. They sounded harmless. They should have been harmless.
She scolded herself for it. Those two had known each other for years. Of course they had stories like that. If anything, didn't it show who Grace was? Loyal to a fault. Brave in the particular way of covering another's mistake.
Oakley laughed and took the thread. "She is good. She takes care of people. I didn't know till I met her that someone like that existed."
"How so?" Evelyn asked, brows winging up.
Oakley sifted through the past few months, the smallness of Grace's attention. "Tiny things. I won't notice a cut on my own finger—she will, and she'll come home with bandages. I'll post something silly about envying a friend's husband who needle-felts little gifts—she'll sit down and prick wool into shape for me."
Evelyn said nothing, only smiled, then drank.
The food arrived in a warm, rhythmic parade, and Grace returned, sliding into the seat beside Oakley.
"Everything here?" she asked.
Work had snagged her the moment she sat down earlier—nothing urgent, but incessant, like gnats. She realized, with a small grimace, that she had arranged her life like a drawer packed to the hinges.
"Yes," Evelyn said, nudging the sherry crab toward her. "Your favorite. And the greens soup. Been a while, huh? Go on."
"Thanks." Grace reached for her chopsticks, then paused, rotating her neck, fingers resting at the base of her skull.
That knot again. Oakley had named it weeks ago; since then, Grace noticed it every time. If she ignored it too long, it bloomed into a dull ache.
"Neck bothering you?" Evelyn asked, not missing much.
"Just busy," Grace said. "It's been one thing after another this year. Stretched a bit thin. It's okay."
"Don't say that." Evelyn ladled the soup slowly, diligently, and passed it to her. "Health outranks everything. If your body gives, nothing else holds."
"I know," Grace said, eyes lifting.
"Don't 'I know' me." Evelyn shot her a look, half tough, half fond. "What about the neck massager I bought you? Have you used it?"
Grace hesitated. "I'll use it next time."
"Next time, next time," Evelyn murmured, amused and unconvinced. "Find a new excuse. Use it. If you brush me off again, I'm ignoring you."
…
Oakley sat and listened and sipped the silky soup. It was lovely—green as a jewel, light sliding over its surface—but her tongue gave her nothing back. No spark, no thought, only temperature.
Evelyn was so gentle it bordered on fictional. The kind of woman dramas call "domestic goddess" without irony—soft, precise, deft. Sitting there, Oakley had a strange, dislocating thought: as if the marriage belonged to Grace and Evelyn, and she was only a guest at their table, watching.
A sudden prickle climbed her chest—restless, sour, small and sharp.
She lifted her cup again and let the steam wash her face, as if that might quiet it. It didn't.
It only taught her the shape of the feeling: jealousy's first thin thread, tight as hair, wrapped twice around the heart.