Page 40 of Weekends with You

“You’re right, you’re right, I do need to relax.”

“Starting now,” she said, then, a little softer, “It’s going tobe a great weekend, Lu. We don’t need Henry to have a good time. We have each other. And a whole city of attractive people who actually live here all the time.”

“But most important, each other,” I said.

“I’m just saying.” She clinked her beer against mine. “Cheers to you, cheers to me,” we toasted in unison, then both took a big swig.

Eventually, we turned on the TV, jumping into a random season ofDerry Girlsand restoring our comfortable silence. Tomorrow wouldn’t be ideal, but at least it wasn’t totally hopeless.

Earlier in the week, I’d scored last-minute tickets to a swanky après-ski-themed New Year’s Eve party at a club in Soho, and it was in full swing when we arrived. Fairy lights, presumably left over from Christmas, hung from the rafters, and electric fireplaces stood along the walls. Skis, snowshoes, and pine branches completed the décor, and nearly every drink appeared to be a mulled version of a regular cocktail.

“Well?” I asked the group before we made our way to the bar. “What do we think?”

“Bang-on,” Cal said, and the others agreed.

“Seriously,” Liv said. “This is great.”

“Liv just wanted an excuse to wear metallic pleather pants,” Margot said, and Finn whistled. “But she’s right. It is great.”

“Well done, Lu,” Raja said, and I smiled. I’d been nervous about my first go at planning a Warehouse Weekend, and was glad to hear I hadn’t totally screwed it up. “Shall we?” Raja asked, nodding in the direction of the bar, and we followed her lead.

We ordered a handful of imported craft beers and mulespacked with cinnamon sticks, then took a lap to get our bearings. A large digital clock mounted above the bar counted the minutes to midnight, and I tried to do the opposite.

I had had such different expectations of this night, making it hard to embrace the festivities. A cloud of disappointment floated over the bar, turning the faces of every guy I looked at into Henry’s. I had approximately two hours and twenty-one minutes to pull myself together so the start of the new year wouldn’t be as melancholic as the end of this one, and I’d need something a lot stronger than a mule to do it.

“Let’s do a shot,” I said to Liv over the music.

“Can we do it off a ski? I’ve always wanted to do a shot off of a ski.”

“Come on,” I laughed, pulling her by the hand to the bar. Liv was unapologetically enthusiastic, and I was trying to let her positivity rub off on me. Finn was standing behind her, and she grabbed him, and he grabbed Raja, and pretty soon the whole lot of us was lined up at the bar, poised to drink cheap tequila out of shot glasses glued to an old ski.

“Ready?” Cal asked, looking at us one by one. We cheered, then lifted the ski together and brought the shot glasses to our lips. “Go.”

The tequila burned my tongue, my throat, and everything else it touched on the way to my stomach. I closed my eyes and let the feeling settle, imagining my disappointment burning away with it. We laughed, linked arms, and shuffled back into the party as a family. I was ready to embrace the night.

Naturally, Raja dragged us all onto the dance floor, and everyone at the party fell away. I looked at my roommates’ faces in turn as we danced, watching as they mouthed the words to a song or teased each other for their terrible dance moves, and for a while, I didn’t miss Henry at all. I had everything Ineeded right there, with those six people, and maybe that’s what I was to expect in the new year.

We were headed to the bar for another round when I saw him.

“Hi,” he said, addressing only me, despite my entourage, and extending his hand. It took me a minute to register what was happening, which probably made me look like an idiot. “Oliver,” he said.

“Lucy.” I shook his hand, and we both held on for a moment too long.

“I saw you earlier, on the dance floor—where you looked great, by the way, but you also looked like you were having far too much fun for me to interrupt. Is now a better time?”

“Yes, it’s a perfect time, really,” Raja interrupted, smiling at him over my shoulder.

I snapped my head around to shoot her a look, but she wasn’t having any of it. Her look was even more stern, imploring me to entertain this conversation.

“Lucky me, then,” he said. He took a sip of what looked like an old-fashioned, and I couldn’t help but notice the glossy sheen it left on his full lips.

“Lu, we’re just going to be over by this fireplace,” Raja said in my ear so as not to interrupt us. No matter how many drinks we’d had or what conversations we were in the middle of, we’d be damned before we lost one another in a crowded bar.

I turned to her and asked with my eyes,What the hell do I do?

“Stop thinking about Henry,” she whispered through barely parted teeth. “Start thinking about this gorgeous stranger instead.” The rest of my friends were at the fireplace, within sight but too wrapped up in each other to notice us. “And Lu, have a little fun, for the love of god.”

I shooed her away, nervous Oliver might have heard her. When I turned back in his direction, he was smiling lightlyand staring at me with deep, kind brown eyes, and I decided I deserved this. I deserved someone kind, patient, willing to actively pursue me.

---