The first time he came to dinner at her parents’ house, Suzanne smiled too brightly, Philip measured him like an appraiser evaluating a used car, and Cheryl arrived twenty minutes late in ripped designer jeans and a fitted white top that would have been inappropriate at a funeral and somehow was still inappropriate at family lasagna night.
She had leaned over Wendy’s shoulder to hug Mitchell with both arms and said, in the exact tone people use when they want cruelty to pass as wit, “So you’re the guy Wendy trapped.”
Everyone laughed.
Wendy laughed too.
Mitchell did not.
He had simply slid one hand under the table and taken Wendy’s without breaking eye contact with Cheryl. Then he said, pleasant and flat, “Actually, I asked her out six times before she said yes. I’m the lucky one.”
The room had gone tight for half a second. Not dramatic. Not explosive. Just enough for Wendy to notice that someone had, for the first time in her life, quietly refused the script on her behalf.