She punches him in the shoulder.
And then Raya appears, shouting Prisha’s name and engulfing her in a bear hug. She jerks back suddenly. “Wait,” she says, glancing around. “Your bodyguards aren’t coming for me, are they?”
Prisha rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” They keep talking, but I’m not listening. My gaze is locked on Oliver’s, breath shallow, mind swirling.
“C’mon,” Raya says, grabbing my forearm, literally jerking me out of my trance. “It’s about to start.”
She steers me away from Prisha and Oliver and I have no choice but to follow.
* * *
“Who was that?” Raya says as we get settled at a table on the other side of the room. As soon as I’m seated, I start searching for Oliver but can’t find him in the scrum of people still milling around.
“Huh?”
“The guy. The ridiculously attractive one. I didn’t even get an intro.”
I look at her. “That was Oliver.”
“What? Jesus. No wonder you dream about him.”
My cell buzzes in the pocket of the ball gown skirt Raya paired with the bodysuit. I dig it out.
Hallway? Two minutes. I scan the room again but don’t see him, and I wonder if he’s already out there.
“I’ve got to go. Bathroom.”
“Mm-hm,” she says, knowingly, and I don’t have time to worry about what she thinks.
I slip out of the banquet room into the red-diamond-carpeted hallway. When the heavy door thuds shut behind me, everything goes still, the din of the party muffled by the thick doors. I spy a water fountain and suddenly feel parched. I walk toward it, bend over and let the cool water wet my mouth, then I splash some onto my face. As I stand up, patting my cheeks dry with my bare hands—“Mia.”
I straighten my back and turn toward his voice slowly, willing my heart to slow. But if anything, it picks up when I see him steadily walking toward me. I keep my hand on the water fountain for balance.
“Hi,” I say. He stops within a few feet of me and I realize I could reach out and touch him, if I wanted. We are alone, even though yards away there are hundreds of people. And something about that is intimate. Exhilarating. Terrifying. Every one of my nerve endings is on fire, alerting me to his nearness.
“What are you doing here?” he breathes.
“You just texted me,” I deadpan, trying to defuse the tension. “Did you forget?”
He doesn’t crack.
I relent. “I went to school here. I’ve known Prisha for years.”
“Someone else we have in common.” He levels his gaze at me, as if daring me to challenge him, to say it’s a coincidence.
And I remember. “Oh my god—is that the one piece of art you own?”
He nods. “I missed opening night at one of her exhibitions. Years ago. It was hammering down rain and the record store flooded. I was stuck trying to save the records, clean up the muck. Next day, I went and bought one of her photos to make it up to her. Cost me nearly a whole paycheck.”
I feel faint. “Which opening night?” I ask, even though I know. I’ll never forget that rainstorm. That night.
“What do you mean?”
“Was it her very first one? That tiny gallery on Fourth Street?”
“Yes,” he says, and then shakes his head as if believing but not believing: “You were there.”
I nod because I can’t form words. My head is blurry. I put my hand out behind me to grip the water fountain again, but it comes in contact with the wall instead. Was the wall always this close? Was Oliver? Only inches separate us.
“It’s actually—” My voice cracks. “That’s the night—” I stop. My heart feels as though it’s beating outside of my chest. On display.
“The night what?”
I swallow. “It’s the night I met my husband.”
He takes a small step back, as if I’ve lobbed the words at him, a bowling ball that takes effort to catch. He shoves his fingers in his hair and I know what he’s thinking because I’m thinking the same thing.
“Too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he says.
He give you baby.
It’s all I can hear. That and the blood rushing through my head. And I don’t know if it’s how close he’s standing to me or his words or the four glasses of champagne I downed in the past hour, but suddenly I’m dizzy.
“I need to sit.”
When I stumble forward, Oliver grabs my arm, sending shock waves through my body, but I don’t jerk away. I let him lead me to a bench and my skirt billows out as I sink onto it.
Oliver takes off his jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. It’s only then I realize I’m shivering. I stare at the floor, my mind a broken movie reel of memories, Isak’s words playing over and over and over.
He give you baby.
He give you baby.
He give you baby.
“Mia,” Oliver says. “Are you OK?”
I shake my head yes and then no. “I don’t know,” I say. Tears spring to my eyes, and then one rolls down my cheek. I don’t bother wiping it away.
“You know,” he says, his voice so low, I have to lean in closer to hear it. So close I can feel the heat of his breath on my ear. “I don’t believe in anything. My great aunt Cici was Presbyterian. Made us go to church every Sunday. Was always saying things like, You’ll see your mom again one day. And I always thought it was just a kind lie; a way to make it not as sad that she was dead. I don’t believe in God. Not really. Or aliens. Or Bigfoot. Although—to be honest I don’t think that’s as far-fetched as people make it out to be. A huge, hairy man hiding out in the deep forests of Canada.”
I tilt my head to look at him, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. He reaches for my hand and part of me wants to snatch it back from him while the other part wants to interlace my fingers with his and never let go. I do neither, and my hand lies limp in his grip.
“I don’t know why I started dreaming about you. Or why I met you. Or why our lives seem to be circling each other like water around a drain. Maybe it is quantum physics or something just too big and complicated for me to wrap my head around. But I don’t think it’s nothing.”
My breathing is shallow.
“I know you’re married. And it’s messy and—God, believe me when I say this is the last thing I thought I would ever be doing, but . . . I believe that this all means something. That there’s something here—” He gestures with his free hand, from me to him. As if it’s as easy as that. A straight line that connects us. Point A to Point B. “I don’t think I’m imagining it.”