“Oh, no worries!” the girl gushed. “I can just grab another.” She stuffed a chair at the end of the table between me and Aspen. “See, this works for me.” She held out her hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Claire, Sam’s girlfriend.”
I took her callous hand in mine and shook. “Lark.”
“Ohh!” Her eyes widened.
For a moment, I worried that she knew. That Sam had confessed it all to Claire and that things were about to get really awkward.
But then she just grinned bigger. “Sam has told me so much about you. You run the campaign, right?”
I stared at her blankly for a few seconds too long before responding, “I’m the deputy campaign manager. Shawn”—I pointed toward him at the bar—“is the head campaign manager.”
“Well, still, I hear you’re the one who keeps everything running.”
“She does,” Aspen interjected. “Lark is, like, literally the best.”
“See,” Claire said, gesturing to Aspen.
“Don’t try to deny it, Lark,” Demi said. “Shawn is great, but he’s no Larkin St. Vincent.”
“You all are too much,” I said, uncomfortable with the praise…and Claire.
“Here’s your drink,” Shawn said, setting the beer down in front of Demi and pushing it across the table. “I’m going to go catch up with Christine. See if we can talk about the feminism topic again.”
I gave him a thumbs-up. “Have fun with that.”
Aspen snorted, and Demi tried to hide her own amusement.
Claire glanced around with wide blue eyes. “Y’all are so cool. I wish I had more people my own age in the orchestra.”
“How did you get into that?” Demi asked her.
I shifted, looking around the room as I took a sip of the beer in front of me. I choked on the dark liquid. God, it was gross. What had I been thinking?
I was looking for Sam.
Of course.
Where the hell was he? And how had I been left alone with his girlfriend?
That was the minute he appeared out of the restroom. Our eyes locked across the room. I could see his thoughts clear across his face. I was there. Claire was there. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?
It was the same question that I was wondering.
But to his credit, he still strode across the room toward us.
I missed everything Claire had said to Demi and Aspen in the brief exchange with Sam. Claire didn’t even notice him until he was standing right in front of her.
“Oh hey! Look, Lark is here,” Claire said with a big smile.
“Should I…scoot down?” I asked with my poker face firmly in place.
“No!” Claire gasped. She waved her hand at Sam. “We don’t have to always be together. Take the other seat.”
Sam wavered for a second. But what could he say? Sorry, I don’t want to sit next to Lark because she’s my ex-girlfriend and this is insanely uncomfortable?
Nope. He took the seat.
And now, I was fucking sitting between Sam and his girlfriend.
Kill me. Just kill me.
“So, as I was saying…” Claire continued.
But I didn’t hear what she said. My ears were ringing. This was such a bad idea. I hadn’t thought that Sam would be here. Let alone with Claire. I should have anticipated it, but after the confrontation with my parents, I hadn’t even considered that option.
“Are you drinking Guinness?” Sam asked next to me. “Don’t you hate beer?”
I glanced down at the drink I’d barely touched. “Shawn got it for me.”
Then I pushed it toward him. Sam loved Guinness. I remembered one of the UW-Madison bars had this guy who had studied in Dublin to pour Guinness. That was how serious he was about the authenticity of their staff. Sam had raved about it. I wouldn’t touch the stuff. Except that one crazy night that involved an Irish car bomb and lots of fuzzy blackout memories.
Our fingers brushed against each other as he took the drink from me without comment. I jerked away on instinct.
“How did you and Sam end up in New York?” Aspen asked. “I always love these stories. Everyone has their own how I got to the city story.”
“Except Lark, right?” Claire asked. “You’re from New York.”
How much had Sam told Claire about me? Christ.
“Uh, yeah, I am. Born and raised.”
“So cool,” she said. “Well, Sam and I met my senior year of college, which was his last year of law school. We had mutual friends and ended up at a party together. We were together, what, about a year when I auditioned for the orchestra?” she asked Sam. He nodded, his head buried in his beer. “Yeah, a year. And when I got the position, he took the New York bar and transferred up here to be with me. It’s been about a year since we’ve been here too.”
I kept my gaze from wandering to Sam. He’d lied. He’d lied to me. He’d said that the firm had transferred him. But he’d only been transferred after Claire had gotten a job here. He must have requested it. He’d moved her for her. When he’d never done that for me.
My throat tightened painfully.
“I love that,” Aspen said. “I wish I had a cute story like that for how I met my girlfriend. We met in a bar.” She laughed and shrugged. “So cliché.”
“That’s not cliché. That’s great!” Claire said. But then turned her attention back to me. “So, Sam says that y’all worked on the Woodhouse campaign together. Isn’t it just crazy that y’all met up again on a campaign here in New York?”
“Wait,” Demi said with an arched eyebrow, “you and Sam knew each other before this?”
“Hey, I didn’t know that,” Aspen said.
“I didn’t know it was a secret!” Claire said.
I forced out a laugh. It was hard to speak around the knife in my chest. “It’s not a secret. We both worked in Madison, like, five years ago. I didn’t even know he was in the city or anything. Just coincidence that he’s here now.”
“Yeah, I actually thought she was working with her parents still,” Sam said.
Which meant…if I’d known, I might not have applied for this job.
“What a small world,” Aspen said.
“It’s all about connections,” Demi said. “I really believe that the world is so much smaller than we think. And that once we make a connection with someone, we’re more likely to see that connection everywhere.”
I gulped and glanced over at Sam. That was exactly how I felt.
“Like, think about when you test-drive a car. You immediately see that car everywhere on the road. But before, you never even noticed it. That’s how it works with people too. We’re brought together for a reason. It’s serendipity.”
Yeah, and what happy accident brought me to this incredibly uncomfortable situation?
“I love that idea,” Claire agreed. “I lived most of my life in rural North Carolina. I like to think that it’s not so big after all. And people come into our lives for a reason.”
I swallowed. I needed to extract myself from this conversation.
I coughed hard into my hand. “Ugh, guys. I think I caught something. I’m really not feeling well. I wish I could stay longer, but I think I should just go.”