“Coffee? No. Well, was he someone you had met before the gala? I mean, how did you get so close with him so quickly?”

“Is that what they told you?”

“Yes,” she said, getting frustrated.

I returned to my eggs, slipped them onto a plate, buttered some bread, and poured my coffee. She sat across from me.

“I didn’t think it was that quick. My parents took forever introducing me to everyone, and when they wandered off, he approached me.”

“And?”

I ate and thought.

“I don’t usually meet my father’s business people. I usually avoid them. Generally, they are as exciting as dripping molasses at the corners of their mouths, talking about profits and losses, margins and capital expenditures . . . honestly Greek to me. I smile and slip away before they give me a headache.”

“But not him?”

I paused to look like I was giving it great thought again. “No, not him.” I continued to eat.

“Stop it!” she squealed. “You’re teasing and tormenting me. You know exactly what I want to hear.”

I smiled and sat back, my excitement now boiling over like overheated milk.

“He’s quite good-looking and apparently, from what my father tells me and what he told me himself, very wealthy.”

“How old is he?”

“My father said he is twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three! And he doesn’t know you’re only sixteen? I mean, couldn’t he tell?”

“Do I behave like a typical sixteen-year-old?”

“Oh, no, of course not. They said you ate with only him.”

“There were a few hundred people around us, so it wasn’t exactly dining alone.”

“You know what I mean, Corrine. They said you danced with him, too?”

“If you can call it that. He showed me the waltz. It lasted only a few minutes.”

“And?”

“And I need practice.” I continued to eat.

She stared at me, her eyes filling with anger and frustration.

“What?”

“I thought I was your best friend. I thought we were going to travel when we were eighteen and have lots of romantic adventures. I thought you trusted me with all your deepest secrets. I trusted you with mine, and now this, this making me pull teeth,” she said, throwing up her hands and pouting.

“Did I teach you how to be this dramatic? I think so. You were quite the shy thing when we first started planning and plotting together.” I put my fork down, sipped some coffee, and smiled again. “You are my best friend, Daisy. That hasn’t changed. All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you the rest of it. He asked me to go for a walk, and we went out to the Wexler gardens.”

“Alone?”

“My parents didn’t see me go, but apparently, our little spies did. Yes, alone. He was . . . quite charming, describing his mansion, his property, and then we both admired the stars . . .”

“The stars? And?”

“And he wanted to kiss me, of course.”

“And?”