She clutched her designer handbag with a fond smile. It was blood red too, that smile, and I wondered how much money she was wearing from toe to top, figuring even that tube of red lipstick cost the equivalent of a decent steak dinner.

“You Bennets always did stick together. Tell me more over dinner.” The hopeful note coupled with the slightest curl at the corners of those lips I’d once dreamed would be mine told me all I needed to know. Not that there was any question. Ali only came around in one-night increments.

“Hate to disappoint, but I’ve got plans tonight.”

She pouted, the expression reminding me of a time years ago and the girl she’d once been. She was just as beautiful as she’d always been—tall and blonde and flawless, with a soft, kind face I’d once believed was incapable of anything but virtue. But I noted that beauty and my old familiar feelings with an unfamiliar detachment, a separation I hadn’t realized had come to pass. She wasn’t quite as tall as Lila, and though their hair wasn’t the same color, I compared the two, noting Lila’s was a little longer, shinier. Where Ali had velvety-brown doe eyes, Lila’s were crisp and bright with wit and determination. But Ali had never made me laugh the way Lila did. I’d never felt seen and appreciated by Ali like Lila did

A cold shock of realization shot up my spine.

My detachment was no fluke. It was simply that Ali wasn’t Lila.

My second realization was how very much trouble I was in.

“I leave in the morning, so I can’t offer a rain check. Are you sure you can’t spare some time tonight?” she insisted quietly, stepping closer to touch my forearm. “Even if it’s late. You know I don’t mind.”

I opened my mouth to decline with my own insistence when the door opened again, revealing the woman I’d been waiting for all day.

Her smile fell, her gait stalling, eyes collecting data from me, then Ali, then Ali’s hand on my arm.

My heart climbed up my ribs like a ladder. “I’m sure.”

When Ali saw Lila, her face shifted with understanding. “I see,” she said with curtness I’d expected and sadness I hadn’t, though I wasn’t dumb enough to assume that sadness had anything to do with her feelings. Not feelings of her heart at least. “Sorry again for barging in. Maybe next time?”

“Maybe,” I answered, unable to reject her so blatantly in front of an audience.

Ali stretched again to brush a harmless kiss to my cheek. Harmless to me, at least.

Lila had come to a stop behind Ali. She was pristine, standing tall and unfazed and smiling that smile she wore at work. Such as to say, it was all a facade, from head to toe.