It wasn’t just that they were beautiful. They were the kind of people who made you feel like you were in high school all over again, who took everything you’d been forcing down your throat about body positivity and loving yourself since you were sixteen years old and shot it straight to hell. You could be as beautiful as you told yourself you were, but you would never be them. Cheerful, easy, in love. The kind of people who made you want, desperately, to be liked.

Vera and John can be very charming. But they only really care about themselves.

Vera patted the space beside her, and I sat down as directed, clinging to my glass.

‘So what brought you guys up here?’ I asked.

Vera smiled, and the two shared a brief conspiratorial look, as if they delighted in telling their story, one chapter in the history of them. ‘We wanted to open an art gallery forever,’ Vera said. ‘But we could never afford the space in the city, so one day, we decided, let’s do it! I run the day-to-day – I was trained in arts management at Pratt – and John paints in his cabin-slash-studio in the woods. I show his pieces, as well as others’.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That sounds so idyllic. It’s one of those things people always talk about doing but never do.’

Vera’s smile faltered, just the tiniest bit, and I wondered if I’d misstepped.

‘I’m sure it’s hard leaving the city, though,’ I added. ‘Starting fresh and everything.’

They exchanged a glance, and John took a rather large sip of his wine.

Vera sighed. ‘It is, yeah. It can be hard to meet people. You’ve got weekenders who do the city and the country, and you’ve got people who were born and raised here. The in-betweeners, like us, we don’t always quite fit in. It’s a little easier if you’re right in the heart of downtown Woodstock, but even a few miles out, it’s different. When we moved here, we were the only people who didn’t grow up on this block. The neighbors didn’t really warm up to us,’ she said.

Maggie flashed to mind. It wasn’t that far-fetched to imagine a local woman set in her ways finding a pair of Manhattanites self-centered. Perhaps that’s all there was to it.

I took a sip of wine, desperate to get us back on comfortable ground. ‘Are there any spots I should know about? Good restaurants? Bars?’

‘Bars!’ Vera said, laughing. ‘I hate to break it to you, but the bar scene around here is severely lacking. Nothing like you’d get in the city. Hardly anything’s even open late in Woodstock.’

‘There’s Platform,’ John offered.

‘Platform?’