Maura bustles in, all out of breath. “What on earth is going on here?” She takes in Ben and his grandfather, a tomato-faced mayor, practically apoplectic. “Dick, seriously, this is why you weren’t invited. You’re like children. Come here, Ben, let me get you an ice pack.” Grandmother mode activated, she shoos Ben into the kitchen; the rest of his face goes red as he catches me in the throng. I offer a thin smile and, on humiliating instinct, a thumbs-up.

The party unravels spectacularly after that. The dining room empties, cater waiters begin to clear dishes and furniture. I manage to locate Ben’s glasses in the corner, an earpiece bent but miraculously otherwise not broken.

On his way out, the mayor exchanges terse words with Laura Escano—surely, about keeping this affair out of the papers. His wife pauses at the door as her husband thunders down the porch steps. Her eyes are full of pity. “Your grandmother told me what happened to your mom,” she says to me. “I’m here, if you ever want to talk. I work in family therapy, with plenty of experience in grief.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I say, caught off guard.

“Well, think about it.” She squeezes my forearm and trots after her husband, already waiting impatiently at the driver’s-side door of a sleek black Mercedes.

Maura’s no longer in the kitchen once I’m brave enough to check on Ben. He’s a movie cliché, with a giant steak pressed to the left side of his face as he sits on a tall barstool, which an hour earlier Gabriel occupied.

“Here, I found your glasses.” I hand them over. “Your black eye will be fun to explain at school on Monday,” I say.

Ben groans. “Don’t remind me. I’m already a pariah, and now you know I’m a mess. I’ll understand if you want to cancel our date.”

“Bronte told me about the lawsuit yesterday,” I admit. “We all have things in our lives we wish we could change. I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope.” I put an extra emphasis on the p.

Ben lowers the steak with a wince before managing a grimace. I whisper my fingers over his purpling cheek; he angles into my touch. It’s intimate, and Ben seems to catch himself quickly. He flinches away.

Right. Way too soon.

But he’s searching my face, seeing straight through me, as he does. He takes my hand in his. “I love how you don’t care what other people think of you.”

I focus on the thrum of Ben’s pulse against my wrist, the way he smells mossy, with a hint of pine, like a sturdy, towering redwood. I drift into his side, allow our thighs to kiss. Think maybe he could be an anchor in this place, even if it’s only for this year. Entanglements aren’t all bad.