She’s surrounded by three or four of these other “academic partners.” Grad students, probably, hanging on her every word. Josh is used to holding his own with people who think they’re the smartest person in the room; usually, he takes pleasure in the challenge of it. For most of his life, there’s been no one he couldn’t talk over. His professors, world-renowned chefs…last month, he’d gleefully debated Stanley Tucci on the finer points of the Negroni.
He’s about to serve up a counterpoint—something about how well strict hierarchy works in a restaurant kitchen—when he feels a hand press into his shoulder, gently nudging him to the left.
It’s so unexpected that it jolts his body. The owner of the hand moves past him before he can turn around and see her face. She bisects the circle, cutting straight through the conversation about the various disappointments of the Toronto International Film Festival, and heads for Cass like a heat-seeking missile.
No greeting. No “I was looking everywhere for you.” She just places herself directly in front of Cass, demanding her full attention. It wouldn’t be hard: She’s wearing black trousers and a bra, as if she’d had on a full tuxedo and simply removed most of the top half. Wobbling slightly on heels, she’s still four inches shorter than Cass.
Josh still can’t see her face from this angle, just the vague outline of her profile. It’s mostly hidden by her hair, a platinum blond bob.
Taking Cass’s jaw in the palm of her hand, she pulls her head forward greedily into a kiss. The woman is loose-limbed, keeping her hand on Cass’s face and somehow kissing her with her entire body. Not a shred of regard for anyone else.
An indignant twinge of envy prickles in his chest—a “this is shameless and inappropriate and why can’t I have it, too?” sentiment. When was the last time Sophie kissed him like that? Or vice versa?
At some point (the kiss either lasts a full minute or Josh’s brain converts it into slow motion), the woman leans back and pulls away, her back arching. The colored light illuminates the side of her face.
His skin goes cold. There are nine million people in this city. Logic dictates that it must be someone else. But New York doesn’t operate on statistical likelihoods. The city has its own agenda, and this—this—is exactly how Josh’s life works. Every slight, every error in judgment, every regret—they all come back to haunt him eventually.
But usually not twice.
Cass tugs at the edge of Ari’s bra, recomposing herself a bit. “My wife certainly knows how to make an entrance.”
* * *
“WIFE! YOU GOT remarried?” one of the young women screeches an inch from Ari’s eardrum. A former student, maybe. Cass is friends with so many of them. It’s kind of remarkable. “Congratulations! That’s amazing!”
Cass’s acolytes immediately make those singsongy awwww noises, like a group of preteens looking at a litter of kittens. Suddenly, they’re all too close, gathered in a tight circle, caging Ari in.
“You okay, Ar?” Cass asks in her sexy, husky voice. She sounds like an old-school country singer who’s had too much whiskey and too many cigarettes.
“Just rolling,” Ari mumbles, refocusing her attention on her wife.
The woman next to them laughs and then murmurs, “I want some of whatever she’s on.”
Ari leans back into Cass, trying to goad her into nuzzling her neck, getting her lips to graze against the nervy spot behind her ear. Every inch of her skin feels more sensitive right now.
My wife. Wife. Every time she hears the phrase out loud, her brain repeats it like an affirmation. A mantra from one of Cass’s self-help books. Because it still feels slippery to the touch. It’s technically legal but still this intangible fever dream. From serial non-monogamist to spouse? Maybe it is amazing.
Or maybe it’s the Molly, which is magnifying everything, making the music pulse in Ari’s limbs. Cass lightly scratches her nails up and down Ari’s spine in a hypnotic rhythm. It has to be the most pleasurable thing she’s ever experienced.
Ari was supposed to spend tonight in Hell’s Kitchen, in the same place she’s spent the last five New Year’s Eves. Gabe always hosts a karaoke fundraiser for LaughRiot and Ari always dresses up in something hideous and sparkly. Together, they torture everyone with their rendition of “The Boy Is Mine” after fighting over who sings the Monica part.
There aren’t that many holiday traditions in Ari’s life. She’s never gone back to Phoenix for Thanksgiving or Christmas, even when she was only a couple hours away at U of A. Making time-and-a-half holiday pay has always been a higher priority than enduring her mother’s new boyfriends and Grandma Pauline’s political opinions.
The only constant has been New Year’s Eve with Gabe.
But three weeks ago, Cass and Ari became wife and wife on the deck of the Jewel of the Seas, just off the port of Nassau, and Cass didn’t think it was too much to ask for her wife to be her date to a New Year’s Eve party she had told Ari about an hour earlier.
Ari had spent most of December 31 staring at a text, feeling sorry for herself, willing the letters to rearrange themselves and form new words.
so they liked your sample
but it’s a no on the staff writing gig.
Your voice isn’t the right fit for the project
you open to an assistant job?
Cass had scoffed at that. “It’s insulting. You are not an assistant.”
The rejection stung doubly hard after a year-long slump: KWPS had folded less than a year after paying Ari a modest sum for her script, and there was no streaming series to show for it. None of her acting auditions had garnered more than one role as a sexual harassment victim in a corporate training film. She’d done a few four-month stints on a cruise ship with Gabe and their improv team, sailing between Florida and the Bahamas. But Cass didn’t like Ari being away for long stretches.
Turned out that success was harder to come by on land.
“That’s how it works,” Cass had pointed out. “Your personal life is amazing right now.” She gave Ari one of those affectionate caresses down her forearm. “Your career trajectory is…stagnant. It’ll even out.”
Of course, sometimes you even it out by ingesting small amounts of chemicals into your body, tricking your brain into a prolonged state of delight, where everything feels good.
Sometimes you watch the patterns of light projected on a concrete wall and allow yourself to disassociate while your wife monologues about her Substack and viable revenue streams for creatives.
“Ar watched Terry Malick’s latest with me,” Cass tells her hangers-on. She slides an arm around Ari’s waist, warm and reassuring. “The entire thing.”
She gazes at Ari like she’s a living goddess. No one has ever looked at her like that. Not even close. Actual heart eyes.
Cass doesn’t just teach at the New School. She’s also a film critic. She calls celebrities by their first names, pitches think pieces to magazines, appears on podcasts, and has a two-bedroom (Two! Bedroom!) condo in Queens. She uses the tiny second bedroom as an office, like a real adult. It’s half Ari’s now.
Okay, yes, the office is basically still Cass’s. But Ari has more than half the dresser drawers. And in this city, offering storage space is the ultimate expression of love.
Among the many pleasant discoveries when Ari moved in: Two of the three drawers in Cass’s bedside table are filled with sex toys—a bounty of purple vibrating silicone that Ari could only have concocted in a dream. Maybe she would have been more open to the idea of committed relationships earlier if she’d known that married life is like a never-ending sleepover, with a lot more sex.
* * *
CASS TUGS AT Ari’s wrist. “Ar, this is Briar and her date, Josh, uh, Something.”
“Ew, no,” Briar says, backing away, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Ar” takes a step forward. Josh braces himself for her to splash a drink over the front of his suit, but she doesn’t erupt in anger. Her glassy eyes move around the room, unfocused, aiming at nothing—over his shoulder, to his left, up at the ceiling—before finding their way to his face.
“I know you.” She squints through the dim lighting, pushing her index finger into his chest with each syllable. “Tall Nightmare Sweater Man!”