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She rolled her eyes. “I’m serious. And I’m going to make a big brisket and noodle kugel and some vegetable sides, and I’m going to make some of those big doughnut cakes for dessert. Do you have any Bundt pans? I need more Bundt pans.”

“I don’t know what a Bundt pan is,” Leo said. He lifted his arm and took another sip of his orange soda, grimacing. Maybe it had gone flat.

“They’re those big round doughnut-shaped cake pans with ridges inside,” Shira said, drawing the shape of one big in the air. She went to take a gulp of her wine. The cup was empty already. Well, it was a very small cup. “Though do you think that’s enough? I mean, they won’t actually be fried. They’ll look like big doughnuts, but they won’t actually be doughnuts. Do you think I should make my own doughnuts?”

“Shira,” Leo said slowly, leaning forward so that his elbows met his knees again. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, but her body was a traitor, and evil little tears sprang to the corners of her eyes. She viciously swiped them away. “Yes.”

“Okay, but you nearly took your eyes out there,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She drew in a deep breath. “I need this party to be perfect.”

His face was solemn, those thick brows pinched. “How come?” Now that she looked closer, she could see that his elbows were actually hovering just above his knees, as if he were ready to spring into action. To do what? Keep her from smashing her plastic glass and trying to slit her throat with it?

Another deep breath. Don’t be overdramatic. She burst out, “Because it’s the only thing I’ve got left!”

Not overdramatic at all. She braced herself for Leo’s tone to get all pitying and sad.

His eyebrows jumped up. “Wow, okay.” His arms fell open, going palms up. “Tell me about it.”

No judgment in his tone. No reassurances about how he was sure that wasn’t true, or a list of her accomplishments. Somehow that made it feel easier to talk to him and tell him all the things she hadn’t quite been able to make herself type out over text. “One, my show flopped.” That was the big one. She pushed on through the tremor in her voice, the lump in her throat. “I worked on those paintings for so long. It was such a personal show.” Talia had flown out for the opening, had marveled at the paintings and told her that some of them had been like looking through a window into a magical version of their childhood. “And I thought it was really, really good.”

“It was really, really good,” Leo said. “It was great, from all the photos I saw. I loved it.”

She hoped he wasn’t about to ask her to sign the print he’d special ordered. Looking at the paintings from the show now made her feel some insidious mixture of pride and hope and also embarrassment and shame. Because this work had poured out from her heart and her soul, however cheesy that sounded. And people had rejected it. The bloggers and reviewers were wishy-washy about it, ultimately deeming it fine but nothing that stood out from the crowd. Only a few of the paintings had sold, even after the gallery had reduced the prices. They’d parted ways with her soon after, and now she no longer had gallery representation, just a bunch of useless paintings stacked against the wall of her kitchen.

What did that say about her heart and her soul? And her life in general? She’d worked her entire life to create that show, and she’d done it, and she’d just…failed. She wasn’t good enough.

“Well, the public didn’t agree,” she said, her voice shaking more now. “And since my paintings didn’t sell well, my gallery dropped me, and none of the other big galleries are going to be interested with my record. So…that’s that for my painting career, I guess.”

“You never know,” he said loyally.

She really didn’t need to hear this from people outside the business, who didn’t know anything about how it worked. “And at least I’ve got my job, except I hate my job now.” That was an understatement. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after a nightmare about having to woo a new artist, only she’d forgotten he was coming over and she was naked in the shower. “It turns out the job at this level is a 24-7 commitment, and I don’t like having to schmooze and flatter all day. It feels so insincere, and I’m not good at it.”

She drew in another deep breath, one that almost made her dizzy. “And before you tell me again that I should just quit and find a new job, it’s not that simple. A thousand people would kill for my job.”

“But if you’re not one of the thousand anymore, what does that matter?” Leo said.

It made sense theoretically, but she dismissed the idea out of hand. What would all her classmates and coworkers and artist acquaintances think about her if she let such an opportunity go? She’d worked her entire life for two things, and one of them was now out—she had to hold on to the other. Now that she couldn’t introduce herself with pride as an artist, at least she could still raise eyebrows with her job title. And besides, if she just left, what were all those years of work for? She’d sacrificed sleep and parties and classes in things she could’ve been interested in in pursuit of a career path like this.

If she left, what was the point of it all?

She didn’t want to fight about it with Leo, though. He would just tell her again that she was too worried about what people thought of her, and…and…okay, maybe that was a little bit true, but it didn’t matter.

“But neither of those is the worst part.” She paused, letting the gut-twisting pain and shame and sadness pour back over her. She’d already marinated in it for so long you’d think she wouldn’t feel it anymore, but no, that wasn’t how life worked. “My best friend—my whole friend group—they…I got…They’re not my friends anymore,” she finished lamely.

“What happened?”

Shira hesitated. The way Danica had dumped her…well, she’d won the group chat and the friend group. Ellery and Nora had said they’d still be friends with both of them, that they didn’t want to take sides, but in practice, Danica had won. Because you couldn’t have two group chats discussing all the same things where only one member differed. Not unless you were using one of them to talk shit about the other. And Shira would rather have no friends than fake friends. “I…It doesn’t matter. It matters that it really hurt, and that I miss them, and I’m also furious at them, and also—” She swallowed the urge to scream the next sentence, then drowned it in another swallow of wine. God, that was terrible stuff. “We’re all in the same circles, art world and college and friends, and there’s this party in the city I know they’re going to, because before everything went down I was going to go, too, but now of course I wasn’t going to go, but then my boss told me I had to go because it’s an art party and apparently this artist he wants is going to be there, and I can’t go. I’d rather die.” She stopped talking only because she ran out of air. She gulped in another breath, but Leo spoke before she could expound upon exactly how dead she would be.

“I’ll come with you.”

It was the simple yet authoritative way he said it that did her in. If he’d asked her if she wanted him to go, she’d have instinctively shaken her head, not wanting to be a bother. If he’d couched it in a bunch of excuses about how much he really wanted to go, she’d have known immediately he was lying for her sake, and she would’ve shaken her head, still not wanting to be a bother. But those four words. I’ll come with you. No pretending that he was doing it for himself. Meaning she’d have to tell him No, I don’t want you to come, and that, she realized, wasn’t true. “Thank you,” she said, and that was true.

“We’ll go in, fake laugh and fake smile and act like we’re doing great and having a wonderful time, we’ll connect with your artist, then we’ll make up an excuse and get the hell out of there,” Leo said. “Sound good?”

She nodded. “Thank you,” she said again. She could fake laugh and fake smile and pretend she was doing great. She could totally do this.