The Pact. Jennifer Sturman

But I worry that the story doesn’t do justice to all of the other traits that make her so special—her quiet insight, her subtle wit, her incredible talent.

      “I feel privileged to have Emma for a friend. I think I speak for all of her bridesmaids when I say that we are honored that she wants us to stand up with her tomorrow, and that we hope that she has some small inkling of how much we want her to be happy. I trust that Richard realizes how very fortunate he is to have Emma in his life.” I hesitated, wondering if my last sentence had sounded sincere. Richard was far too arrogant ever to understand how lucky he was to be sitting at the same table as Emma tonight, let alone marrying her.

      Raising my glass, I scanned the assembled guests. “Please join me in drinking a toast to Emma.”

      “To Emma,” the crowd joined in. I sat down amidst a cascade of clinking glasses.

      Embarrassed, I looked over at her. A silent tear rolled down her face. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

      “Of course,” I mouthed back. What else could I do?

      CHAPTER 2

      “Well done,” a voice said, low and intimate and positioned mere inches from my right ear. It was a warm, deep voice, and it sent a distinctly pleasant tremor down my spine.

      Startled, I turned to establish its owner.

      The seat next to me, the one that had been empty all through dinner, was now filled by the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

      He wasn’t beautiful in the obvious sense—the male model, movie star sense. In fact, by traditional measures, he was fairly nondescript. Thick, sand-colored hair, a regular-size nose, normal-size eyes topped by straight eyebrows that were golden at the edges, as if he spent a lot of time in the sun. He was altogether not my type—as a general rule, I preferred men who were dark, brooding and aloof. Still, I found myself wondering what our children would look like. My cheeks flushed in that lovely way that makes my freckles stand out as if I’ve been spattered with mud.

      “I’m Peter Forrest,” he said with a quiet smile, displaying even, white teeth. “Richard’s best man.”

      My heart slid like a lead weight from the fluttering position it had assumed in my throat down to the depths of my stomach. The glowing mental photograph I’d constructed of our two (perhaps three) perfect children morphed from color to black-and-white and then faded into shadow. Surely a close friend of Richard’s was, by definition, an evil troll, even if every molecule in my body begged to differ. I should have known that any handsome unattached stranger must have a tragic flaw.

      “My flight was late,” he continued, oblivious to the fact that his previous words had destroyed any potential for our future together. “But I got here just in time for your toast. I’m glad I don’t have to give mine until tomorrow. You’re a tough act to follow.” As if flattery could mitigate his damning association with Richard.

      “I’m Rachel,” I said, hoping that my voice didn’t betray the speed with which I’d just internally staged and discarded courtship, marriage and procreation. “Emma’s maid of honor. We’re friends from college.” I gave myself a swift mental kick in the shin—after all, I’d just spent several minutes explaining precisely that to the entire room. Then I gave myself another mental kick in the shin for caring about the impression I was making on one of Richard’s cronies. “But I guess you know that. And how do you know Richard?” I asked, trying to mask the despair I felt. If only his answer could in some way absolve him of the intimacy implied in being Richard’s best man.

      “Oh, I’ve known Richard since birth, practically. We grew up together in San Francisco, went to the same school and everything. At least until Richard came east for boarding school.” I’d known Richard was from San Francisco, but I never gave it much thought. Yet when Peter said San Francisco, my mind instantly conjured up images of Peter on a sailboat, Peter skiing on an Alpine trail, Peter hiking up a mountain, and Peter doing all of those other healthy things for which the Bay Area is famous. As quickly as these images flashed before my eyes, I struggled to replace them with ones that more accurately would reflect the ways in which any friend of Richard’s must pass his leisure time—Scotch drinking, cigar smoking, shooting small defenseless animals, and amusing his like-minded pals with misogynistic limericks. All my mental maneuverings, however, met with little success.

      “San Francisco,” I said, trying my best to act like a normal person making conversation with her dinner partner. “It must be hard for you to see much of each other when you’re so far away.” I was grasping at straws, I knew, but somewhere inside me burned a small flame of hope that hadn’t yet been extinguished by the facts at hand.

      He hesitated a moment before answering, contemplating the bubbles in his glass of champagne, as if he were trying to word his response with care. Then he turned his gaze back to me. His eyes were the color of rich, dark chocolate. “It is hard. In fact, I’ve only seen him a couple of times since we started college. His mother moved away from San Francisco years ago, and I don’t think he’s been back to the West Coast since then except for maybe a couple of quick business trips.”

      My brain sucked up that fact with the power of an industrial-strength magnet and allowed my heart to register a flicker of pleasure. After all, you can forgive anyone for his childhood friends; it’s just the friends people choose when they’re old enough to know better that you can hold against them. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why Richard would ask someone he was barely in touch with to be his best man.

      As if reading my thoughts, Peter leaned toward me and confided, “I have to admit, I was a bit surprised when Richard called and asked me to be in the wedding. It must have taken some doing for him just to track down my phone number. But it’s hard to say no to someone you’ve known all your life.” My heart gave another flutter when he said this; loyalty, even to someone as vile as Richard, was a noble trait, however undeserving its object might be. But Peter’s words still didn’t explain why Richard had asked him in the first place. Was Richard that bereft of close friends? It was entirely possible, I guessed; I was all too aware that to know Richard well was to despise him.

      Richard’s tedious colleague stood to give the next toast, and Peter turned his head to listen. This provided me with an excellent opportunity to observe his profile, the strong set of his jaw, and the handful of prematurely gray hairs at his temple. I pretended to listen to the toast, laughing at the appropriate moments, but mostly I was busy looking at Peter’s left hand, loosely gripping his champagne glass, and thinking about how nice his left earlobe was. I caught myself unconsciously leaning toward it, the better to give it a gentle nibble. “Behave yourself,” I admonished my wayward id.

      The toasts went on, as they usually do, interminably. It turned out that I’d had no need to fear the audience’s level of sobriety. A number of drunken but earnest souls, some of whom barely knew either the bride or the groom, stood to bless Richard and Emma’s union. Finally, the last well-meaning speaker had slurred his way through a wandering speech and sunk back into his seat. I saw Emma’s mother give the bandleader a discreet but urgent hand signal. Her sense of etiquette was extraordinarily well developed, and the endless toasting and clinking of glasses was probably like a form of torture to her. She hated public displays of emotion and frivolous sentimentality more than anyone I’d ever met; if I found the toasts tiresome, she probably found them excruciating.

      Peter turned toward me as the band began to play. “Care to dance?” he asked.

      “I’d love to,” I answered, quickly, before my brain could thoroughly analyze the situation and pass down a judgment that would forbid physical contact of any sort. He helped me up from my chair and took my hand in his. His palm was pleasantly warm and dry. From the corner of my eye, I saw Jane and Luisa exchange a bemused look.

      Peter led me onto the dance floor and swung me smoothly into a fox-trot. I silently thanked my parents for those nights as a child when my mother had played our old battered piano while my father twirled me around the living room, my bare feet resting atop his polished shoes as he taught me the elements of ballroom dance that he’d learned long ago in Moscow.