41 ⦿ in which i learn

After a guarded sweep of the room, I yawn. It's been an exciting opening night for Levi, but a pretty boring one for me. Even though Graeme and Xander were invited, they've spent the majority of the evening parading around the room so Graeme can show off her ring to her fashionable friends. Every so often I see Xander's pleading face staring at me across the room, or, equally as often, snagging something to eat off a passing waiter's tray.

Levi had stuck to me at first, but his face was too recognizable, and before I could say "pig in a blanket", he'd been whisked off to charm and schmooze some of the old biddies who had bank accounts larger than their wigs.

The gallery gleams white and gold, everything sparkling and glossed with an expensive veneer. Levi's art, bold black strokes and bright colors, splashes over multiple canvasses. He loves landscapes, but unless you were one of the old masters, it was hard getting work painting scenery in the modern age. Instead, he draws people. It had sold well and had helped him make a name for himself.

The paintings that brought him to fame are from a series called Emote. His subjects portrayed an emotion across their faces, but their gender is curiously fluid. Drawn without hair or any other gender-specific qualities, the faces staring back at me from the canvas are androgynous.

I sip at the free champagne and wonder if Levi painted us, his family, in any of these. Nothing I can recognize jumps out at me, but as I stroll around the room, I stay alert. I see one that looks suspiciously like Graeme—light skin, light eyes—and one that looks kind of like Celine Dion, but other than that, there's a stark unrecognizability in his work.

"That one kind of looks like you," a voice whispers behind me.

I whirl, grinning at Brett. She stands there with a mushroom on a toothpick and a floor-length gown the color of baby vomit. "Nice dress, B," I say as I give her a hug, careful not to let the greasy mushroom come into contact with my white lace V-back dress.

"I could say the same." She takes a step back to look at me. "Are you..." She blinks at me. "Is that a wedding dress?"

"What on earth would make you think that?" I snicker. "Geez, Brett, it's just a dress."

"Well," she says, still looking at me with wariness, "You disappeared on me when I thought we were supposed to be getting ready together. Then I talked to Levi and he said you left the apartment without him and there's like, a whole half hour that's unaccounted for."

"A half hour?" I gasp, bringing my empty champagne glass to my chest in mock-horror.

"Don't mock." Brett mutinously chews her mushroom and brandishes the pointy end of the toothpick at me. "Babies have been conceived in far less."

"I promise you that I'm not pregnant," I tell her dryly. "Graeme would kill me if I did anything to steal attention away from her big day, and I'm pretty sure if I'm waiting at the altar as big as a watermelon, she'd claw my eyes out."

"I don't know about that." Brett laughs. "Graeme might be a totally kick-ass aunt. All the fun of a cute, squashy baby, and none of the work."

I grin and wrap an arm around her shoulders. "She might be a great aunt," I allow, "but not as great as you." Before she can get any ideas, I add swiftly, "And no, I promise you, you are so not going to be an aunt any time soon, so don't give me that calculating look."

A quick scan of the crowd reveals what I've suspected - Wolf's absence. Brett catches my face fall and she leans her head on my shoulder, sighing. "He's not here?" she asks.

"Nope."

Her arm wraps around my waist. "I'm sorry," she says, sympathy dripping from each word.

"It's fine."

I catch Levi's eye from across the room and for a moment, I think he knows. Knows what I'm going to do. His eyebrows twitch infinitesimally and his lips part, like he's about to call out my name.

I smile at him. I'm going to be okay, I want to tell him. I'm ready for this. And even if I'm not, I'm going to do it anyway.

Levi's expression clears and his parted lips curve into an understanding smile. For a moment, it sends a pang to my heart. He's always been the one that understood me. That person used to be Xander, but I understand why he can't be that guy for me anymore. He needs to be that guy for Graeme now. I'll always miss the closeness that Xander and I shared, but I know that it can't be that way forever.

My gaze flits to my other best friend, at his goofy, slightly-too-much-champagne grin and the blatant love that shines from his eyes when he looks at Graeme. He won't understand, but maybe Levi will help him, maybe he won't feel so betrayed when he knows that I didn't tell any of them, either—

"Charlotte," Brett whispers. "Don't."

My eyes widen in alarm. Have I given something away?

"Don't look at everyone like you're saying goodbye." Her eyes bore into mine, beseeching me to contradict her, to laugh it off.

"Come here," I say, and we walk to the restrooms, where the crowd has thinned out and the music and lights aren't nearly as distracting. "I need to tell you something."

"You did run off and get married, didn't you?" she accuses the second we're alone. "I knew it!"

"Brett," I say in as calm a voice as I can muster. "When you go to the office, you'll find some papers on your desk with my signature." I take a deep breath. "I'm giving you Charlotte's Web."

"What?" she almost screeches.

I put my hands on her shoulders, wincing at her high decibel. "Hear me out, okay?" I plunge on. "You once said that I didn't trust you to make the decisions. But I do. And I don't know how else to tell you that other than leaving control of our company in your hands. Your very capable hands."

She stares back at me, completely flummoxed. Her blue eyes swell with tears, her eyelashes spiky with wetness. "I don't understand."

"I'm going to go away for a little while."

"On a honeymo—"

"No, B. Not on a honeymoon." I give her a tired smile.

"Oh." Her voice is watery. She frowns, glancing in Levi's direction. "Are you and him...?"

I shake my head. "No. I was kind of tempted to take him up on it and just follow him wherever he winds up. But I need to make my own path, and whether he knows it or not, he needs the same."

"For him it's less about forging his own path and more about running away," she points out.

"There's not so much of a distinction if you think about it."

"One is more proactive than the other," she counters. "So which one is it that you're doing?" All trace of her surprise and sadness is gone. All she has left is belligerence and all of it is aimed at me.

Instead of answering her, I press a soft kiss against her cheek. I feel her quiver, though whether it's with grief or suppressed anger, I don't stick around to find out. "I'm sure about this, Brett. Being a matchmaker...I don't think it's something I should be doing anymore. It doesn't make me happy and if I'm being honest, I don't think it has for a long time." I bite my lip. "I need to be someone who makes me happy."

I pull away, giving her the widest smile I can manage. Which, for the record, isn't all that much, considering I'm an inch away from the waterworks myself. "Try and explain things to Xand, will you? He'll feel like it's his fault."

With a self-righteous sniff, Brett mutters, "And so he should. He's the one who goddamn introduced you to goddamn Wolf in the first goddamn place."

Her prickliness coaxes a laugh out of me and after a moment, she joins me. Collapsing into helpless giggles, arms around each other, it feels in that second like everything will be okay.

"Go on, then." Brett gives me a little shove. "Before I decide to keep you." Her voice lowers to a whisper. "And there's some guy who's been eying me all evening and if we stay here a second longer he's going to think we're lesbian lovers."

I roll my eyes. "Go get some, B."

"I will." She gives me a valiant smile. "And just so you know, if I don't hear from you, like, freakin' ASAP, I will hunt you down."

"I'm only leaving New York, not the planet!"

"It may as well be the same thing," Brett says with a despairing sigh.

I collect my coat from the coat room, and after a split-second of indecision warring inside me, I slip the key Wolf gave me into Xander's coat along with a letter. It makes no mention of breaking my contract with Wolf—I'm pretty sure after he realizes what's happened, he and Wolf will do it anyway—or of my conversation with Levi.

Xander's about to be a married man, after all, and there's some things that a husband can't keep from his future wife. And Levi's words to me, well, that's just it. They're for me.

I slip into the cold, brisk air. I'll miss the familiar smell of New York, of counting bedroom lights in windows rather than sheep, of the blur of life happening all around me. The infiniteness of life on every street corner and every brownstone walkup. Just as I hail a cab, I see Wolf arrive in one of his own.

He doesn't notice me, his blond head ducked down to avoid the wind. For a moment, one wild, hopeful moment, I think that if he looks up, if he sees me, I'll abandon my plan and chase after him. I'll go back into the warmth of the gallery and pretend like the last ten minutes didn't happen. I'll forget that I left the apartment before Levi and snuck to the office with my signed papers to deliver to Brett. I'll forget that I wrote a letter to Xander telling him I needed a break from the city and would he please, pretty please, move my stuff out of Wolf's place and back into Levi's?

Wolf goes inside the gallery.

I decide to forget everything I promised myself I would forget if only he looked up.

"Hey," interrupts an irritated voice. The cab driver glared at me from the front seat. "You goin' somewhere or not?"

"Yeah. I am." I slip into the warmth of the car and shut the door behind me. The meter is already running. "I'm definitely going somewhere."

Author's Note: We are just two chapters away from being done, you guys!!!! Can you believe it? I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'd be super appreciative of any feedback because this was kind of a hard chapter to write and I hope I did it justice. :) Thanks, you all rock.