Chapter 4 - The Toast
Derek did not answer my email for two days. Instead, he sent me a photograph of a dog wearing sunglasses with the message, Truce? I did not respond. The silence between us became another room in the apartment, one neither of us entered willingly.
On Saturday, my family gathered at my parents’ house to rehearse the seating and speeches for Elise’s wedding. Elise had asked me to coordinate the day because I was good at making lists that calmed other people. Her fiancé, Marcus, kept losing the ring box. My mother was worried about the flowers. My father had volunteered to grill in weather that threatened rain. The whole afternoon smelled of charcoal, wet grass, and the lemon cleaner my mother used whenever guests came over.
“Derek is coming, right?” Elise asked as she arranged place cards across the dining table.
“He said he would.”
She hesitated. “Is that okay?”
I heard the concern underneath the question. I had told her about the dinner, but not about the account. I had told everyone only the version I could survive hearing aloud: Derek had a strange habit, and I was trying to get him to understand that some settings required restraint.
“He’ll be fine,” I said.
The lie moved easily through the house because my family had practice accepting my reassurances. They had watched me smooth over missed birthdays, canceled plans, and the year Derek forgot my mother’s surgery date but sent her a bouquet the following week. I had trained them to trust the repaired surface.
Derek arrived with a box of wine and a grin. He hugged my mother, shook Marcus’s hand, and told Elise that her dress fitting had made her look like “a very elegant hostage.” Everyone laughed, including me. That was the most treacherous part. He could still be funny. He could still make a room brighten.
During the rehearsal, he volunteered to demonstrate the entrance from the patio. He walked through the open doors as if crossing a theater stage, bowed to the assembled chairs, and made the noise. It was loud enough to rattle the silverware.
Elise’s hand stopped halfway to a place card.
“Derek,” I said.
“What?”
“Not today.”
He turned toward my family. “I’m warming up.”
My father set down the tongs he had been holding. “For what?”
“For the big day.”
“The big day is Elise’s wedding,” my father said. “Not whatever you’re doing.”
The room went quiet. Derek’s smile held for a moment, then became something narrower.
“I’m trying to keep things relaxed.”
“You’re trying to be the center of attention,” I said.
His eyes found mine. “There she is.”
My mother touched my arm. “Maybe we can take a breath.”
“I have been taking breaths for months,” I said. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Derek laughed softly. “Do I?”
My father stepped between us, not dramatically, just enough to make the distance visible. “You heard her ask you to stop.”
“I heard her try to manage me.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“You all want me to apologize for making a noise.”
“No,” my father said. “We want you to stop making her explain why she’s uncomfortable.”
The sentence struck me because it was the sentence I had been unable to say without entering an argument. From my father, it sounded plain. Not polished. Not defensive. Plain enough to stand on its own.
Derek looked around the room. “This is unbelievable. I came here to help.”
“Then help by leaving,” Elise said.
Her voice shook, but she did not lower it. Derek stared at her as if she had broken an agreement none of us remembered making.
He picked up his coat. “Fine. I can see where I’m wanted.”
At the front door, he turned to me. “Are you coming?”
I looked past him at my family: my mother holding a stack of place cards against her chest, Marcus standing beside Elise, my father watching me without telling me what to do.
“No,” I said.
The word was small. It changed the temperature of the house.
Derek left without saying goodbye.
After the door closed, Elise began to cry. I apologized to her, then stopped because the apology belonged to the wrong person. My father put his hand on the back of a chair.
“You don’t have to defend him here,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I almost laughed at the echo of Nia’s question. Instead, I sat down at the table and told them about Rook’s Nest. I described the clips, the captions, the comments, and the folder marked for the gala. My mother covered her mouth. Elise took my hand.
“Why would he do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
My father went to the counter for his phone. “You said he has a producer?”
“Rook.”
He searched the name. A page appeared with a logo I recognized from Derek’s laptop: a black chess piece over a yellow field. Beneath it was a banner for something called the LaughTrack Live Challenge, a competition for emerging unscripted comedy creators. The winner received a production grant and a distribution meeting with a streaming company.
One of the featured entries was titled The Uncomfortable Girlfriend.
The page did not show the creator’s face. It showed a still image of Derek’s hand lifting a coffee cup, and behind him, blurred but unmistakable, the outline of my profile.
“There’s a submission deadline next month,” my father said.
I felt the room tilt. The gala was less than six weeks away. The folder. The messages. The clips. They were not random pieces of a private joke. They were building toward something.
That night, Derek called from an unknown number. I let it ring until it stopped. A minute later, a message appeared from a mutual friend: He says you’re threatening to sabotage his opportunity.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
The next Monday, a cream-colored envelope arrived at Brightwell with my name handwritten across the front. Inside was the printed seating plan for the gala, marked with a red circle beside Derek’s name. He had somehow been moved from my guest table to the head table, directly beside a representative from Northstar Foundation, our largest prospective investor.
At the bottom of the page, someone had written: He requested this placement.
I carried the plan to Nia. She read it once and looked up.
May you like
“This isn’t just a relationship problem anymore,” she said.
Outside the conference room, phones rang and carts rolled toward the ballroom. The gala was coming toward us with three hundred guests, and Derek had found a way to put himself at the center of the room.
