Chapter 61: Gala Night Preparation

Aria's POV

She'd genuinely forgotten about the Gala.

Not completely. It existed somewhere in the back of her mind in the category of things that were supposed to matter and probably still did but had been crowded out by federal investigations and storage facilities and her father's not-denial about her mother and fights that ended with foreheads against chests and a man sitting at Sienna's kitchen table with a folder he'd spent three weeks being careful about.

Elena reminded her on Wednesday morning.

She appeared in Aria's office doorway with the specific expression she used when she had something to say that she'd already decided wasn't negotiable. "The Gala is Saturday."

"I know."

"You'd forgotten."

"I hadn't forgotten." Aria looked at her computer screen. "It was in a different mental folder."

Elena came in and sat down, which she didn't usually do. She was a hallway conversation person, efficient and in motion. Sitting down meant she was staying.

"You're going," Elena said.

"I was planning to."

"Good. Because if you'd told me you were thinking of skipping it I'd have had something significant to say about that." Elena looked at her with the directness that had always been her main mode. "This is your achievement, Aria. The nomination, the award, the research that got you there. None of that happened because of Bruno or Dante or Romano or any of the rest of it. That happened because you're excellent at your work and you've been excellent at it for five years." She paused. "Don't let this situation take it."

Aria looked at her mentor.

At the woman who'd told her three weeks ago that she'd failed to protect her and had been carrying that since. Who'd sat in a small meeting room with Dante and said things that Dante had only partially disclosed.

"I'm going," Aria said. "I promise."

Elena nodded once. Matter closed. She stood.

"Wear something good," she said from the doorway. "You've earned the right to walk into that room and look like it."

Then she was gone.

Sienna appeared forty minutes later with the energy of someone who'd been waiting for permission. "Shopping. Now. Don't argue."

Aria argued for about ninety seconds and then gave up because Sienna in this mode was a force of nature that had a better success rate than most surgical interventions she'd performed.

They went to a street near the Pantheon where Sienna knew a shop that was the right kind of expensive without being the wrong kind. The afternoon was warm for the time of year and the city was doing its beautiful indifferent thing and walking through it with her best friend felt like something she hadn't had for too long.

Normal. The particular gift of normal.

They tried on things. Most of them were wrong. Sienna had opinions about all of them. Aria had opinions about Sienna's opinions. They argued about a green dress for six minutes before agreeing it was a no.

Then Aria tried on the black one.

She looked at herself in the fitting room mirror and Sienna, who was sitting on the small bench in the corner eating a pastry she'd produced from somewhere, went quiet.

"That's it," Sienna said.

It was simple. Floor length. Not complicated. The kind of thing that worked because it fit correctly and didn't try to do too much and let the person wearing it do the talking.

"It's a lot," Aria said.

"It's exactly right." Sienna stood and came to stand behind her, looking at the mirror. "He's going to lose his mind."

"He's not coming."

Sienna looked at her in the mirror with the expression she used when she thought Aria was being deliberately obtuse. "Right."

"He's not. It's a professional event. I'm representing the hospital."

"Sure." Sienna went back to her pastry. "Try the shoes."

Aria tried the shoes.

They bought the dress.

\---

That night she put it on.

She wasn't sure why. She'd got home and hung it up and looked at it for a while and then put it on, maybe to make sure it still looked right outside of a fitting room, maybe for another reason she wasn't examining closely.

She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror when she heard the front door.

She'd given him a key two weeks ago. She wasn't sure either of them had made a significant moment of it, it had just happened in the practical way things happened when someone was at your apartment often enough that a key made logistical sense.

"I came to drop off—" Dante's voice stopped.

She heard him stop in the hallway.

She looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Considered going to her bedroom and getting changed and pretending this wasn't happening.

Decided not to.

She walked out.

He was standing in the hallway with something in his hand, a book or a folder, she didn't register because he was looking at her in a way that made registering anything peripheral fairly difficult.

The thing in his hand ended up on the hallway table without him appearing to consciously put it there.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said.

"I know."

"You should leave."

"I know." He didn't move. Neither did she.

The hallway was narrow and he was taking up a fair amount of it and she was standing at the other end in a floor-length black dress at nine in the evening and neither of them was moving.

He crossed the hallway.

Slowly, the way he moved when he was being deliberate about something.

He came to stand behind her and turned her gently toward the mirror at the end of the hall, his hands at her waist, both of them looking at their reflection. Her in the dress. Him in whatever he'd been wearing when he'd come over, jacket and dark jeans, looking like himself.

She watched him in the mirror.

He looked at her for a moment before he spoke.

"You're going to that gala," he said quietly, "and every person in the room is going to spend the night wondering who you're thinking about."

She kept her eyes on the mirror. "And who am I thinking about?"

His mouth was close to her ear. "Me. Obviously."

She laughed. The genuine kind that came out before she decided to let it. "Your ego is a medical condition."

"You're my doctor." She could feel the smile in his voice without seeing it. "Fix it."

She turned in his arms and kissed him to stop him saying anything else.

He didn't mind.

His arms came around her and she was in a floor-length dress in her hallway and it was ridiculous and also exactly right and she stopped thinking about that because thinking about it was less good than just being in it.

When she came back to herself she was aware of his hands at her waist still and his forehead against hers and both of them breathing.

"The dress is good," he said.

"I know."

"You should wear it."

"That's the plan."

His phone buzzed on the hallway table where it had ended up with the book or folder.

He glanced at it. The reflex that was always there.

Then he reached over and turned it face down.

She watched him do it.

First time.

"Important?" she said.

He looked at her. "Nothing more important than this."

She held his gaze.

Something settled in her chest that had been in the process of settling for weeks and chose this particular moment to finish the job.

She didn't say it. I wasn't quite ready for those specific words yet.

But she thought it clearly and completely.

And from the way he was looking at her, she thought he might be thinking something similar.

The phone stayed face down.

Neither of them mentioned it again.