Logan and Brontë showed up, and the cake-cutting ceremony was held. Each delicately put a piece of cake into the other’s mouth, though Logan suggestively licked Brontë’s fingers in a way that made the bride blush. Marjorie began to re-contemplate the open bar.

“Is this seat taken?” A voice said.

Marjorie looked up and smiled at Cade Archer. It was hard not to like the guy. For one, he looked like an angel, all blond hair and blue eyes and gorgeous, friendly smile. She leaned over and examined the place card at the seat next to hers. “It looks like it’s taken by you.”

“What a stroke of luck,” he said, and sat down next to her, grinning. “How come you’re hiding back here in the lonely hearts corner?”

She gave him a halfhearted smile. “My date had to go to the mainland for a dialysis appointment.”

His brows drew together. “What?”

“My date was Dewey. A nice old man I picked up at the shuffleboard courts. He told me he loved weddings, but not as much as he loves his kidneys.” She smiled. “It’s all right. I’m bad company today anyhow.”

Cade smiled and sat next to her. “I’ll join you in the bad company ranks, then.”

“Where’s your date?” she asked politely.

His friendly smile faltered, and for a moment, he looked incredibly sad. “She had a sudden and last-minute change of plans.” He shrugged. “I should have expected no more from her, but I find I’m still disappointed.”

She knew the feeling. She knew she shouldn’t want Rob, but she still did. She still missed him, even though she knew he was bad news. Only time would heal this wound, and she hadn’t had a chance to properly grieve for her broken heart yet.

“It’s a beautiful wedding,” she said softly. “And Brontë and Logan look so very happy.”

“They do,” Cade agreed. “I’m thrilled for them—for all of my boys, actually. There’s quite a few weddings coming up and I’ll probably be a groomsman at all of them.”

“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride?” she guessed.

He gave her a quick flash of grin, and then gazed back out on the dance floor again, his thoughts far away. Again, she got the impression that he was just as achingly lonely as she was. After a long moment, he turned and gave her another smile that didn’t quite catch his eyes. “I suppose so.”

Poor Cade. He seemed almost as miserable as she was. She was poor comfort for a brokenhearted man when her own had been trampled to shreds.

Chapter Twenty-three

One Month Later

“This is a super cute apartment,” Brontë gushed, carrying in a box of donated linens. “How on earth did you find such a score on the Upper East Side?”

“Apparently by paying through the nose,” Marjorie teased, holding the door open for her. “And the bed is in one of the closets.”

Brontë giggled. “But hardwood floors! Come on. You have to admit that’s a bonus. And you have a window! Maylee didn’t even have a window when she moved to the city.”

“It’s pretty great,” Marjorie agreed, taking the box from Brontë and setting it down on her tiny, tiny kitchen countertop. “The city’s just a big adjustment from Kansas, you know? I’m pretty sure I could have gotten a huge house for this much back home.”

“Probably,” Brontë agreed, opening a closet door and peeking in. “Huh. That is the bed. Well, that’s fine. The location’s good and the apartment’s cute. If the rent’s high, the trade-off is that you’re living in the greatest city in the world. Seriously—you’ll have so much to do that you won’t have time to sit at home and mope.”

“I already know someone in the building,” Marjorie admitted. “Remember Agnes? She lives two floors down. She’s the one that got the landlord to pick my application out of all the others.”

“Oh! That’s so wonderful. You already have a friend here.”

“I do,” Marjorie said. “Agnes wants me to go to Friday night bingo with her and a few friends.”

“See?” Brontë beamed at her. “You’ll love it here. It’s a fresh start.” Her face grew concerned and she looked Marjorie over. “Speaking of . . . are you okay? How are you doing?”

Marj forced a smile to her face. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Are you sure? You’re just so . . . thin.”

Marjorie had heard that a few times over the last month. She’d lost a few pounds, unable to eat in her misery. And on a tall frame like hers, even a few pounds showed. “I’m fine. I just . . . was hurting for a while. I’m better now. I promise.” She hoped it sounded convincing.

Brontë’s concerned expression didn’t diminish. “He used you. I hate that. I wish I’d been paying more attention and not so caught up in whether or not the roses were the right shade of red.”

She waved a hand at Brontë’s concern. “It’s in the past. And I don’t know that he did use me. Sometimes I think he did and I fell for it, and sometimes I rethink our conversations and wonder.” She shrugged, picking up a pillowcase from a box and unfolding it. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. I can’t support the kind of man that he is and the business that he runs. I thought he was someone different. The truth . . . wasn’t what I thought. He’s someone I’m not sure I could ever be comfortable with and not question who I am.”

“You know,” Brontë said, opening the closet and fetching Marjorie’s pillow off of the hideaway bed. She crossed the room and handed it to her friend. “When I first met Logan, I didn’t know he was a billionaire. I just thought he was the manager of the hotel. I was a waitress, right? So when I found out he was a billionaire, I freaked out. I didn’t know if I could handle dating someone that was rich. Not just rich, but obscenely rich. And the more I fought against it, the harder it was for me to come to the realization that I was the problem, not him. It was my perception of what a billionaire would think of me, not the reality of what he felt. Could that be the same here? Is it a class thing?”

Marjorie shook her head. “It’s not the money. It’s that his business is set up to prey on girls with low self-esteem and to serve them up to men for money. I can’t respect someone that does that. It doesn’t seem right to me. Maybe I’m being overly moral or prudish, but it’s how I feel.”

“Plato said, ‘People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person, or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.’”

“That’s right,” Marjorie said. “I’m avoiding a growth-stunter.” At least, she was pretty sure she was. In the daylight hours, it was easy to hate Rob and all the ways he’d lied to her. At night, in her lonely bed, it was . . . not so easy, and she sometimes had regrets.

Regrets that Rob was who he was.

That she was who she was.

Mostly, though, she regretted not tackling him and dragging him to bed sooner. Which was probably the wrong thing to regret, but there it was. Out of all the things to miss, she missed his smiles and his gentle caresses the most. And that made her an awful person, didn’t it? Because she should have been thinking about how he lied to her, and how he profited off of women with low self esteem, and mostly, she just missed him.

“Just as long as you don’t avoid the people that nourish you,” Brontë said with a smile, bringing Marjorie back to the present. “And you know I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to.”

“I know.” Marjorie stuffed the pillow inside the pillowcase. “But I think for a while, I’ll just throw myself into work.”

“Now that’s music to my ears,” said Brontë. “I’ll be sure and give you plenty of it, then.”

***

Marjorie settled in to life in New York City slowly. Some things about the city were amazing, like the vast variety of restaurants and the subway tunnels that allowed you to get anywhere and everywhere without a car. She loved the shops and the museums and Central Park most of all. Some other things in New York City took a lot of getting used to—like buying groceries from a corner store instead of a supermarket, and the sea of taxis, and the endless, endless swarm of people. She’d never seen so many in one place in her life. She walked next to them on the streets, shared cabs with them, and heard them through the thin walls of her apartment. No one in New York City was ever alone, it seemed.