If We Lived Here by Lindsey Palmer Page A

freaking out about their bank balances—and singing it together now, the night before Annie’s hundred-thousand-dollar wedding to her financier fiancé.
    “Are you okay?” Nick asked.
    “Just hold me, please.” Emma sang along to the chorus, delighting in the fact that for the moment it seemed socially acceptable to be yelling out expletives at a fancy party.
     
    In the cab back to the hotel, Emma slouched against Nick and watched the car’s clock strike 11:59. “Happy almost-anniversary, babe. Remember that night we first met?”
    “Barely. I do remember you got me wasted, and then I made an idiot of myself in front of my family.” It was true. Nick, whose second cousin had been the groom at that wedding, had moonwalked across the dance floor and crashed right into his parents.
    “I’d been watching you all night. Your Hora was hilarious.”
    “Are you joking? I’m a pro at that dance—it’s just like the grapevine.”
    “Whatever you say, babe. And then I saw you in a corner, scribbling on all those napkins. I thought you must’ve been some kind of lunatic. Or a detective, or something.”
    “I was lesson planning, Em. I know you Jews all love to have your weddings over Labor Day weekend so you can do it on a Sunday night and avoid Shabbat, but it’s rough going for a teacher, partying right before the start of the school year.”
    “Oh, poor you. I remember I went over to talk to you, and you started in on this made-for-TV crap about how inspirational your job was. I thought I’d never heard so much B.S., which is saying a lot considering I was working in P.R.”
    “You were not very nice about it, actually.”
    “Aw, baby.” Emma squeezed his hand. “But then I had the genius idea to challenge you to a multiplication tables race, which I’d always dominated in grade school. Then you got to see what a smarty-pants I was.”
    “We tied, as I remember it.”
    “No way.”
    “Yes way, Em. And you were so turned on by my brilliant math skills that you hopped directly into bed with me.”
    “Correction, my friend: It was the other way around. I couldn’t fend you off.”
    “Well, one thing’s for sure. By the time I woke up, you’d disappeared. I assumed you’d sobered up, decided I wasn’t as cute as you’d thought the night before, and fled.”
    “But in the end, you couldn’t get rid of me.” Emma nestled her head into the nook of Nick’s shoulder, and remembered back to that morning after the hookup. She’d woken up queasy—she never did shots, but something about Nick had driven her to order several—and she’d glanced at the guy in the bed, snoring softly, his face slack with sleep. She’d dreaded his awakening, worrying he might look at her with scorn or triumph or sarcasm or some other equally distasteful emotion, fearing that what she’d imagined as sparkly and special the night before might dissolve in the light of day.
    Although she’d hated to admit it, Emma had still been feeling the weight of her doctoral studies at the time. She’d flashed on Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence, and felt herself to be the Ellen Oleska character, scandalizing society with her loose ways. Emma had winced to imagine how she and Nick had behaved the night before, and what people must’ve been saying about her that morning. Because of course the girl was always blamed. Remembering the book’s plot—how the free-spirited Ellen returns to Europe shamed and alone, while the object of her desire remains proudly protected in his proper marriage, unscathed in the eyes of society—Emma had quickly dressed and ducked out, skipping brunch. Resolving to act more appropriately the next time she met a guy she liked, she’d pledged to forget all about the previous night, and Nick along with it.
    Of course, Emma hadn’t been able to excise Nick and his ocean-y eyes from her mind. Then Annie called to say she’d snagged the phone number of “that hookup guy” for her at the brunch, and