Scott and Jess scrambled into their clothes as Kiki stormed around.

“Babe you have to let me—” Scott started, zipping his pants.

She rounded. “I don’t have to let you do a goddamn thing.” Something caught her eye and she strode toward the window, snatching up the ring box. She turned to Scott, who was buttoning his shirt. “Is this for me?”

He looked miserable. “That’s what I was trying to tell you before you left—”

Kiki looked at the box for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was low and faraway. “Got to the airport. Went through security. Then I started to think about the candles. The champagne. The roses. Like I couldn’t see it at the time, but, then, standing at my gate . . . So I came home. Missed my flight. Probably lost my author. And,” she looked up, her eyes burning with fury, “I find you screwing my big sister.”

“Kiki,” Jess swallowed, hard, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this happened.”

Kiki looked at her, her eyes boring into her in a way that made Jess, finally clothed, feel naked all over again.

“Going to be another late night, Jessie,” Tyler popped his head into the closet, where Jess was surveying the contents.

“Okay.”

“What do you have going on today?” Tyler loosened his tie and reached for another, nearly identical one.

She reached for a slim black dress. She’d bought it for a work party of Tyler’s because it seemed so safe, but the back dipped into a low-v, and she was starting to like the feel of the wind on her skin. She looked at Tyler. “Nothing.”

“Well, have fun,” he said, tightening his tie, without a look back.

“Jess—you look incredible. Did I say that already?” Scott slipped his phone into the pocket of his suit pants as Jess neared him on the corner of 55th and 5th Ave.

Like she always did when she looked at him, she started to imagine how she would paint him. A portrait, to feature his nearly perfectly symmetrical face. She scanned his cheekbones, his jaw, her eyes dropping to his shoulders beneath his suit jacket. She felt her cheeks flush. Perhaps she wouldn’t stay so tight on his face.

Scott looked amused. “Are you an artist, Jess?”

“A painter,” she said, surprised. “I used to be.”

“You still are. I work with a lot of artists”— Scott was a dealer—“and the best ones always look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

He smiled. “Like they’re trying to figure out how to capture me.”

She felt her cheeks color again. “So, what are we doing this morning?”

Scott stepped next to her, his shoulder nudging hers. “It’s a bit of a surprise.”

“Okay,” she said as they started uptown. She could feel her heart start to race, and her mind tried to follow, but she repeated No looking back until her thoughts went still. Until she was ready. For whatever came next.

Two blocks later, Scott stopped. “You’re going to think this is crazy—”

Jess waited, her heart pounding in her chest.

“—because we haven’t known each other that long—”

The street went silent around them.

“—but I’m going to ask Kiki to marry me.”

All the air rushed out of Jess’s lungs.

“You think I’m crazy.”

“Not at all.” She shook her head, maybe a little too hard. “I’m surprised, of course—” she glanced up at the building.

Tiffany’s.

“You want me to help you—”

“Pick a ring. Yeah. Would you?”

She nodded, relieved and, ridiculously, a little heartbroken. “Of course.”

It was early, and the showroom was quiet when they walked in, their footfalls lost in the deep carpet.

The woman behind the counter looked up. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for an engagement ring,” Scott said, an edge of excitement to his voice that made Jess smile up at him.

“Congratulations to you both,” the woman smiled warmly. “And such a beautiful couple.”

Scott laughed. “No, this is my girlfriend’s sister.”

Jess’s heart contracted.

“She’s just here to help me out.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fine.” The woman’s tone turned businesslike. “What are you looking for today?”

“It’s great, right? She’ll like it?” Scott touched the pocket of his suit again, where he had slipped the tiny box.

“She’ll love it,” Jess smiled. The art deco setting was just Kiki’s style.

“Okay, what about the rest of it? A restaurant? Hide the ring in her dessert?”

“She never eats dessert.”

“What would you want?” he asked, stopping at a red light.

Jess looked at the cabs racing by. “I’d want something at home. Private and romantic.”

“I like the sound of that,” Scott murmured.

“Champagne, roses, candlelight.”

“Is that what Tyler did?”

“That’s not really his style. We were in college. It was in his car, after a football game. I picked the ring out the next weekend.” She didn’t look at Scott. “Get caviar, too.”

“I like the way you think, Jess.” Scott caught her arm, and as the light changed, guided her across the street.

“Wow. That seems fast. And,” Tyler shrugged, “like a lot of trouble.”

Jess stared at him across the bedroom as he kicked his shoes into the closet.

“To ask my sister to spend the rest of her life with him, to love him forever—a bottle of champagne is too much trouble?”

Tyler flopped on the bed. “You’re so dramatic, Jess. What was wrong with the way we did it? Naturally. No fuss.”

Jess felt her anger rising. “It might not kill you to go to a little trouble yourself, every now and then.”

Tyler looked up, propping himself on his elbows. “Is that right?” He tipped his chin at her. “You want me to cut off all my hair and start dressing like an NYU film student, too?”

“No—”

“More trouble than it takes to work seventy-hour weeks so you can live in this house, drive that SUV? You want me to go to more trouble than that?”

“God, Tyler, that’s not—”

“Any jackass with a match can light candles, Jess.”

She felt taut with frustration. “Showing someone that they’re special to you isn’t a waste of time.”

Tyler got to his feet, shouting across the bedroom, “There are lots of ways to do that. Important and unimportant.”

“It’s not unimportant to listen to someone. To act like they matter.”

“Jess,” Tyler called, but she was already out the door, down the stairs, out of the house.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Scott said, cornering Kiki in her bathroom.

“I’m not. Arabella is freaking out and insists we talk face-to-face. Her advance was fifty-thousand. I can’t lose her now.”

Scott followed Kiki as she buzzed through her apartment, throwing her things into a bag. “Could you just stop, for a second, and look around?” he asked.

She stopped in the living room, coat over her arm. She took in the lowered lights, the candles, the roses. Her face gentled. “For me?”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “For you.”

She bit her lip. “I really have to go.”

Scott reached for her, his hand going to her cheek. “Please. This is important.”

She leaned in for a moment, then reached for her keys. “So is this. The roses will keep. I’ll be back in two days.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Jess looked up, quickly, into the bluest eyes she would ever see.

She looked back at her empty drink on the bar top at Balthazar. She shrugged. “Needed a little air. And a train ride. Ended up here. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be having wild engagement sex?”

Scott slid onto the stool next to hers. “Let me buy us both a drink before I answer that.”

Another gin and tonic in front of her, she looked at Scott. “Where’s Kiki?”

“Probably somewhere over the Atlantic.” He took a drink. “She had to go to London for work. Didn’t even show her the ring,” he finished, bitterly.

“Welcome to the let-down club,” Jess tapped her glass against his, and he laughed. “You know how she gets about work. You’ll give it to her when she gets back.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another long drink. “I’ve got this stupid caviar. I’m embarrassed to say how much I paid for it. It’s just sitting there, open, surrounded by a humiliating number of roses.”

Jess laughed.

“You should come grab it. You and Tyler can have a night. I’ll even give you the crackers and champagne.”

“Tyler hates it. Can’t even stand the smell.”

Scott stared at his drink for a moment. Then he stood, resolutely. “I love caviar, and you love caviar, and I refuse to let it go to waste. Let’s go stuff ourselves like trust-fund babies.”

“Scott,” Jess breathed, walking into Kiki’s apartment, “it’s beautiful.”

“Hang on a second. Let me give you the full effect.”

He lit candles and adjusted lighting until the room was bathed in a low golden glow. He popped the bottle and handed her a glass of champagne.

“One more thing,” he said, as she took a long drink.

The sound of Ella Fitzgerald’s voice filled the room like a warm breeze.

Jess smiled, the champagne flushing her cheeks, making her feel warm and weightless. “It’s amazing.”

Scott’s eyes darkened. He tossed back his own glass of champagne. “Not as amazing as an author in crisis, I guess.”

Jess stepped into the room. “Let’s go through it. Kiki gets home from London. It’s evening. The sky’s streaked with sunset—”

“Such a painter thing to say,” Scott smiled.

“Comes in, drops her bags. I suppose you chose this song so you could dance.” Putting down her glass, Jess held out her arms.

Scott’s hesitation was infinitesimal. “I suppose I did,” he said, slipping an arm around her waist, and she leaned into him.

She knew, the whole walk uptown from Balthazar, that she would end up like this. She knew, but it hadn’t stopped her. It had barely made her pause. And, now, there was nothing outside this feeling of Scott pulling her close. Nothing beyond the sound of My Funny Valentine. No world beyond this moment.

Scott’s arm around her tightened.

“Sometimes,” he said, and she could feel his voice rumble in his chest, “I think back to that night, when you and I met. Sometimes I think,” Scott’s voice was husky, “if you hadn’t been married, it would have been you—”

“Sometimes I think of that, too . . . “ she reached up, seeking Scott.

They were half undressed before they fell onto the couch.

“I love this dress,” Scott murmured, pushing it off her shoulders.

No looking back.

It looped through her head, again and again, as she sought his skin, as he sought hers. She closed her eyes against his touch, as he mapped her body with his hands, his tongue. She clung to him, wrapping around him, and, in the end, he gasped her name like he’d been waiting for her.

How could I have done such a terrible thing?

The door slipped shut behind her as Jess walked into her darkened house, praying that Tyler wasn’t home. She turned the lock and padded silently across the living room and up the stairs. The train ride home had been a quiet, miserable nightmare. She’d cried the whole time. Now she wanted to pull every blanket she owned over her head and lie, hidden, until she could figure out a way to travel back in time and fix her mistakes.

As she entered her bedroom, there was a shuffle, then a pair of arms emerged from the darkness and swept her off her feet.