(Zara)
We celebrated at a place with no menu, where the chef sent out whatever he felt like and the wine kept coming, and I laughed more in three hours than I had in three years.
Sebastian was different tonight. The last of the guardedness gone, the deal as good as done, nothing left to manage. He told me stories I suspected he'd told almost no one, about the grandmother who ran the house, about a younger version of himself who'd been softer before the world taught him not to be. He laughed at his own expense, which I'd never seen, and every time he did it I felt the same quiet astonishment, that this man existed under the one the world got, and that he showed it to me.
"You're staring," he said.
"I'm watching. There's a difference. My sister taught me."
"And what do you see, watching
