Read Online Falling by Jane Green - Free Book Online

converged around the drinks, usually served from a permanent wet bar tucked into a small nook somewhere in the apartment or house.
    The men would drink single malts and straight vodkas, while the women invariably chose some cute, pretty signature cocktail for the night. As the evening progressed the women would keep to their side of the space, and the men would keep to the other.
    Occasionally the twain would meet, particularly if a sit-down dinner was involved, but even then, the men would shout to each other across the table, leaving Emma bewildered at their lack of manners. There’d been more dinners than she could count where she sat next to a man she hadn’t met, and peppered him with questions about himself, only so she didn’t have to sit in an uncomfortable silence. She was never obtrusive, but polite and gracious, only to have him break off in midconversation to shout something to a friend sitting across the table.
    Either that, or Emma would eventually run out of questions, and then, instead of asking her anything about herself or initiating any other subject of any kind, her dinner partner would just carry on eating in silence, leaving Emma chewing her chicken, or short ribs, wondering how early she could leave without causing offense.
    Emma’s mother may have been a nightmare, but she was a stickler for manners, for being gracious, and always—almost always—immaculately behaved. What would she have done in these situations, Emma used to think, imagining her mother turning to her father and saying, with a sniff, “NQOCD.”
Not quite our class, dear.
It was quite as awful an expression as “not PLU,” which her mother used frequently—
not people like us
—but, of course, Emma’s mother never realized that these expressions were only ever used tongue-in-cheek, never seriously.
    Emma thought back to one party in particular, in East Hampton. She’d been dating a man named Evan, the only man she knew at a party filled with the usual mix of braying bankers and their trophy wives, who showed off their worth with crocodile clutches and heavy gold men’s watches dragging down their tiny wrists.
    The dinner was interminable. She sat next to an imperious know-it-all, and afterward, when they all retired to the vast sun porch, she almost sank with relief at the prospect of a quick escape.
    After the meal, the men disappeared, apparently to the barn, which housed whatever it is men like to do late at night, leaving Emma in a room filled with women she didn’t know, none of whom had spoken to her all night.
    She excused herself politely, removed her heels, and slipped silently out the back door, walking back to the house they were staying in. She gratefully crawled into bed and was fast asleep by the time Evan joined her, hours later, so drunk that his snoring woke her and kept her awake for the rest of the night. She ended things as soon as they arrived back in New York.
    As Emma approaches Dominic’s cottage next door, she shakes her head to clear the memories. Parties are decidedly not her thing, but a barbecue in the garden at her landlord’s house . . . at least there will be no pressure to perform. At least the crowd won’t consist of self-absorbed bankers and intimidatingly gorgeous and perfect women.
    At least there is that.
    She pushes open the gate that separates the two gardens, hearing the buzz of happy chatter and children’s squeals. A group of people are standing around a trestle table covered in a red-and-white checked tablecloth, with bottles of wine and soda, and a big aluminum bucket filled with ice and cans of beer wedged underneath.
    The table is covered with platters of chips and dips, giant bowls of pretzels, and M&Ms mixed with popcorn. Children grab handfuls of the snacks when their parents aren’t looking and run back and forth between them and a great big inflatable pool and slide at the bottom of the garden,