The Champagne Treaty

Chapter 1: The Coat Closet

The coat closet at the Grand Seneca Hotel in Buffalo, Ohio, smelled like mothballs, cedar hangers, and regret.

Nico Petrosino had not planned to spend his Saturday evening wedged between a mink stole and someone's forgotten North Face jacket, but life, as his therapist liked to remind him, was what happened when you made other plans. His therapist also charged two hundred dollars an hour to say things like that, which was why Nico had stopped going.

The problem had started on the dance floor. Specifically, it had started when the bride's Aunt Dolores—a woman built like a refrigerator and twice as cold—had seized Nico's wrist during "At Last" by Etta James and informed him that she hadn't danced with a young man since her third husband's funeral and she wasn't about to let this one get away.

Nico had danced. He had smiled. He had made small talk about Dolores's cat, Pimento, and Dolores's bunions, and Dolores's strong opinions about the designated hitter rule. And when the song ended and a new one began and Dolores showed no signs of releasing him, Nico had done what any reasonable thirty-year-old man would do: he'd faked a coughing fit, pointed vaguely toward the bar, and bolted for the nearest door.

Which turned out to be a coat closet.

He'd been in there for approximately ninety seconds, breathing hard and feeling both relieved and deeply pathetic, when the door opened and a woman in a sage-green bridesmaid dress stumbled in.

She didn't see him at first. She pulled the door shut behind her, pressed her back against it, and let out a long, shuddering exhale that sounded like it had been building for hours.

"Oh thank God," she whispered to no one.

"Agreed," Nico said.

She screamed. Not a full scream—more of a yelp, the kind a person makes when they step on a Lego in the dark. She spun around, and in the thin bar of light leaking under the door, Nico could make out wide brown eyes, a dusting of freckles, and an expression that was trying to decide between fear and fury.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm hiding," Nico said. "Same as you, apparently."

"I'm not hiding. I'm... taking a moment."

"In a coat closet."

"It's a versatile space."

Nico laughed. He couldn't help it. The sound bounced off the coats and came back to him, and the woman's expression softened from fury to something like reluctant amusement.

"I'm Nico," he said. "Groom's side. College roommate."

"Lily," she said. "Bride's side. Also college roommate."

"So we're basically family."

"We're basically strangers in a closet."

"Tomato, tomato."

"You said that the same way both times."

"I know. I've never understood how that expression is supposed to work in print."

Lily almost smiled. Almost. She caught it, the way you'd catch a sneeze in polite company, and redirected it into a businesslike nod. "So what are you hiding from?"

"Aunt Dolores. She's got a grip like a bench vise and opinions about the American League. You?"

"The bride's brother. He's been following me around all night telling me about his podcast. It's about conspiracy theories involving the postal service."

"Is it good?"

"It's four hours long per episode."

"So no."

"So no."

They stood in the semi-darkness, two people who had never met, sharing the particular camaraderie of wedding refugees. Outside, the muffled thump of the DJ's bass line vibrated through the door. Someone was giving a toast. There was laughter, then clinking glasses.

"We should probably go back," Lily said, not moving.

"Absolutely," Nico said, also not moving.

She tried the door handle.

It didn't budge.

She tried again, harder this time, rattling it with both hands.

"You're kidding me," she said.

"Is it—"

"It's stuck. The handle's stuck."

Nico stepped forward and tried. The handle turned halfway and then stopped, as if the mechanism had given up on life. He pushed. He pulled. He jiggled. Nothing.

"Okay," he said. "So we live here now."

"This is not funny."

"It's a little funny."

"It's a coat closet in Buffalo, Ohio. Nothing about Buffalo, Ohio, is funny."

"The name is a little funny. There are no buffalo. And it's barely Ohio."

Lily sank down onto the floor, her sage-green dress pooling around her like a deflated parachute. Nico, after a moment's hesitation, sat down across from her. The closet was maybe five feet wide and four feet deep, which meant their knees were almost touching.

"Someone will find us," Lily said.

"Eventually."

"When the coats get claimed."

"It's June. Half these people didn't bring coats."

"You're a real comfort."

Nico reached behind him and felt something cold and smooth. He pulled it forward. A bottle of champagne, still sealed, the label obscured by darkness.

"Well," he said. "Someone stashed this for later."

"We can't drink someone's champagne."

"We're imprisoned in a closet. I think the Geneva Convention covers this."

Lily considered this for exactly three seconds, then held out her hand. "Open it."

Nico popped the cork with a muffled thud—no room for the dramatic spray, which felt appropriate for the venue—and handed the bottle to Lily. She took a long drink, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and passed it back.

"So," she said. "How many of these do you have left?"

"Bottles of champagne?"

"Weddings."

Nico groaned. "Don't. I can't think about it."

"I've got six in the next two years. Six. Three of them destination."

"I've got four confirmed and two probables. My sister Lauren is on engagement number... actually, I've lost count. She collects fiancés like stamps."

"At least she's enthusiastic."

"She's enthusiastic about setting me up, is what she is. Every wedding, she's got someone for me to meet. Her coworker, her yoga instructor, her dentist's niece. Last time it was a woman who bred ferrets professionally."

"Was she nice?"

"The ferrets were nice. She had opinions about my career."

"What's your career?"

"I write jingles."

Lily blinked. "Like, for commercials?"

"Like for commercials. I'm the reason you can't get the Sparkle-Brite Toothpaste song out of your head."

"That's you?"

Nico sang, very softly: "Sparkle-Brite, Sparkle-Brite, every morning feels just right—"

"Oh my God. I hate that song."

"Everyone hates that song. That's how you know it works."

"What a depressing metric for success."

"Welcome to my life."

Lily took another pull of champagne. "I'm a nurse. Pediatric. So don't feel bad—my job is also mostly about making people cry."

"At least yours involves healing."

"Yours involves toothpaste. Also healing, arguably."

Nico laughed again, and this time Lily let herself smile for real. It was a good smile—crooked, slightly reluctant, as if she wasn't sure she'd authorized it.

They passed the bottle back and forth. The muffled sounds of the reception continued beyond the door—speeches, laughter, the unmistakable opening bars of "Shout." Time became elastic in the way it does when you're in a small space with a stranger and a bottle of champagne and nowhere else to be.

"Can I tell you something?" Lily said, after a while.

"We're trapped in a closet. I think we're past small talk."

"I keep a spreadsheet. Of weddings. Not just dates and locations—I track everything. What I wore, who I sat with, how many times someone asked me when it would be my turn. I have a column for that. 'Turn Inquiries.' Last wedding, I hit eleven."

"Eleven?"

"Eleven separate people asked me when I was going to settle down. My own mother was three of them."

Nico whistled. "That's impressively invasive."

"She's a professional. She also sends me articles about egg freezing. Unsolicited. With highlights."

"My mom sends me articles about tiny houses. I think she's given up on me affording a real one."

"At least tiny houses are aspirational."

"They're two hundred square feet. That's not aspirational, that's a walk-in closet." He gestured around them. "This is bigger than most tiny houses."

Lily laughed, and the sound was warm and surprised, like she'd forgotten she was capable of it.

"So what's your deal?" she asked. "Why no plus-one tonight? Don't tell me Lauren couldn't find you someone."

"Oh, she found me someone. Her landlord's daughter. I declined on the grounds that I'm a grown man and I'd rather eat glass than go on another setup."

"So you came alone."

"I came alone. And now I'm in a closet. So clearly, great decision-making all around."

"I came alone too," Lily said. "I had a boyfriend until three weeks ago. Blake. He's a surgeon. Very handsome, very charming, very... present at half the weddings I go to because our friend groups overlap like a Venn diagram drawn by a drunk person."

"That sounds like a nightmare."

"It's a nightmare with excellent cheekbones."

"So you broke up?"

"He broke up. He said I was—" She made air quotes. "—'emotionally organized to the point of inaccessibility.'"

"That's a lot of syllables for 'I'm scared of your spreadsheets.'"

"Right?" Lily took another drink. "He said I kept him at arm's length. Which is rich, coming from a man who scheduled our dates around his racquetball league."

Nico leaned his head back against the coats. "You know what the worst part of weddings is? It's not the chicken. It's not the DJ playing 'Sweet Caroline.' It's sitting at the singles table and feeling like everyone in the room is looking at you and thinking, 'What's wrong with that one?'"

"Nothing is wrong with that one."

"I know. But tell that to Table Fourteen."

"Table Fourteen is a war crime."

"Table Fourteen should be banned by international law."

They were quiet for a moment. The champagne was half gone. Through the door, someone was doing a very bad rendition of "Don't Stop Believin'."

"What if we didn't have to do it alone?" Lily said.

Nico looked at her. In the thin light, her expression was half serious, half something he couldn't read.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—we've both got a decade of these things ahead of us. Maybe more. And they're all the same. The same questions, the same pity, the same slow dances with someone's aunt. What if we just... went together?"

"Together."

"As each other's plus-one. Permanently. Or at least until the wedding industrial complex runs out of our friends."

"You're suggesting a pact."

"I'm suggesting a treaty. Like nations do. Mutual defense. You protect me from Turn Inquiries, I protect you from Lauren's setups. No romance, no jealousy, no expectations. Just one ally in every banquet hall in America."

Nico stared at her. The idea was absurd. It was also, he realized, the best idea he'd heard in years.

"What are the terms?" he asked.

"Rule one: no romance. This is a professional arrangement."

"Professional."

"Rule two: no jealousy. If one of us meets someone at a wedding, the other wingmans. Wingpersons. Whatever."

"Wingpersons. Got it."

"Rule three: no expectations. If one of us can't make it, no guilt, no drama. This isn't a relationship. It's a... strategic alliance."

"A strategic alliance sealed in a coat closet."

"The best treaties are born in strange places."

Nico held out his pinkie. "Pinkie swear?"

Lily looked at his outstretched finger. Then she hooked hers around it.

"The Champagne Treaty," she said.

"The Champagne Treaty," he agreed.

They shook on it—pinkies locked, champagne bottle balanced between them, coats hanging overhead like witnesses.

Twenty-two minutes later, a busboy named Terrence found them, opened the door with a butter knife, and looked at them with the weary expression of a man who had seen everything a hotel banquet hall could produce.

"You two okay?" he asked.

"Never better," Nico said.

They walked back into the reception together. The dance floor was still going. Aunt Dolores was teaching the flower girl the foxtrot. The bride's brother was cornering someone new about the postal service.

Nico and Lily found a table in the corner, finished their stolen champagne, and spent the rest of the night talking about nothing important and everything that mattered.

Neither of them danced.

Both of them stayed.