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It was like all of the air in the room had been vacuumed right out of it. The sounds of people's voices, the mellow music, the clinking of glasses, the scraping of chairs...all of it became like a slow motion echo. His eyes were locked on me and mine were locked on her, watching as she giggled and glanced around at all of the people here and sipped on her champagne as her white, satin maxi gown clung to her curves.
'Ava?' Kam's voice broke through my trance and as I turned away and looked at him, all of my surroundings seemed to return to normal and I was able to breathe again. 'You okay?'
'Yeah,' I replied, the word coming out in a heavy breath, as I smiled at him and took the champagne flute from his hand. 'I'm fine.'
I wasn't fine, but I wasn't upset either. I was indifferent. If anything, I saw this as his way of purposefully throwing Alicia in my face. It was likely he was doing this to get to me because things were so hostile between us. There was also a strong chance that the time they had spent together had actually caused him to like her and he genuinely preferred to have her on his arm tonight over me. That was fine. Escorting him here tonight would have been idiotic anyway. It would have meant abandoning Kam, giving the whole room something to talk about and also overstepping our boundary of no-strings attached.
Maybe he realised that it would have been a foolish decision for us to come together. Or maybe I was right and he was just getting back at me; if that was the case, Alicia was welcome to him. I knew he wasn't the type to begin anything serious anyway, so at the most they were likely just sleeping together, as much as the thought nauseated me.
'There's some free seats on that table,' Kam told me, and I linked his arm as we walked to it and sat down. I allowed my eyes to glance over at Caden and Alicia every so often as Kam sat and snapped pictures of the room on his phone. They were laughing together. He looked happy to be around her.
'Okay, hurry up and drink that!' Kam cried, as he wiggled his empty glass. 'It's an open bar; we need to make the most of it.'
'Sorry,' I giggled, throwing back the rest of the champagne and handing him the glass. He got up to return to the bar and I wrinkled my nose at the aftertaste of the champagne. Most probably, it was a very expensive one, but it tasted like shit.
I couldn't stop my eyes from looking at them and after a while of seeing their perfect, white teeth grinning at everything each other was saying, I found myself feeling bitter and I had to stop myself from watching them.
Getting up to find a bathroom, I spun around and my eyes widened as Alex stepped before me and smiled. He looked so handsome. His hair wasn't it's usual messy waves but straight and slicked back, parted at the side. His suit was white, obviously, but he wore grey shirt underneath it and had a grey handkerchief in the pocket, matched up with grey brogues. The combination of the two shades looked incredibly good on him.
'Wow, Ava, you look...out of this world,' he told me, and the smile that spread on my face was the first genuine smile of the evening. It felt refreshing to see him; I felt like I hadn't seen him for a while.
