Free By Design by Jayne Denker

imposed on you to add an extra guest a little prematurely. That was Trish. She can’t make it.”
    Juliet put on a concerned frown. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope nothing’s wrong.”
    Emmie told her about Logan, and Juliet expressed just the right amount of dismay at the news. She commiserated by talking about the health crises of her own children, which another guest overheard. That woman added her accident-prone-kid anecdotes, and they were off and running in the small-talk department.
    Pretty soon Emmie realized that she was actually having a good time. The other partygoers were not, in fact, vicious animals sizing her up as their next meal; instead, they were friendly and welcoming. Sure, the Popular Girls were out in full force, and still glamorous, but the high school celebrity contingent was balanced, possibly even outnumbered, by the frumpy, the overweight, the shy—the resoundingly average. Emmie fell somewhere in the middle of the scale, which made her feel . . . normal.
    She was honestly enjoying her conversation with a few of the dowdy and a few of the still gorgeous—their own little alumnae UN—enough that, when they asked her about her life, she felt comfortable telling the truth—that she was with Wilman Designs right now, but really wanted to start her own company.
    “Oh, Emmie, you should,” enthused one of the Popular Girls, who owned her own yoga studio. “It’s so rewarding. Hard work, but worth it.”
    “I’m seriously looking into it,” Emmie replied, punctuating her words with a wave of her hand, then exclaimed, “Damn!” as a dollop of cream cheese flew off her appetizer and landed on the front of her fawn-colored sweater.
    Instead of raising their eyebrows at this faux pas, the women in the group cooed their concern. “And as you can see from my demonstration,” she commented as she started wiping at the cream cheese with her cocktail napkin, “tan-colored walls can be nicely augmented by an off-white or ivory faux-finish that we can achieve by applying the lighter color and then ragging most of it off.”
    Amid appreciative laughter at her self-deprecation, Emmie kept wiping but realized she was going to need some soap and water to really clean it up properly. Then she felt the lightest of touches on her shoulder.
    It was Juliet, breaking into their small circle to announce, “Sorry to interrupt, girls, but it’s time to divvy up the cookies. Emmie, yours are on the kitchen counter.”
    “I’ll grab them.”
    Still swiping at her cream cheese smear, she headed for the kitchen as a door slammed at the back of the house. In an instant she was nearly run over by a boy about thirteen and a girl a few years younger as they thundered down the hall, into the foyer, and up the stairs, shedding coats and shoes and backpacks along the way. She recovered in time to hear Juliet shout, “Zoë! Brian! Pick up your things! No TV up there; I want you to get your homework done—”
    Emmie was sort of pleased that Juliet had to yell at her kids like any other mother. It brought her back down to earth somewhat. She crossed to the sink, put her empty plastic wineglass and crumpled napkin on the counter, flipped on the water, and tore off a paper towel from the roll, all before she noticed the other person in the room.
    “Hello there.” A shortish man with a pleasant, freckled face and thinning, sandy hair was taking off a baseball jacket and hanging it on the back of one of the tall chairs at the breakfast bar. “How’s the party?”
    “Great; we’re so rowdy we’re flinging food. Okay, I actually flung it at myself, but still.” Emmie smiled, blotting at the stain on her sweater.
    “Sounds like a good time.” He smiled back.
    She finished cleaning up and tossed the paper towel and napkin in a nearby garbage can but held on to her wineglass for a refill. No worries about not being fit to drive; the amount of wine these glasses held wouldn’t fill the gap left by her pulled