1 Walter
FIVE WEEKS BEFORE THE PRESCOTT-SCHAFER WEDDING
NEW YORK—If anyone had asked five minutes ago, Walter Burns would have described himself as a rational person, by nature and training. A journalist’s job was to observe and report, not embroider the truth with fanciful notions—and Walter was nothing if not a consummate professional.
Most of the time.
So how to explain his immediate awareness that Hildy had entered the ballroom of this nondescript Midtown hotel, even before he looked up and saw her standing near the entrance? Maybe it was the force of her personality, sending out vibrations strong enough to register on the Richter scale. Either that or he’d turned psychic, and this was a forewarning of imminent doom.
He tried not to stare as she moved across the room, nevertheless noticing that her hair was a little longer than she usually wore it, pinned back on one side with a sparkly clip. That was the “now” version of Hildy, a sleek and sophisticated woman of business. She turned her head to greet someone, and he saw that the rest of her riotous curls had been set free, reminding him of the lightly electrocuted look she’d sported in her youth. It was like this every time their paths crossed.
The weight of their history made for a double whammy, the impact of adult Hildy layered over the damage she’d done to him back then.
Hildy smiled at someone Walter didn’t recognize, her dark eyes bright with interest. The shimmery stuff on her lids matched the silver of her dress—if you could call that a dress. It looked more like liquid mercury, dancing over her skin. His arm lifted on autopilot, raising his glass to his lips.
Wine dribbled down his chin. Walter swiped at it with the back of his hand. Leave it to Hildy to reduce him to a drooling imbecile.
At least that snapped him out of his haze, as if a giant thumb had unmuted the background noise. Of course Hildy was here—and fully expected to win, if that outfit was any indication. He practiced his poker face. The one that said, I am a neutral bystander. As opposed to someone who had been concussed by the sight of his competition.
The effort was wasted, because she didn’t turn in his direction. It seemed his prickling physical awareness of Hildy was a one-way street. Walter chose a table at random, only realizing after pulling out a chair that he’d met two of the occupants before.
“Basketball, right?” He leaned across the table, arm extended.
“Hoop D’s. Derek and Dean,” the larger of the pair confirmed, shaking Walter’s hand. His thick neck and coat-straining shoulders suggested football, while the lankier Dean looked like he might actually have played basketball. Not that you needed real-life experience to report on a topic. It wasn’t as if Walter had been married before.
“That’s Oliver,” Derek added, indicating a weedy blond with round tortoiseshell glasses and a sweater vest who looked like he’d be more at home in a rare-books room. “He’s Mr. Wine.”
“My YouTube channel,” Oliver supplied.
Walter nodded as if he’d heard of it.
“We’re doing viognier next week. You should tune in. It’s the next albariño.”
“Good to know,” Walter replied, as though he had a burning personal interest in wine fads. He’d gotten better at pretending to care about hoity-toity lifestyle trappings, though it was still an uphill battle trying to catch up with all the class signifiers he’d missed during his normie childhood. Obscure shellfish rules. To eat the cheese rind or not? Socks vs. no socks. How to disassemble an artichoke with the finesse of an open-heart surgeon.
Sometimes Walter worried that if he lingered too long in that world, he’d lose sight of reality. He was a tourist, not a transplant. It was important to remember that.
“Who is that?” Mr. Wine asked, sounding way too interested.
Walter guessed who he meant, but feigned ignorance so he’d have an excuse to look. Hildy was laughing with a woman he recognized as a political reporter from the Times. He wondered what they were talking about. It had been a long time since he’d heard Hildy laugh, unless you counted the occasional ha of scorn.
“He knows her,” Derek informed the half-filled table, jerking a thumb at Walter.
“Knew.” Walter ignored the expectant pause as they waited for him to elaborate. If he started that story, they’d be here all night. “She’s the editor of Life, Styled,” he said, keeping it dry and factual. “Hildy Johnson.”
“Youngest editor in chief I ever heard of,” Dean chimed in.
“They keep stats on that?” Walter’s snappish response garnered a disapproving frown from Derek. That was fair; he sounded like a jealous ass.
Oliver stroked his wispy goatee. “She’s like a glass of champagne,” he began, breaking off at Walter’s glare of warning. “The color of her dress, I mean. And those heels,” he added, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Walter’s scowl intensified. This Oliver person had no right to talk about Hildy’s appearance. Would he have waxed poetic about a male colleague’s looks? Also, she was none of his business.
“A lot of history there, huh?” Derek managed to sound both sympathetic and eager for details, while Oliver blinked hard, as if he couldn’t quite picture Hildy Johnson rubbing elbows with someone like Walter Burns.
Joke’s on you, Walter thought, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt. Once upon a time, he and Hildy had been … after an internal debate, he settled on the term “friends.” It was both ironic and insufficient.
“It was a long time ago,” he said out loud.
“She broke your heart?” Dean guessed.
“Not like that,” Walter replied, a shade too quickly.
He could tell from their mmkay expressions that his denial had been less than convincing, even though it was mostly true. Hildy had shredded Walter’s trust and his professional prospects, but he’d built back since then—entirely on his own, without handouts or shortcuts.
“Who told you that?” he asked Derek. “About Hildy. And me.” If Hildy ever mentioned Walter, he assumed it was to curse his name. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t perversely satisfying to get under her skin—metaphorically speaking.
As opposed to the real thing, so abundantly displayed in that dress.
Derek shrugged. “I heard what happened at that wedding in the Catskills, with the mud wrestling. Seemed like a safe assumption the two of you had some baggage.”
Not Walter’s proudest moment, though there had been extenuating circumstances. What did people expect when they held a wedding at a summer camp, complete with crafts, campfires, and guided nature walks? Messiness went with the territory—especially after a certain magazine editor showed up in her white jean shorts and immaculate hiking boots.
If you were going to point fingers, how about the wedding planner who’d had the brilliant idea of sticking Walter and Hildy on opposite sides of the grown-up tug-of-war?
“We tend to compete for the same stories,” Walter explained. Surely fellow journalists would understand how chasing a story could become all-consuming, until it was hard to think about anything else. “It’s a professional rivalry.”
“Sounds very professional,” Dean murmured.
“You must see that all the time in sports. Like Duke and … that other team.” Walter’s usual facility with metaphors seemed to have deserted him.
“UNC,” Derek supplied.
“You’re saying the two of you are like the Packers and the Bears?” Dean glanced at Hildy, so naturally Walter had to follow the direction of his gaze. What was holding that dress up anyway? The straps looked as structurally sound as cobwebs.
“It’s not like the Super Bowl or anything.” Walter tried to sound casual, and also like he knew about sports, despite the fact that the only one he’d watched with his mom growing up was figure skating. “There are plenty of weddings to go around.”
Although they didn’t all cast the same spell as the over-the-top celebrations he and Hildy vied for. The general public seemed to have an insatiable appetite for reading about the nuptials of the ultrawealthy, the glitzier the better. It wasn’t necessarily the kind of journalism he’d dreamed of doing as an idealistic teen, but those stories got so much traffic, businesses fell over themselves to buy ad space. His beat might lack world-changing impact, but it was hard to top for job security.
“Hey, Wally.”
He’d been too caught up in not staring at Hildy to notice Corinne’s approach.
He stood to give her a hug. “You look nice.”
“Thanks.” She slid her belt to one side, centering the buckle. “Do you like my dress as much as Hildy’s?”
Walter opened his mouth to deny any knowledge of Hildy’s whereabouts, much less what she was wearing, but Corinne held up a hand. “It looked like you were trying to read the care instructions on the label. From across the room.” She pretended to nudge Walter’s jaw back into place with the tip of her index finger. “She smells incredible too. And I can tell you her moisturizing game is on point.”
Copyright © 2026 by Amanda Sellet