Chapter 19

She texts you the address on Friday afternoon.

alysa 🖤 ⛸️ ✨
3:12pm
party tonight at my friend jade’s
bigger than usual don’t panic
also come as my date obviously
3:13pm
if you want
3:13pm
you want to right

You smile at your phone for an embarrassing amount of time before you reply.

you
3:15pm
obviously

alysa 🖤 ⛸️ ✨
3:15pm
okay good
3:15pm
I’ll pick you up at eight
3:16pm
wear something nice you always look nice though so just wear whatever
3:16pm
okay bye

You put your phone down and go directly to your wardrobe.

You wear the black dress again.

Different top this time — something with a slight sheen to it, just enough to catch light without asking for attention. Same boots. Same tights. Your hair up this time, a few loose pieces framing your face, a small dark ribbon you found at the back of your drawer because it felt right tonight, because Alysa gave you three pins and a book and a date under the stars and you want to dress like someone who belongs in her world, in her orbit, in the story you are apparently in the middle of writing together.

The three pins on your bag.

Always the three pins.

She picks you up at eight exactly.

You come through the door and she’s leaning against the car in the cold night air and she sees you and her face does the thing — that particular stillness, that caught-before-she’s-ready quality — and then she smiles, slow and warm and entirely for you.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” you say.

She opens the passenger door without a word.

You get in.

Jade’s house is loud from the pavement.

Not aggressively — just warmly, the kind of loud that means a lot of people who like each other in a space that fits them perfectly. Music and voices and the particular energy of a Friday night that has decided it wants to be remembered.

Alysa takes your hand at the door.

Not tentatively. Not checking. Just — takes it, fingers threading through yours, and looks at you once with an expression that says ready? without using the word, and you squeeze her hand once which says yes without using it either.

She pushes the door open.

The house swallows you warmly.

Cora is there — she finds you within minutes, paint on her wrist as always, and pulls you into a hug like you’re someone she’s been expecting, which maybe you are. Wren is there too, close-cropped hair and kind eyes, and she hands you a drink and asks about your programme with genuine curiosity and you answer and feel yourself settle into the warmth of being somewhere you’re wanted.

Alysa stays close for the first while.

Her hand at the small of your back as she introduces you to people. Her shoulder against yours when you’re standing still. Small, continuous, unthinking contact that says something she hasn’t quite put into words yet but that everyone in the room can apparently read clearly because you catch more than one knowing look exchanged over your heads and choose not to acknowledge any of them.

It’s Wren who takes your arm first.

“Come meet some people,” she says, with the warmth of someone who has already decided she likes you and would like her other friends to also like you. “Alysa can survive five minutes without you.”

“I can hear you,” Alysa says.

“I know,” Wren says serenely, and steers you gently toward the other side of the room.

There are four of them — Wren, Cora, and two others you haven’t met. A girl called Bex with elaborate earrings and an immediately infectious laugh, and a boy called Theo who within thirty seconds of meeting you has strong opinions about figure skating that are mostly wrong but entertainingly so and you correct him cheerfully and he takes it well and by the end of it you’re all laughing and you feel, warmly and genuinely, like you fit here.

You glance across the room.

Alysa is with a small group of her own, drink in hand, talking — but her eyes find yours at the exact moment yours find hers and she smiles over the rim of her glass, private and warm, just for you, and you smile back and look away and Bex makes a small sound beside you.

“Oh she’s got it bad,” Bex says, to no one in particular.

“We know,” Wren says.

“I’m right here,” you say.

“We know that too,” Cora says, and hands you another drink.

Across the room Alysa is having a different conversation.

Or trying to.

She’s been attempting to follow what Jade is saying for the past several minutes but Jade has noticed where her eyes keep going and has stopped pretending the conversation is about anything other than what it’s actually about.

“You brought her,” Jade says.

“Obviously I brought her.”

“You’ve never brought anyone.”

Alysa looks at her drink. “I know.”

“To anything,” Jade says. “In the entire time I’ve known you.”

“I know, Jade.”

Jade looks across the room at you — laughing at something Theo has said, your head tipping back slightly, completely at ease in a room full of strangers in a way that Jade suspects you wouldn’t have predicted about yourself — and then back at Alysa, who is watching the same thing with an expression she probably doesn’t know is on her face.

“Alysa.”

“Mm.”

“You’re completely gone for her.”

A pause.

Alysa takes a sip of her drink.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I really am.”

Jade follows her gaze back across the room. You’ve said something now that has made Wren actually double over. Bex is clapping. Theo looks delighted.

“She fits,” Jade says, simply.

Alysa smiles at her drink.

“She really does,” she says. Like it’s the best thing. Like it’s everything.

The music shifts.

It does it gradually, the way good party music does — one song fading into the next, the energy of the room following it without noticing. And then something comes on that is lighter than what came before, guitar-led and warm and slightly older, and you know it immediately without being able to place it for a second—

There she goes
There she goes again—

You look up from your conversation.

Across the room Alysa is already looking at you.

The song plays and the room moves around it and she is standing with her drink and her striped hair and her silver ring and she is looking at you the way the song sounds — like something that keeps happening, like something she can’t help, like you are a fact about her life that she has stopped trying to qualify.

You hold her gaze for a moment.

Then Theo says something and you’re pulled back into the conversation and you go, smiling, and across the room Alysa turns back to Jade and says nothing, just sips her drink, and Jade pats her arm once and says nothing either because nothing needs saying.

You find each other in the middle.

Not planned. Not coordinated. Just the natural gravity of two people in the same room who have been aware of each other all evening, finally giving in to it, drifting toward the centre of the party and arriving at the same point from different directions.

She’s there when you turn.

Right there.

Close enough that the noise of the party feels suddenly further away than it is, close enough to see the silver of her ring and the particular way she’s looking at you that you have collected so many versions of now and never get tired of.

And the song changes.

Something familiar starts — the same guitarist, the same warm unhurried quality, a song you know you know—

Kiss me out of the bearded barley—

Oh.

You look at her.

You look at her and you feel the smile starting before you can do anything about it, wide and helpless and not even slightly subtle, and you say —

“I love this song.”

You do love it. You have always loved it.

But the way you say it means something else entirely and you both know it.

She looks at you for just a second.

That second.

And then she closes the small distance between you and kisses you.

Right there in the middle of Jade’s party with the music playing and the room full of people and the lights warm overhead — she kisses you like it’s the most natural thing, like she’s been wanting to since the moment she picked you up tonight, like I love this song was all the invitation she needed.

She pulls back.

And you look at her — at this girl, this specific extraordinary girl, with her striped hair and her smiley piercing and the three pins she gave you before she ever said what she meant — and something rises up in you that is warm and certain and slightly reckless in the best way.

You take her face in your hands.

And you kiss her again.

Slower this time. Deeper. Your hands against her face like you are keeping her somewhere, like you are saying something with your mouth that your words haven’t quite caught up to yet, and you feel her hand come up to your wrist, not pulling away, just — holding, just staying, just yes.

When you pull back you are both breathing slightly differently than before.

Her eyes open and find yours.

And the confidence is still there — warm and bright and slightly fizzing at the edges, maybe the drink, maybe just her, maybe just this — and before it can go anywhere you say, quietly but clearly, with your hands still holding her face:

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

The word lands between you like something that was always going to be said eventually and is simply relieved to finally be here.

Alysa stares at you.

For exactly one second she just — stares. And then something breaks open in her expression, that luminous undone thing, and she laughs — soft and disbelieving and so full of something — and turns her face just slightly to press her lips to your palm, warm and brief, and then looks back at you.

“Yes,” she says. “Obviously yes.”

Obviously yes.

Your words. Handed back to you.

You drop your forehead to hers and close your eyes and feel her hands find your waist and the music plays and the party moves around you and none of it matters even slightly.

“Obviously yes,” you repeat softly, just to have said it.

She pulls you in by the waist and you go, and somewhere across the room you hear what might be Wren saying something loud and celebratory and what might be Bex clapping again and what is definitely Cora saying finally with great feeling.

You don’t look.

You stay exactly where you are.