Chapter 44

The party is Cora’s idea.

End of summer, she said in the group chat. Before competition season swallows everyone whole again. Last hurrah. And because it’s Cora and Cora does nothing halfway, the last hurrah has approximately sixty people in it, a playlist that has been curated with genuine care, fairy lights strung everywhere because of course, and a drinks table that is extensive and well considered.

You get ready at Alysa’s.

The apartment that is still technically hers for three more weeks before the new one — your new one, yours, a word you are still getting used to wearing — and you stand in her bedroom in various stages of dressed while she sits on the bed in hers and gives opinions that are helpful and also slightly devastating.

The skirt goes on last.

White pleated mini, the kind that moves when you walk, and you pair it with the pink long sleeve wrap top — soft, slightly fitted, the neckline doing something that you notice her noticing in the mirror — and the heels and the frilly socks that were her suggestion and that you resisted and that are completely right.

You look in the mirror.

You look — good. Genuinely good. The kind of good that is yours but also has her influence in it now, the months of her eye and her yes and her that one having quietly shaped something.

You turn around.

She’s looking at you.

Not casually.

Looking.

With that expression — the still one, the caught-before-she’s-ready one, except by now she doesn’t bother pretending she wasn’t looking, she just looks and lets you see her looking and you have learned to receive it without needing to look away.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hi,” she says. Her voice is slightly different from usual.

“You’re staring,” you say.

“I’m appreciating,” she says.

You look at her.

She’s in the black pleated skirt — vintage, thrifted, you were there when she found it, a small thrift store on a Tuesday afternoon when you were supposed to be doing other things — and a tight 90s tee with a pattern that is interesting and slightly faded in the best way, black ripped tights, doc martens already on. Her hair half up, the smiley piercing, the ring.

She looks — herself. Completely, entirely herself. But also something else tonight, something that the skirt does, the particular combination of her aesthetic meeting something slightly softer and you look at her—

Matching, you think. In our completely opposite way we are completely matching.

“You look incredible,” you say.

She stands up.

Crosses to you.

Looks at you properly up close — the frilly socks, the heels, the wrap top, all of it — and shakes her head slightly like she can’t quite believe you exist.

“Come on,” she says, taking your hand. “Before I decide we should just stay in.”

You go.

Cora’s house is already full when you arrive.

The particular warm chaos of a party that has been going for an hour and has found its rhythm — music from somewhere, voices from everywhere, the fairy lights doing exactly what fairy lights do and making everything look like it’s happening inside something golden. Cora at the door, paint-free for once, pulling you both in with the energy of someone who is very happy about this evening and wants everyone to know it.

Wren. Jade. Bex and Theo and people you know and people you’re about to know and the general expansive warmth of a large group of people who like each other very much in a space that is full of fairy lights and good music.

Alysa’s hand in yours through the first half hour.

And then — naturally, the way parties work — you drift.

You drift well.

This is something you’ve learned about yourself in the months since a girl sat next to you on a bench and changed everything — you drift well now. You talk to people easily, laugh easily, find your way into conversations and stay in them comfortably, and somewhere in the back of your mind you are always, always aware of where she is.

You don’t need to check.

You just know.

The drinks are good.

You have one and then another and by the third something in you has loosened in the particular pleasant way of someone who is warm and safe and surrounded by people they like and has nowhere to be tomorrow morning.

You are having the best time.

You cannot stress this enough.

Somewhere around midnight the music changes.

Something comes on — older, louder, the kind of song that has a specific gravity to it, that pulls people toward it — and the dining room, which has been many things tonight, becomes a dance floor.

You are in the dining room.

The song comes on.

You look at the table.

The table looks back.

Alysa is in the garden.

She’s been there for twenty minutes — a good conversation, someone she knows from the skating world, easy and warm, the summer night doing its thing around them — when Jade appears at her elbow.

Jade has an expression on her face.

“What?” Alysa says.

Jade opens her mouth.

Closes it.

“Your girl,” she says.

“What about her?”

“She’s—” Jade pauses. Seems to be selecting the right words. “She’s dancing.”

“Okay,” Alysa says. “Good.”

“On the table,” Jade says.

Alysa looks at her.

“There’s no way,” she says.

Jade’s expression says there is absolutely a way.

She follows Jade through the house.

Through the kitchen — someone hands her a drink she doesn’t take — through the hallway, the music getting louder, and then into the dining room and—

There you are.

On the table.

In your white pleated mini skirt and your pink wrap top and your frilly socks and your heels and you are dancing like nobody is watching except approximately thirty people are watching and you don’t appear to care even slightly and you look—

You look incredible.

You look like someone who started a story barely able to say hey and has arrived, via a bench and a rink and three pins and Paris and a key and an apartment that isn’t signed yet but already has a bench in the plans—

You look like someone who found themselves.

Someone around you says something — a voice Alysa doesn’t recognise, someone nearby watching you with the particular attention of a stranger appreciating something beautiful:

“Who is that?”

Alysa puts her drink down.

Looks up at you.

At the white skirt and the pink top and the frilly socks and your face, your actual face, laughing at something, completely free, completely present, completely and entirely yourself in the middle of a dining room table at midnight at the end of summer—

“That’s my future wife,” she says.

The words come out before she’s decided to say them.

The way the best things always do.

Jade turns to look at her.

“What?” Jade says. “Alysa you’re drunk—”

“I’m not,” she says. Simply. Certainly. Still looking at you. “I swear I’m going to marry her Jade. I already—” she stops.

Jade’s eyes go very wide.

“You already what?” Jade says.

“Never mind,” Alysa says.

“Alysa—”

“Never mind,” she says again, and she is already moving, crossing the room toward the table, and Jade is saying something behind her that she isn’t hearing because she is looking at you and you have spotted her from the table and your face has done the thing — the whole thing, the real thing — and you reach your hand down toward her.

She takes it.

Climbs up.

The table holds.

Just.

And then there are two of you on it — you in your white skirt and her in her black one, doc martens and heels, pink and black, soft and alt, matching in your completely opposite way — and the music is loud and the room is watching and neither of you cares even slightly.

She takes your hand.

You take hers.

And you dance.

Like no one is watching.

Like the table is the rink and the music is the programme and neither of you is thinking about anything except this — this exact moment, this exact song, this exact person whose hand is in yours and whose eyes are bright and whose smile is the whole one, the real one, the one that belongs to small hours and warm rooms and the spaces between things.

She pulls you close.

You go.

Her mouth near your ear — the music too loud for anything else — and she says something that gets lost in the noise and you pull back to look at her face and whatever she said is written there, in the expression, in the open luminous thing, and you don’t need to hear the words.

You know.

You’ve known for a while.

You lean in and kiss her on the table in the middle of Cora’s dining room at midnight at the end of summer and someone cheers — probably Massimo, except Massimo isn’t here, so probably Bex — and the music keeps going and the fairy lights keep doing their thing and somewhere in the room Jade is telling Cora something with great urgency and Cora’s hand is going to her mouth and Wren is grabbing someone’s arm—

But up here on the table none of that matters.

Up here there is just her.

My future wife, she said.

I already—

You don’t know what she was going to say.

You think you might know.

You let it be something to find out.

You keep dancing.