Experienced

Chapter Twenty-Five

In the film version of the wedding saga, Ruth would have run off after their conversation and caught a sad train back to Bristol, leaving Bette to sit alone with her devastation. But it wasn’t the film version. Ruth was a PhD student on a budget and Bette had bought non-flexible multi-connection tickets, and the last regular train back south had already departed. And so when Bette made it back to their room, she found Ruth already curled up in bed, facing the window. It was a starkly different scene to the one the night before, and Bette chewed on her lip, holding back tears. She had cried enough already today. There was nothing for it but to get into bed and try to sleep. In the bathroom she brushed her teeth and diligently took off all her makeup, and then pulled back the duvet (how was there a company that sold duvet covers printed with toads?) and pretended to herself that it was possible for her to get any sleep at all.

The twenty minutes between getting out of bed and making it to the train the next morning were some of the worst of Bette’s life. The room was too small to avoid each other, but she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She couldn’t beg Ruth again. Couldn’t ask her to throw caution to the wind, ignore all her instincts and give them a go. There were only so many times you could ask someone to be in love with you before it became mortifying. She’d run out of asks.

The idea of sitting next to one another for the seven-hour journey back south seemed entirely impossible. And so, on their way down the stairs, suitcase slapping against her shins as she maneuvered it awkwardly, Bette proposed the alternative she had thought of when lying awake the night before.

“Look,” she said, swallowing again before she continued, trying to force the lump in her throat back down it. “I think we probably both need some time. Alone, I mean. So how about I forward you your ticket, and we just…”

She paused, unsure how to say it. It had been so clear in her head.

“Make our own way back?” Ruth finished.

“Yeah.”

“I think that would be good for both of us,” Ruth said, her voice delicate. Impossibly small. It sounded as though she might burst into tears at any moment. “I should pay you for the…”

And Bette couldn’t stand it. It’s not that the money wouldn’t have been useful, not like the ticket had been cheap. She was staring down the barrel of a lean November. But the thought of Ruth paying her out of guilt was too horrible.

“Don’t,” she interrupted. “That was the deal. You—you came with me, so I didn’t have to be alone. I’m really grateful.”

Ruth shrugged, misery smearing into calm on her face. They stood in silence, not quite looking at each other.

“Okay,” Bette replied. At the bottom of the stairs she handed her room key to Ruth and pulled out her phone. “I’ll get on this, and you return those.”

She found Ruth’s ticket, screenshotted all the bits of it and sent it, then swiped on the litany of messages clogging up her notifications to clear them and pushed the phone back into her pocket. Outside the hotel the air was heavy with November drizzle. Bette could feel her hair frizz almost immediately.

“Well,” Ruth said as she stepped out behind her, not quite meeting Bette’s eye. “I’ll see you back in Bristol, then.”

“Yeah. I’ll be in touch,” Bette said, the words odd and formal and entirely inadequate.

Ruth nodded and turned to leave. Bette watched her turn the corner at the end of the street, willing her to look back, to change her mind. She didn’t. Once she disappeared, Bette burst into tears.

Bette hadn’t been able to think about food in the station and was deeply regretting not having forced herself to pick something up. The smell of the hot sandwiches made her feel queasy and the sight of crisps make her heart ache, and so she was surviving on a diet of tea and Kit Kats, of staring out of the window and feeling sorry for herself.

Finally, an hour or so from Birmingham, she took a deep breath and pulled her phone out of her bag. There was nothing from Ruth, no heartfelt missive trying to find her carriage and take it all back. It was as expected, but it hurt regardless. Thankfully, there was nothing from Mei either. There was a message from her mother, prompting her for details of Christmas plans that Bette hadn’t made. And there was, inevitably, a string of messages from Ash that grew increasingly more committed in their use of capital letters. She scrolled back through them, barely taking them in, and then plugged in her headphones and hit the call icon.

“You’re not dead then,” Ash said, picking up on the second ring. Bette felt a flash of guilt; they always replied to one another. She would have killed Ash if the situation was reversed.

“No. Not dead.”

“Well, you’d better be calling to tell me you’ve been having a frankly disgusting amount of sex. That’s the only acceptable reason for ignoring me since yesterday.”

“I—” Bette replied, and her vision blurred through her tears. “I—”

“Bette, hey. Hey, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m here,” Bette managed, uselessly, and then abandoned her backpack at her seat and stumbled down the aisle, avoiding eye contact with everyone she passed. Once in the vestibule between carriages, she sank down against a wall until her bum hit her heels. She would not sit down on the floor of a CrossCountry train. She would not.

“Are you still there?” Ash’s voice said in her ear.

“I had sex,” she said.

“Okay,” Ash replied, leaving space on the line for her to continue.

“Not with Mei.”

Ash burst out laughing on the other end of the line, but recovered quickly. “Sure.”

“I had sex with Ruth.”

“Obviously.”

Ash had known, Bette reminded herself. She’d always known.

“I slept with Ruth, and I think I might be in love with her, actually, but Mei wants me back and Ruth saw her holding my hand, and now she doesn’t want me.”

There was a long pause.

“What?”

“She’s somewhere on the train, but I don’t know where. We’re not traveling back together. But we have to change, like, three more times, so there’s a decent chance I’ll run into her on the platform. God, we’re going through fucking Wales, because they were the only tickets I could afford. We’ve still got hours to bump into each other. I ruined it all. I never should have kissed her. I—oh god I fucked it up. Ash, I fucked it up so badly…”

“Hey,” Ash interrupted. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be home soon. So soon. We’re going to work it out.”

“How, Ash? How is it going to be okay?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. But you just need to get through the next few hours. And then I’ll be there.”

The next three hours felt like seventeen. At Birmingham New Street, outside the Pret, Bette glanced to her left and caught a glimpse of the back of Mei’s head. She turned away and saw Ruth instead, looking up at the departure board. It felt like an experience she should nod sagely at, as if that’s what she should expect after the past forty-eight hours: a heartbreaking not-quite love triangle encounter in a major railway station. It felt like some sort of cosmic bullshit, the universe laughing at her. Except that she didn’t believe in that, and actually they were all in the same place and on the same trains because she’d planned all their journeys in the first place.

She made it onto the next train, and then kept her head down and her headphones on, counting down the trains until they hit Bristol. When Bette tapped through the barriers at Temple Meads, Ash was standing there, an insulated cup clutched in front of her.

“I thought you might need a tea,” Ash said, taking Bette’s case from her and pushing the cup into her hands.

The last fifteen minutes home were, somehow, the worst of all the worst bits. The previous hours paled in comparison with the effort it took to place one foot in front of the other, to keep making her way up the hill. It helped to have Ash beside her, though, even if she hadn’t said anything since handing the tea over.

“If it helps, she looked at least as rough as you,” Ash said finally, dodging a pedestrian and almost losing the suitcase into traffic.

And it really did. For a moment it helped a lot, made the stupid hope flare in her chest. If Ruth was as devastated as she was, surely it was only a matter of time before she decided Bette was worth the risk. Worth the jump off the cliff. But she extinguished the hope before it could find a toehold. Maybe devastated was simply how you looked, after an incredibly good, impossibly complicated night of fucking at a wedding.

Bette lived small all week. Small and quiet and determined not to lose herself, not to sink into a pool of devastation. It would have been so easy to luxuriate in it, to lean into a heartbroken esthetic again. But she tried hard not to, tried so hard that it felt instead like hibernation, like all her focus and energy went into keeping her vital faculties (showing up at work, eating whatever Ash had cooked, brushing her teeth, sleeping) functioning. She couldn’t even watch ice-dancing. Everything in her was frozen. Paused. It was safer than despair.

Eventually, inevitably, it was Sunday again, and a whole week had passed. In a bid to fill her weekend with purpose, with something tangible, Bette decided to visit her nonna. On the familiar train, she watched the countryside slide by. No one needed anything from her, no one started a conversation. She’d searched Spotify and was listening to a playlist called Sad Classical, which ran the full spectrum from moping to devastated. Apart from the regular interruptions by ads for dairy alternatives, it was sort of perfect.

Bette had texted her mother the night before, trying to nudge any Sunday family plans out of her. It was a difficult bit of subterfuge—seeming interested enough in Sunday church and lunch to reassure herself that she wouldn’t run into the rest of the family at the care home, but not so interested she ended up with an invitation. She simply did not have the energy to engage with the rest of the family. The possibility of running into them, of being demonstrably miserable, had sat heavily on her. It was one thing to feel like she had to defend her life when she felt blissfully happy. It was another thing altogether when she was heartbroken, when she couldn’t talk about why she was sad. When she was alone again, living the sort of life that made it easy for them to pity her. It was precisely what they feared: a lonely, miserable existence. And it wasn’t that. But it also wasn’t a week when she felt particularly capable of shouting about how great things were.

It was a long, meandering journey to the care home, and it was November. Bette walked with her hood up, the misty rain gradually turning to drops on her skin before trailing down her throat. By the time she arrived, she was damp. The sort of English dampness that wasn’t quite enough to count as wet, but was absolutely enough to make taking her coat off a sticky, uncomfortable, horrible sort of job.

There was no one at the desk to witness the coat removal, which was a relief. She’d been waiting only a moment when the matron appeared down the corridor with the same energy as always: as though operating on 1.2x speed, slightly at odds with the world around her.

“Leone, isn’t it,” she said, the certainty of her tone negating Bette’s nodded confirmation. It was her nonna’s surname, not hers, but every time she was known and remembered, it squashed down the guilt she felt at not visiting enough. The matron didn’t dither, not brusque or cold, just without any interest in extraneous chatting, and Bette was grateful for it; her temperature was recorded, a mask was handed to her, and she was pointed down the hall without any need for small talk.

Her nonna’s room was right at the end, close to the large shared space that opened out onto the garden. She made her way past rooms filled with the other residents and their families, trying to resist the temptation to peer into every open door. But her wet footsteps on the squeaky floor attracted attention. Music-loving Mr. Law, who had a record player and a towering stack of jazz and blues by his window, waved as she passed. And then Jean, her nonna’s closest friend and a relentless gossip, practically body-blocked her as she walked past her room.

“Little birdy told me you started a care homes project, and we’re not on the list.”

“Hi Jean,” Bette said, and submitted to the hug Jean pushed on her. Bette hadn’t been ready for it, hadn’t braced herself as she had been doing with Ash all week, and it loosened something within her. She cleared her throat, her voice scratchy and caught after a morning of disuse. “It’s regional funding, sorry. We did try! We’ll make it a big success and then next year we’ll be able to expand it. I’ll keep Nonna posted.”

“We’ve got that owl lad, is all I’m saying. Could do with some art. Anyway. I’ll leave it with you. I’ve a face to put on and a date who won’t wait.”

She bustled back into her room, leaving Bette processing in her wake. She stood for a moment until Marina, her favorite of the care home staff, walked out of Jean’s room with a tray beneath her arm.

“Morning, love.” Marina was too young to call Bette “love,” really, barely in her mid-twenties. But she also wore an engagement ring and the residents adored her and she was so capable and easy-going. Her hair was always twisted up elegantly in a scarf, her winged liner perfectly applied. In almost every respect, Bette felt like a teenager in her presence, someone who barely had her life together.

“Hey Marina.” And then, before Jean’s words took another loop through her head: “Owl lad?”

“Oh, that’s Pascal,” Marina replied. “He brings an owl in on Thursdays.”

She smiled at Bette as though that explained literally anything.

“Right.”

“She had a rough night, love. Your nonna. She was awake a lot, so she’s tired. Been up and dressed, but last I checked she was having a little lie-down. Might wake up in a bit though, if you want to sit with her? Sure she’d love to know you’re there and chatting to her?”

Bette nodded, aware of the amount of effort it took to smile.

“You can always give us a call and check too, before you come.” Marina squeezed her on the shoulder and walked off down the corridor.

She should, of course. Calling made sense. But she also only had weekends, and she was so reliant on the trains, and she wanted to avoid her parents. Really, these Sunday mornings were her only option. And so even when it was a day like this, when it wasn’t a good day, when it was a “sitting in Nonna’s room and reading in case she woke up for a bit” sort of day, Bette knew she’d happily get on the train anyway.

It was a well-appointed room; enough space for the large bed, a couple of chairs, some small moveable tables and a tall chest of drawers. What made it feel small, as if the walls were forever creeping inwards, was all that was crammed into it; the piles of hand-knitted and hand-sewn blankets and quilts, the well-polished shoes lined up that Nonna rarely put on but liked to see, the crowded collection of framed family photographs that sat on a lace runner. The framed pictures of Jesus and Mary that sat among them, honorary members of the family, their hands hovering over their holy, glowing chests.

In the plastic-framed bed her nonna lay on her side, on top of the sheets, dressed in her regular nylon elasticated-waist trousers and a shapeless lilac jumper. A quilt covered her from her knees to the foot of the bed. Bette wondered if Marina had placed it there, and decided she liked imagining she had. She could picture it precisely: tender, careful Marina shaking out a quilt and tucking it over her nonna’s notoriously cold feet.

Her first impulse was to clean, to make sure Nonna’s room was the way she liked it, but it was spotless already. Not a frame out of place. There was nothing to do but sit and wait. She slid a chair over to the bed and unpacked the contents of her backpack: a thermos full of coffee (there was a lot that suited Nonna about life in the care home, but the quality of the coffee was an ongoing challenge), along with two slices of cake that Ash had picked up for her at Hart’s the day before. She looked down at the box and felt, for the first time all week, truly on the edge of tears. She was so lucky. She didn’t deserve Ash.

Bette hadn’t felt like reading when she’d left home, but she was regretting not bringing a book with her. Scrolling through Instagram had too much potential to be devastating while she was in this mood. But she needed to do something. Marina had mentioned talking to Nonna; maybe Bette could just…talk. It was surely better than dealing with everything swirling around her head. She realized that last time she had seen Nonna she had been heartbroken and hurt over Mei. It felt so long ago, that so much else had happened. But it wasn’t, really. And, despite all that had happened in Edinburgh, the pain of that first heartbreak still lingered.

It would have been easier, maybe, to be so crushed after Ruth that it pushed everything else from her. But the truth of it was that it was one thing on top of another: the humiliation of everything with Mei, the loneliness, the devastation of starting all over again was all still there, propping up the fresh hurt.

“Ciao, Nonna,” Bette said, reaching out to rest a hand on the bed. She cleared her throat again, keeping her voice gentle and low. After the first stroke they’d all talked to her like this. As if she could hear them, as though it might encourage her to come back. “Sorry you had a rough night. Honestly, you’re not missing much. Seems like a quiet day here. And it’s been a shit week. Sorry. A bad week. Not that I’ve been keeping up with the news, really, but it all seems pretty doom and gloom. But you probably—you probably know this. And there’ll be family news, but you’ll have heard it from Mum, and I don’t know…”

Bette didn’t know, was the simple truth of it. Didn’t know what she could tell Nonna that she didn’t already know. Nothing about the family, that was certain. And it wasn’t her family that was occupying Bette’s thoughts anyway.

“I lied, Nonna. I told you I’d been all right, last time I came here. I wasn’t. I wasn’t okay. I was pretty bad at hiding it, so I’m sure it’s not much of a surprise. You probably knew. But I was heartbroken. I think I still am, a bit. I had a—thing—with someone, and it ended. And I miss he…I miss how easy it was. When it was good. I still don’t know how to just—not have it. And be okay with that. Everyone seems to think it’s good that it’s ended, and I know it’s the right thing. It is. But I’m just—I’m really sad about all the things I thought we’d have that we won’t now. I’m so sad that it fell apart because we both assumed stuff that wasn’t true. I want to stop being sad about it, but it’s still there.” It was good, she realized. Useful, to say all this without thinking too much about it. To be sad about Mei, whom Ash was definitely sick of hearing about. “I told myself it didn’t matter anymore, so I’m sort of angry it does. Because I also—I met someone else. Or, I didn’t meet them, but I guess I finally understood how I was feeling about someone. So it all seemed—fast. It felt like I fell for them fast. Even though I didn’t. But I messed it up…”

She trailed off as her nonna’s breathing changed, as the mouth that had dropped open in sleep came back under her control.

“Elisabetta?” she asked, eyes still closed.

“It’s me, Nonna. Hi,” Bette said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Do you want to get up?”

Her nonna nodded against the pillow, still finding her way back from sleep. Bette moved her chair back to where she’d hauled it over from, looking out of the doors and into the garden. It took a moment to get her nonna settled in her chair, and then Bette sat down in the other.

“You bring—?” Nonna began, trailing off with a satisfied smile when Bette wheeled over the table with the thermos and the cake box. She poured the coffee out into the Willow-pattern cups her nonna liked best, and relayed stories of workshops and work plans. It was easy, for a while, to be distracted. But it felt oddly like a monologue; she’d expected the sort of questions and opinions that her nonna was never short of.

But it was not the conversation her nonna seemed to want to have.

“This person, the one you love? Do they love you?”

Bette’s stomach turned over. Of course Nonna had been listening. She’d forgotten, somehow, that they were years on from the stroke now. That she wasn’t trying to bring Nonna back into the room. That she was right there, napping. Listening, apparently.

“I don’t think so. I mean, they weren’t ready for it. They’re getting over someone. And I knew that.”

“Everyone always getting over someone. People die. People leave. Everyone is sad, but don’t just be sad. Might as well love too.”

“I’m not sure it’s just sadness. More…fear. I think maybe if you’ve been badly hurt, it would be scary to feel like you’re falling in love again.”

“Who could be afraid to love you?” She reached out and took Bette’s hand, her dark eyes sincere. “So easy to love.”

There was nothing to say to that, really. Bette shrugged and nodded, like it was true. Like she agreed. Like it truly was that simple.

“What is her name?”

“Ruth,” Bette replied, before she could think twice about it. And then she felt, suddenly, as though her face had been ignited from the inside: hot and uncomfortable. Her heart raced, her tongue and teeth felt too big in her mouth. She hadn’t—she didn’t—how did…?

“A good name,” her nonna said, nodding, quiet and considering. “Naomi, Orpah, Ruth.”

Old Testament names, Bette realized. She couldn’t remember the details of the story. She was too distracted to try.

Her nonna looked entirely unperturbed. Like the information wasn’t new. Had it been the gender-non-specific pronouns? Had her mother said something? Had Bette let something slip? She wanted to cry. Wanted to press her nonna for more. But her nonna was sipping her coffee and reaching out for the cake. Maybe drawing attention to it wasn’t the right thing. Maybe they could just…not. And so Bette pulled out her laptop and put The Golden Girls on, and settled back in her chair to laugh along with her nonna as Blanche flirted in dubbed Italian.

After a couple of episodes, her eyes flicked over to the clock hanging above the chest of drawers; she and Ash had an afternoon of house-cleaning ahead of them. There was a train in thirty minutes, and she needed to be on it.

“Your train?” Nonna asked, and brushed off Bette’s apologies. “Thank you for coming. For sitting with me. You bring Ash to visit? Next time?”

Bette screwed the top back on the thermos and zipped up her backpack. She pressed her masked mouth to her nonna’s cheek and squeezed her hand.

“I promise. Ciao, Nonna.”

By Monday morning, Bette had made a decision. She couldn’t make Ash’s life impossible any more. She couldn’t be the sort of flatmate who didn’t shop and didn’t clean and moped around the flat. This wasn’t even a breakup, and she was absolutely, definitely not going to mourn it as if it were. And so, when Ash had found her up and dressed in the kitchen before work, Bette had smiled and handed over the coffee she’d made.

“Thanks,” Ash said, clearly incredulous. She’d been so careful and kind all week, had sat and talked with Bette after they’d done the cleaning. Later, as she was getting into bed, Bette could see how the rest of the month, the rest of the year, might go. She knew Ash had had the same thought too. She could see the dinners Ash would put in front of her, and the nights on the sofa. Maybe, just maybe, she could skip it. Maybe she could be a better friend and better person than she had been in the past weeks and not make the rest of Ash’s November about her too. She could be the kind of flatmate who made coffee instead.

“I was thinking it’d be nice to see Tim this weekend? Feels like it’s been ages since I’ve seen him for more than just a hello or goodbye.”

“Okay, stop. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Bette asked, keeping her voice perky and bright, fighting the impulse to slip back into the cold allure of hibernation.

“Nothing. Nothing, obviously. This is all entirely normal. We’ll just get something in the diary then,” Ash said, her voice loaded with sarcasm.

“Great!” Bette replied, confident that leaning into relentless cheer was the only real way to get through this. She was going to fake it until relentless cheer was all she had left.

Ash looked at her, drained the cup and handed it back to Bette. She turned to pull her lunch from the fridge, and then looked back again before leaving the kitchen.

“This was weird,” she said, waving her hand as if to encompass all of Bette. “You know that. That was a weird interaction we just had. But I could get used to the morning coffee. If that was a bit you wanted to commit to. Anyway. See you tonight.”

It was even easier as the week went on. It felt ridiculous that she’d never really considered it as an option, that she hadn’t just embraced this the week before. That instead of feeling absolutely every feeling, instead of collapsing into the sofa in devastation, instead of moping around in bed, instead of shutting everything down and feeling nothing as the only alternative, she could just…live.

Despite Ash’s clear misgivings about the way she’d proposed it, Bette had messaged Tim midweek and organized a long, wintry pub lunch for Sunday. Being all right again was going to be about filling her time. She needed not to dwell on the thought of Ruth in her bra in bed, her chest flushed, her eyes half closed. Being all right was about making sure she had plans on the weekend and in the evenings, about removing the possibility of wallowing alone. Being busy was the key.

When Ash was at Tim’s on Thursday, Bette’s first impulse was to order a takeaway: boxes of hummus and stuffed vine leaves and falafel and salads with chopped herbs through them. It would be easy to order something, to collapse into the sofa. But she thought of making the mussels, thought of the satisfaction of lifting the lid off the pan. She thought of being busy and useful, giving her brain something to do. She thought of the train tickets too, of the frugal month she was supposed to be having.

There were books in the kitchen—Ash’s, of course—but she’d find something. The corner shop didn’t have everything she needed, but Ash had most of the rest. And the internet was confident that the sauce would work without the marinated artichokes. Bette ate her pasta at their table, music playing from her phone, and then watched Bake Off in the bath. When Ash came home the next night, there were leftovers for them in a box in the fridge; they ate them cold, standing up in the kitchen, passing the box and a fork back and forth between them. Ash stuck a Post-it on the recipe in the book, wrote the date and Bette’s name, and v. good (try the artichokes next time), and Bette wanted to text Ruth about it. She managed to resist the temptation.

On Sunday there were deeply fine roasted vegetables and surprisingly decent Yorkshire puddings, and genuinely great pints in the pub near Ash’s school. It was pretty early in November, but the fairy lights were already up. Signs around the pub promised carol nights and Christmas quizzes and a room for hire at the back for work parties. The floor was wood rather than carpet, Ash’s only stipulation. It was busy, every table occupied and a hum of general cheer filling the room. It had been a good plan, a perfect distraction.

It was easy, Bette thought, as she walked across the pub to collect the ancient edition of Scrabble from among the pile on the windowsill, not to be thinking too much about Ruth. Ruth would probably like this sort of thing, but so did lots of people. It wasn’t particularly special to have met a woman who seemed like she might enjoy a Sunday roast and a board game. There were loads of them.

It was easy, Bette thought, as she waited at the bar to buy the three of them another round, not to get too hung up on the things she didn’t have, on what her life was lacking. It would be nice, of course it would, to be in love with someone who loved her back. That wasn’t a unique feeling. It wasn’t unusual to want that. It didn’t make her special. It hadn’t changed anything.

It was easy, Bette thought, as she put bazaar over a triple word score and tried not to look too smug about it, to think about the bits of her life that were brilliant and to feel happy to be here in the pub with Tim and Ash on a gray Sunday before Christmas. They’d go home later and Ash would make them watch some twee ’50s classic film. She and Tim would roll their eyes and they’d drink tea and it would all be lovely. She didn’t need to dwell on a thing that had only existed as a possibility for a couple of hours in her head, one night before a wedding.

And in the meantime she’d won Scrabble, and bowls of pear crumble and custard had arrived. Tim was full of retail capers; his stories always got madder and better the closer they were to Christmas. His knitted jumper looked cozy, and his hair had grown out enough to be pleasantly scruffy. Beside him, Ash had on an oversized cardigan and there was pink blush on her cheeks and she was scraping the last remnants of custard from her bowl. They looked so soft and perfect next to each other that Bette couldn’t help smiling stupidly at the pair of them.

“Hey, we were thinking of keeping things small this New Year,” Ash said, smiling back, as if she knew exactly what Bette had been thinking. Bette’s heart dropped. Most years they had a party of sorts; the size fluctuated, but Ash loved to host and was, incomprehensibly, a fan of New Year’s Eve. Bette had grown used to not having to make a plan, knowing the party would happen around her. The thought of having to find something else to do, of leaving them to it, was appalling.

“Maybe dinner just the three of us?” Ash was saying, pulling Bette from her spiral. She felt the relief fill her, warm and soothing, like tea after a long walk.

“That’s perfect,” she said. “Low-key family dinner is perfect.”

Tim smiled at her too, and then all three of them were laughing at each other like idiots. It was cheesy, and lovely, and the best she’d felt in a while.