19. The Kiss
THE KISS
Riley Puth is shorter than I imagined.
"You're the RileyPuthDrumsticks account," she says, and her voice is exactly the voice from the Instagram lives—warm, unhurried, the voice of someone who takes her time with everything. "Your breakdowns are amazing."
"Thank you. I—thank you." I have lost the ability to form sentences. "I mean. Yes. Thank you for—"
"I loved what you said about the cross-sticking analysis, I felt so validated." She leans against the counter, and she's completely at ease, like this is the most natural thing in the world. "I showed it to my drum teacher. She said you caught things she missed."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I still take lessons. Every Tuesday.
Your post about my left-hand ghost notes changed how I think about my grip.
I've been working on it ever since. The control changed.
The finesse. Everything." She's looking at me like I'm a real person, not just a handle on the internet.
"I wanted to thank you for that. I've been meaning to find you at a show or something and say thank you. "
"I—" I have no words.
"You okay?" Riley asks, and there's real concern in her voice now.
"Yeah. I just—you're Riley. Riley Puth. And you knew my analysis. You actually read it."
"Of course I read it. Why wouldn't I? You were seeing things in my playing that I was trying to do. Thank you so much." She steps closer. "Come here," she says, and she opens her arms, and she hugs me.
Riley Puth is hugging me. I am screaming in my head.
The hug is genuine and warm and she smells like clean laundry and my brain short-circuits with the complete, helpless joy.
I laugh into her shoulder. I can feel my eyes getting wet.
I hold on. My arms wrap around her ribs, and I can feel the definition of her shoulders, the solid reality of a woman who plays drums for a living.
"Thank you," I say into the hug. "For everything you do. For the way you play."
"Thank you for watching," she says.
She squeezes me once more and lets go, and I'm standing in Sandy and Erica's kitchen with a wet face and a racing heart and Riley Puth's hand on my shoulder.
I hug her one more time. Because who knows when I’ll be able to hug Riley Puth ever again.
She releases me with a grin. "I hope you keep posting. You're making the world better."
I nod. I can't trust my voice.
Over Riley’s shoulder I catch Jani watching us, watching Riley.
And when Riley glances up and finds my sister across the room, something passes between them.
Riley’s smile falters half a degree. Jani lifts her chin.
Neither of them says a word, and I file it away as a mystery for another day, because the room is already going quiet, and it has nothing to do with me and Riley at all.
The room notices before I do.
I see the room change—people going quiet, looking toward me, conversations pausing mid-sentence—before I see Rhonda. Then she's there. Right there. Two feet away. Eye contact. The whole world narrowing to a single point of focus.
Her hands come up. They find my face—palms on my jaw, thumbs along my cheekbones.
She kisses me.
In the middle of Sandy and Erica's kitchen, in front of everyone.
The room goes quiet.
Riley, behind me, takes a step back. "Whoa!"
Jani goes very still. She doesn’t gasp but her eyes find mine across the crowd and hold on, and I watch my unshockable sister be, for one second, undone.
We move onto the balcony. The air is cold, and city noise below. Rhonda's hands still on my face, even though we've stepped away from the party.
"I'm done," she says. "I love you, Lena. I’m sorry I've been handling it badly. I'm not going to do that anymore."
"I love you too," I say, and my voice cracks on too.
Her forehead against mine. Our breathing in the cold air, visible, rising like twin plumes.
The city spread out below us. The party carrying on inside, the room processing what just happened.
All the people who just watched that kiss, who just had the entire invisible relationship made visible in one moment.
"I'm sorry," she says. "for asking you to be invisible. I locked you in a cage, and you deserve better than that."
"It had good hot chocolate."
She laughs. We stand on the balcony with the party noise behind us and the cold air around us and her hands on my face, my arms around her waist.
"I was terrified," she says. "That you would choose Riley. “
“What? You know I’m just a fan right?”
Rhonda’s ears went red. “I know but I thought you might choose her instead of—”
"Instead of what?"
"Instead of me."
"Rhonda." I lift my hand to cup her face. "You're not hiding anymore."
"Yeah."
"And I chose you. I've been choosing you every single day for a year. I chose you even when you put me in a cage."
Rhonda leans her cheek into my hand. "What have I done to ever deserve you?"
"Because you're worth it. Even when we were hiding, you were the most real thing in my life. You were the only thing that made sense."
She steps closer. She wraps her arms around my waist. I lean into her. We stand like this for a long moment, holding each other against the cold, holding each other in the open.
"Lets go back inside?" Rhonda asks eventually.
"Yeah. Okay.”
She doesn't let go of my hand as we walk back through the sliding glass door. She holds my hand as we rejoin the party. She holds my hand as people congratulate us, as Jani hugs us both, as the room accepts the new arrangement of things.
She holds my hand like it's the most important thing she can do right now.
And my hand holds hers back.