Two #3
I scan the room. Clara has somehow produced three more glasses of champagne. Liv has abandoned her post at the counter and is hugging Luca so hard I worry about oxygen loss. Even Leo, not usually sentimental, is sitting quietly next to Maisie, peeling the wrapper from a cupcake for her.
I realize I haven’t thought about Ethan in at least fifteen minutes. Not once.
Maybe that’s the real victory.
I look back at the frame on my phone: Elsie and Noah, the twins, the friends, all jumbled together in a chaos that somehow makes perfect sense. I let it run, not wanting to miss any of it, not wanting to let go of the warmth that has started, against all odds, to fill up the cold places.
Somewhere in the background, Liv says, “Best. Proposal. Ever.”
And I completely agree with her.
Champagne goes to everyone’s head within five minutes, even the regular drinkers.
Luca is the first to feel the effects, generous and a little wild, his cheeks still blotchy from earlier but now bordering on drunk.
He pours more champagne with zero regard for time of day, and when the twins try to commandeer one, he swaps in apple juice and clinks them anyway.
There is hugging. There is passing of twins.
There is at least one toast that goes off the rails, Liv tries to say something profound and ends up quoting a meme.
For a while, the moment is pure: friends, sugar, bubbles, an excess of love so unfiltered that I feel myself floating slightly above my own body, just to keep from getting swept into it.
I keep filming. I get the hug pile. I get Noah picking up Maisie and spinning her, both of them laughing.
I get Liv and Luca making bunny ears behind Elsie’s head, both faces stuck in that delighted, dumb way only best friends have.
Even Clara, who is not a hugger, gets drawn into a group shot, her expression soft and embarrassed at the same time.
At some point, Elsie glances across the room and her eyes meet mine. It’s nothing dramatic but I feel it in the pit of my stomach. She lifts her glass, small and private, and toasts me. Just me. Then she smiles, all the way up into her eyes.
I smile back. I keep the phone up, frame steady, not blinking.
But Elsie’s gaze doesn’t move on immediately, the way it usually does.
It lingers. There’s something in it, not an accusation, but a knowing.
The kind of look you can only give if you’ve already lived through your own disaster and come out the other side, proof that survival isn’t always about sheer determination, sometimes it’s just about knowing which parts of the past to let go of.
The silence in the look is enormous.
I hold the smile, don’t let it falter. After another second, I look away again, drop my attention to the phone screen, let myself get lost in the shallow depth of a digital frame.
I focus on the chaos I can control: Maisie eating an entire frosting rose in one bite, Milo methodically unwrapping every cupcake liner, Luca crying and laughing in the same breath as he wipes the counter with a napkin.
The question from Elsie, whatever it was, remains unanswered. I’m not ready to answer it, not now, maybe not ever.
I stay until the bubbles are gone, and the twins are sticky with sugar, and Liv has gone back to her tablet and is quietly drawing hearts and exclamation points in the margins of her digital planner.
I help clear tables. I hug Elsie, both arms this time, and hold on for a second longer than I need to.
When she says, “Thank you for coming,” I say, “Of course. Always.”
Leo, full of cupcake and kid confidence, runs circles around me all the way to the car.
Outside, the sunlight is too bright and the air smells like yeast and spent flowers. I buckle Leo into his seat, hand him a juice box, and get in the driver’s side. My phone sits face-down on the passenger seat, silent and blank. There are no new messages from Ethan. I haven’t checked, but I know.
I don’t turn on the car right away. Instead, I let my head fall back against the seat and close my eyes.
I listen to Leo tell me, in exquisite detail, how he could easily eat four more cupcakes if I let him.
I listen to the cars on the main road, the distant whine of the espresso machine inside, and the laughter that floats out every time the café door swings open.
Somewhere inside, the unasked question from Elsie sits like a stone, unmoving, a placeholder for every feeling I’m still not willing to name.
That’s the thing about survival. Sometimes it’s just smiling and playing along and pretending you’re not the one unravelling. Sometimes it’s keeping the camera running, keeping the story going, until you’re ready to be in the frame yourself.
I open my eyes, start the engine, and pull away from the curb.
Everything ahead of me is wide open and unfiltered.
In the rearview, Leo is already digging into the cupcake box that Luca insisted we take home, his face a mess, his smile so big it doesn’t look like it could possibly belong to the same species as mine.
I drive us home, the windows down, the silence full but not empty.
Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll answer the question. Or maybe not. Maybe for now, just getting through the day is enough.