Chapter 8 #2
From the other side of the room, Billie turns to Melissa. I am near enough to hear it. She keeps her voice low, but not so low that it doesn’t carry a little, and she says, with a flat, honest delivery: “Just how rich are you guys?”
Melissa looks at her. “We’re treading into ‘it’s starting to get embarrassing’ territory,” she says, narrowing her eyes.
“You got an electric scooter at your baby shower,” Billie says.
“Wait until you see the one Steven is building for the baby,” Melissa answers.
Something about this— the precise, baffled economy of that exchange between them— makes me laugh. Billie isn’t just beautiful: she’s funny. I press my palm against the kitchen counter, reminding myself my goal is to make sure this woman stays away from me.
The party begins to wind down in the comfortable, slow way of parties that were good.
People retrieve coats, trade numbers, give their departing comments: this was so fun, you’re going to be such a wonderful mother, call me if you need anything.
The room gives up its warmth gradually, guest by guest, until there are only a few of us left standing in the yellow light.
Alana finds Billie.
I watch her do it from across the room, and I want you to understand: watching Alana befriend someone is one of the more alarming things I have ever witnessed.
It looks so effortless. It looks so genuine.
And I know what Billie’s thinking, because Alana did this to me once.
Billie doesn’t know she is a target in the crosshairs. And neither did I.
Alana crosses to Billie and descends on her with both arms open, and Billie— Billie goes right into it, because of course she does, because who could help it— and they are hugging for a long moment while Alana says something low and warm into her ear that I cannot hear from here.
Then she steps back, holding Billie at arm’s length, beaming.
“Yoga,” she says. “Tomorrow morning. West Loop, right? What time works for you?”
“Eight o’clock?” Billie asks.
My heart sinks. I have failed. They’re becoming friends.
“Perfect. I’ll meet you there.” Alana squeezes her hands.
“I’m so glad Melissa has you,” she says, and she means it, I think, which is the most complicated part of all of this.
Alana means everything she says in the moment she says it.
That’s what makes her so dangerous. “I feel like I’ve been waiting to meet you. ”
Billie’s face does something I am not equipped to look at directly. It softens— fully, without defense. There is something in her expression that says she is not used to being told she was waited for.
I look away.
Near the door, Melissa is watching all of this.
She has one hand resting on her belly, and she is smiling, but it is a slightly smaller smile than the one she’s had all evening.
It’s the smile of someone who has just watched their best friend be recruited by someone new, and who is choosing, because she loves her best friend, to be glad about it instead of whatever the other thing would be.
I wonder if Melissa knew this would happen.
Maybe she hoped for it, in a way— that these two would hit it off.
She’s eight months pregnant. Her life is changing.
Her best friend is making plans with someone else for tomorrow morning, and nobody invited her.
I understand this, I think. More than I’d like to. Alana made me feel this feeling often when we first started dating: that I am only lucky to be in her orbit.
When Alana comes back to collect me, she takes my arm and steers me toward the door, pausing to say goodbye to Melissa with another enormous hug, and I shake Steve’s hand, and then we are at Billie, and I nod. That's it. Just a nod— the most minimal possible gesture of leave-taking.
Billie looks at me. There’s that question again, the one she keeps deciding not to ask. It sits in her eyes for exactly a second, then she looks away and says something warm to Alana, and that’s the last I see of her face as we step out the front door.
She is beautiful, I think as I turn away from Billie, resisting the urge to look over at my shoulder at her one more time.
The cold hits me like a hand. Alana is already talking.
We make our way to my car— wheeling Alana’s new scooter behind us— and I’m so lost in thought that I’m only catching every other word.
By the time I’ve adjusted the mirrors and fastened my seatbelt, Alana is already deep into what I can only describe as a keynote address.
She has not, as far as I can tell, taken a breath since we left Melissa’s porch.
The electric scooter is in the back of the car, partly disassembled, wearing its pink bow at a defeated angle. I ease us out onto the street.
“—and Billie just has this quality, you know?” Alana is saying. She’s got her legs folded under her in the passenger seat. “Like she’s so warm. She’s just such a nice person. But not in a boring way. In a way where you actually feel something when she’s nice to you.”
“Mm,” I say, which is my contribution.