26. Salem
SALEM
Alba showed up at four o’clock with a garment bag over one arm and a rolling case in the other hand.
“Don’t ask questions.” She brushed into the apartment before I’d fully opened the door. “Just trust the process.”
“I haven’t asked a single question.”
“You were about to. I could see it forming.” She set the rolling case down in the middle of my living room like she was staking a claim and turned to take in the space—the couch, the half-dead pothos by the window, the muffin tin still sitting on the counter from breakfast. “This is very you.”
“Is that an insult?”
“It’s an observation.” She unzipped the garment bag with the reverence of someone unveiling a relic. “Sit. We have three hours, and I refuse to rush.”
A makeup artist and a hairstylist arrived twenty minutes later, both brisk, kind, and entirely unbothered by my living room. The apartment turned into something between a salon and a small, efficient invasion. Brushes lined up on my coffee table. A curling iron warming on a heat-safe mat.
Alba paced through all of it, narrating the evening’s logistics—who’d be where, which donors mattered most, what time the car was coming—like saying it aloud was the only way she fully believed it herself.
The dress came out of the bag while the makeup artist worked.
Black. Strappy. More glitter caught in the weave than I had ever voluntarily worn. Alba held it up against the window light, turning it slightly so it caught the light.
“Okay,” I said, eyeing it. “That’s a lot of dress and also not a lot of dress.”
“It’s exactly the right amount of dress,” Alba said. “Trust me.”
“I trusted you with the PR relationship, and look how that turned out.”
“That turned out incredible, and you know it.” She draped it carefully over the back of the couch. “Also, low back. Wear the strapless bra I left in the bag and remember the plan.”
“There’s a plan?”
“There’s always a plan.”
By the time the makeup artist finished, the hairstylist had moved on to pinning something soft and deliberate at the back of my head, and I’d stopped recognizing the version of myself reflected in the little hand mirror Alba kept passing back and forth.
Eventually, the stylists packed up, citing another appointment, leaving instructions about touch-ups and a small bag of pins I had no intention of using correctly. The apartment went quiet in the way it does after a lot of people have just left it.
Alba stayed.
She sat on the arm of the couch finishing her own makeup, while I got into the dress in the bathroom, and when I came out, she looked at me for a long moment without saying anything.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Okay. Good. We’re good.”
“That’s it? No commentary?”
“I’m saving it. If I start now, we’ll be here another hour, and the car’s coming in forty minutes.” She patted the couch cushion beside her. “Let me fix your earring. It’s crooked, and also, I want five minutes before you have to go be charming at strangers.”
I sat. She reached over and adjusted the earring with careful fingers, close enough that I could see the exact shade she’d chosen for her nails: a deep plum that suited her.
“You nervous?” she asked, not looking up from the earring.
“A little.”
“Good. Means you care.” She finished and sat back, studying me again. “You know, the gala used to terrify me, too. First few years. All those people in their nice clothes asking very polite questions that were actually about money.”
“How’d you get used to it?”
She was quiet for longer than the question seemed to need.
“I didn’t, really,” she said. “I just started thinking about it differently. You know the story—Liam, why we started all this. You’ve heard the short version.”
“The short version.”
"He's Miles's little brother. Twelve years younger. Used to follow us around everywhere, which used to drive Miles insane. Now Liam's off at college pretending he doesn't need anyone, and Miles misses him, though he'd only admit that if you got him drunk enough."
She turned the ring on her finger. I wondered if it was an old habit.
"He got sick when he was nine. Leukemia.
In and out of that hospital for what felt like a lifetime.
Miles and I were newly married, so it put a strain on every part of our lives, but we got through it.
It was hard. We were one of the lucky ones—good insurance, great care.
We met a lot of families who weren't so lucky. "
She started to tear up.
“Alba—”
“It’s fine,” she said, waving me off. “He’s fine, he’s been fine for years.
That’s not even the part that stays with you, weirdly.
It’s everything before. I’m not telling you this to make tonight heavier.
I’m telling you because of what he was like in there.
Nine years old, hooked up to more machines than I could count, and he still wanted his hair gelled a certain way every single day.
Still asked the nurses if his shirt looked stupid.
Still cared, completely, about things that had absolutely nothing to do with being sick. ”
She looked at me, something steady and clear in her face.
“That’s the reason we do all of this. Not the donor numbers, not the press.
Because somewhere in that hospital right now, there’s a kid who needs his family, and his family needs to advocate for his care.
And it turns out that costs money. An obscene, infuriating amount of money. ”
I didn’t say anything for a second. There wasn’t really a right thing to say.
“He’d have had opinions about tonight, for the record. Would’ve told you that dress was good, but the shoes were a mistake.”
I looked down at the shoes. “They’re fine shoes.”
“They’re tragic, and you know it. He’d have been right, and he’d never once let either of us forget it.”
My laughter cracked something loose in my chest, something that had been sitting there all afternoon without my noticing. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Don’t get used to it.” Alba stood and smoothed her dress, like the moment was officially over. “I don’t do this for everyone.”
“I feel honored.”
“You should.” She glanced at her phone, and her face shifted back into the brisk, bright version of herself I was used to. “Okay. Car’s almost here. Stand up, let me see the whole thing one more time before you go.”
I stood.
She circled me once, slow, critical, but satisfied. “Perfect. Go get them. I will be right behind you”
With that, I was off.