Chapter 16
Alex came downstairs the next morning expecting the usual sight, Dani facing the windows, mid-pose, the low sun catching gold in her hair.
Instead she found her sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the empty fireplace, a large leather photo album open across her lap, so absorbed she didn’t look up right away.
“Morning,” Alex said carefully, unsure yet what kind of morning this was going to be.
Dani glanced up, and there was something soft and slightly startled in her expression, like she’d been caught somewhere private. “Hope this is okay. Found it on the bottom shelf where I usually set up my mat. Couldn’t help myself.”
Alex crossed the room and looked down at the open page, and her chest did something complicated and immediate at the sight of it.
Cass in a cream-colored dress, laughing so hard her eyes had squeezed shut, Marisol beside her in a sharp ivory suit, hand resting flat over her heart like she couldn’t quite believe her own luck.
Behind them, a crowd of familiar faces under strings of the exact same warm white fairy lights that had, until yesterday, been strung across a blanket fort in this very room.
“That’s their wedding,” Alex said, lowering herself down onto the floor beside Dani, unable to resist looking closer. “Four years ago. I was there.”
Dani’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you’re in this?”
“Should be a few pages in. I was a groomswoman, if that’s a thing.
Cass insisted.” Alex reached over, turning a few pages back until she found it, herself at maybe thirty-six, hair longer than she wore it now, standing beside Cass in a matching suit with an expression of such open, unguarded joy that she barely recognized her own face.
“Look at you.” Dani’s voice had gone quiet, something tender creeping into it as she studied the photo. “You look so happy.”
“I was.” Alex traced a finger along the edge of the page, not quite touching it.
“I remember standing up there thinking I’d never seen two more different people work so well together.
Cass needs six backup plans for every plan.
Marisol’s never met a spontaneous decision she didn’t love.
Cass color codes her calendar. Marisol still doesn’t own a functioning one.
I used to tease Cass mercilessly about it, actually, told her she was basically marrying chaos in a very charming package. ”
“What did she say to that?”
“She said something I’ve never forgotten, actually.
” Alex smiled, the memory surfacing whole and clear.
“She said the point was never finding someone exactly like her. The point was finding someone worth building a shared language with, even when none of it comes naturally. That the mismatch was the whole reason it worked. Two people who actually had to choose each other on purpose, every day, instead of just coasting on similarity.”
Dani was quiet for a long moment, staring down at the photo, at Cass’s unguarded laughter, at Marisol’s hand pressed flat over her own heart like she was holding something in.
“They still fight, by the way,” Alex added, gentler now.
“The whole folder situation, remember? Neither one trusted the other one to handle something, so they both quietly handled it themselves and made this whole mess. That’s not a couple who found some perfect, effortless answer.
That’s two people who are still figuring it out four years in, and choosing to keep figuring it out anyway. ”
“That’s terrifying, actually.” Dani let out a small, unsteady laugh, not quite meeting Alex’s eyes. “The figuring-it-out-forever part. I always assumed people who made it work had, I don’t know, cracked some code the rest of us missed.”
“I don’t think there’s a code. I think there’s just people who decide the person is worth the ongoing effort, even without a guarantee it’ll work out.
” Alex chose her next words carefully, not wanting to push, just wanting to leave the door open.
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything this morning.
I just wanted you to know, in case it helps, that even the couple who seems to have it all figured out is really just two people choosing each other on purpose, over and over, without any certainty at all. ”
Dani didn’t answer right away. She turned another page instead, more photos, Cass and Marisol at some later anniversary, still laughing, still clearly delighted with each other despite whatever ordinary chaos had no doubt happened in between.
“Thank you,” she said finally, quiet, eyes still on the album. “For not pushing. And for telling me anyway.”
“That’s the deal, isn’t it.” Alex bumped her shoulder gently against Dani’s, careful, not quite closing the distance the night before had opened between them, but not letting it sit unaddressed either. “Honesty, even when it’s inconvenient.”
Dani almost smiled at that, something in her posture easing just slightly, though the careful distance from the night before hadn’t fully closed yet either.
Outside, sunlight glinted hard and bright off snow that had finally, entirely stopped falling, the mountain road beyond the windows visibly clear enough, for the first time in five days, for someone to actually drive it.