Pointe of Pride

Chapter 19

A week later, Carly’s wedding prep list was down to almost nothing. After their unexpected overnight stay in the mountains, she and Nick had helped Marcus place the bulk liquor order, and over the next few days, they’d picked up tablecloths and napkins, driven to an event-rental warehouse to pick out folding chairs for the ceremony, and gone to a massive hardware store called Bunnings to buy several hundred feet of twinkling lights that the guys had strung all over Heather and Marcus’s backyard.

Last night, they’d recreated the Deep South Manhattan and the Freshwater 75 for Heather and Marcus’s final approval, and today Nick and Marcus were going to the discount liquor store to pick up all the supplies they’d need on the day.

“It’s basically a French 75,” Carly admitted to Heather as they drove over the Harbour Bridge, “but a little pink, like ballet. Trust me, people will love it.” She yawned widely. She’d enjoyed a few too many Freshwater 75s last night and was regretting it this morning. It was Company Day at ANB, meaning that morning class would be taught by a member of the company instead of by a ballet mistress or the artistic director. It was Alice’s turn to teach, and from what Heather had told her, Alice’s classes were no joke. Assuming she was still alive at the end of it, she and Heather had the best wedding errand of all still to run: Heather’s final dress fitting.

Carly had never been the kind of kid who dreamed about their wedding day. She’d never pictured herself in a big white gown or imagined a faceless but presumably handsome man lifting her veil to reveal her shining face. Even now, as her friends coupled up and married off, she didn’t exactly want that for herself. Heather, though, was different. Practical and even keeled as she was, Heather wanted to be married, and she wanted a wedding—one of the reasons, Carly thought, that she’d stayed with Jack for so long. And if Heather wanted a long white gown and a veil and something borrowed and something blue, well, Carly wanted her to have it.

But first, she wanted to survive this ballet class.

For the last week, ANB had agreed to let her join company class every day, so every morning she’d woken up early, sometimes leaving Nick in bed asleep and sometimes finding that he’d already left to go surfing with Marcus. The classes Carly had taken with ANB’s ballet masters and mistresses had been staid and predictable, in a comforting and familiar kind of way, confirming her belief that ballet class was basically the same in every country and in every language.

“All right, get your calf raises in, and let’s party!” Alice called, rubbing her hands together with evil glee. Heather caught Carly’s eye from across the barre and raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she muttered, with a wry smile.

Ninety minutes later, Carly’s scalp was drenched with sweat, and her heart was pounding from the speed and difficulty of the petit allegro combinations Alice had set for them. Petit allegro was usually her favorite part of class, because even if you made a mistake, you moved on so quickly to the next jump, the next direction change, that no one would notice, and you could almost forget that the screw up ever happened. Until, of course, you had to do the entire thing on the left side, with all the directions flipped. Most people hated that part, but Carly had always loved the puzzle of it, the way her brain had to communicate with her body, and vice versa. Today she was struggling.

The final group of dancers sautéd in zigzags across the studio, and when they were finished, Alice called out for the pianist to stop. All around Carly, dancers were panting, hunched over with their hands on their knees or leaning on the barre trying to catch their breath.

“Pretty good, guys!” Alice said enthusiastically from the front of the room. “Should we pick the tempo up a bit?”

No one bothered to suppress their groans, but Carly looked around and saw several dancers giving Alice what looked like fond smiles. Apparently this was just the Alice Ho way, and her colleagues had learned to love it. When she retired and was asked to run some company somewhere, she’d have the fittest dancers in the world.

Was that something Carly could do, after she couldn’t dance anymore? Run a company? She tried to picture it: teaching company class every day, picking who got promoted and who got let go, meeting with a board stocked with rich donors like her parents, figuring out how to give audiences what they liked without putting the same old shit on stage year after year. It seemed like something she’d be good at. But the question was moot, because only former principals got asked to run companies. No one was handing an artistic director job to Peasant Maiden #4.

“Oi, you’re up,” someone muttered in her ear, and she started and turned to see a tall blond man looking at her expectantly. Heather had introduced Justin, one of the company’s other principals, the first time Carly had taken class here, and she’d noticed his unbelievably good feet immediately. They looked like they’d been photoshopped into the kind of cashew curve that dancers obsessed over. One girl Carly used to dance with had spent hours with her feet under the couch trying to bend them into that shape, but the toe point Justin had been blessed with could only be achieved by some combination of winning the genetic lottery and starting dance training as soon as you exited the womb. Once she was done ogling his feet, she also noticed that Justin was also very cute, with wide green eyes and dimples that flashed whenever he was smiling, which was pretty often.

Right now, though, his dimples were invisible, and his eyebrows were raised in confusion.

“Right, shit, sorry,” she muttered back, and stepped forward just in time to start the combination with him and two other dancers. And just in time to immediately bump into Justin.

“Other left, Carly!” Alice called from the front of the room, and Carly swore under her breath again as Justin and the other two dancers carried on without her, bouncing and pivoting across the studio, the women’s pointe shoes clacking on the floor in perfect unison each time they landed a jump. She scrambled to catch up, but she could barely remember the combination, let alone flip it and translate everything to the left-hand side. If this ever happened in an NYB class—and she couldn’t remember the last time it had—she’d grit her teeth and keep going, unwilling to let the director see her giving up halfway through an exercise. But Alice wasn’t a director, and Carly didn’t work here.

“Sorry,” she waved at Alice, stepping to the side of the room and shaking her head. “Total brain fart. I’ll go with the next group.” She’d been so distracted by trying, and failing, to envision her hypothetical future that she’d totally spaced out.

“No worries,” Alice shrugged, “you killed it on the right. So just … kill it backwards and in reverse this time.”

Carly gave her a half-hearted smile, then trudged to the back of the room where a handful of dancers were still waiting their turn. Heather, who had already had her turn, caught her eye, looking concerned.

“Are you okay?” she mouthed.

Carly gave her a shrug that she hoped said I’m fine and not I have no idea what I’m doing, with this combination or with the restof my life. Heather didn’t look convinced. She waved Carly over, and when Carly arrived at her side, Heather gave her a grin.

“Come on, let’s do it together. First one to fall on their ass or pass out wins.”

Carly laughed despite herself. “You’ve never once fallen on your ass.”

“If anyone can make me do it, it’s Alice,” Heather shrugged, then reached out and tapped on the shoulder of the tall, reedy dancer in a red Sydney Swans singlet in front of her. “Hey, Matty, do you mind if we join your group?”

In the end, neither of them fell on their ass or passed out. With Heather dancing a foot in front of her, and apparently a little more accustomed to Alice’s high-speed, intricate combinations, Carly got through the exercise without messing up again. By the time they were near the front of the studio, Carly caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror and saw that she was smiling, unable to resist the pleasure of petit allegro, the combination of explosive power and control that had made it her favorite part of class since she and Heather were gangly eleven-year-olds. It felt like magic. Like freedom. Even on the left-hand side.

“Yes, Carly, yes, Carly, yeeeessss!” Alice chanted from the front of the room, clapping her hands with the kind of exuberant delight Carly had never witnessed in a ballet teacher in her entire life. She tried to imagine Mr. K or Catherine behaving like that in a company class and couldn’t even conjure it. She liked it, though.

“All right, all right, I’m taking mercy on you all,” Alice called, gesturing to the accompanist to stop playing. “You all look great. Don’t forget to stretch or you won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”

“I can barely walk now,” Matty grumbled from behind Carly.

“Seriously,” she muttered back, but she joined Heather on the floor by their bags, and they took off their pointe shoes to stretch for a few minutes, letting beads of sweat slide into their already-damp leotards and onto the already-slick floor.

“You okay?” Heather asked, before pushing herself up into a downward dog.

Carly hugged one knee to her chest and let out a heavy sigh. How much longer could she keep doing this? Killing herself in class, performing five or six nights a week, waking up stiff and sore and finishing class exhausted? And for what? So she could snatch a few moments of petit allegro joy? So she could wear a giant rat costume in The Nutcracker or be one of thirty-two identical wilis in Giselle?

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, needing it to be true. “Just tired. Tired and old.”

“Alice makes everyone feel that way, don’t worry about it,” Heather replied. She pedaled her feet out and groaned. “It’s a good thing she’s so nice or I’d have to hate her.”

“You could never hate me,” Alice said, walking over to join them. She was the only person in the room who wasn’t panting, sweating, and drooping from exhaustion.

“No, I definitely hated you during that last combination,” Carly agreed with Heather. “But it passed.”

“Glad to hear it. You look really good!”

“Thanks,” Carly sighed, not really believing her. “You’re a good teacher. Demonic, but good.”

“Ooh, I want that on a business card,” Alice grinned. “Okay, I gotta go, but good luck with the big fitting today!”

“They’re going to have to pour me into the dress, but thanks,” Heather replied. “We’ll send pictures.”

When Alice was gone, Carly rolled over and reached into her bag for her water bottle, which was almost empty. She drained it, then felt around in her bag and found her phone. Maybe tomorrow would be better, she thought. Maybe tomorrow she’d feel less adrift, and even if she didn’t, maybe she’d have the discipline not to get distracted halfway through and—

“Oh, shit,” she said, staring at her phone.

“What’s wrong?” Heather said instantly.

“Um,” Carly scrolled, still staring. “Wow. I … we … it’s very viral.”

“What is?” Heather sat up and scooted to her side.

“One of Nick’s photos. Holy shit, it’s everywhere.” It was one of the photos he’d taken in Leura, and she knew he’d been particularly pleased with it—something about the composition that she didn’t really understand and couldn’t really appreciate. He hadn’t let her jump, but he hadn’t objected when she’d put both hands on the railing, thrown her head back, and kicked her legs up, the bottom one tucked close to her body and the other arched behind her until her foot almost disappeared into her hair. Her legs looked long and strong, and because it had been toward the end of the session, the sun had dropped a little and the afternoon light had turned warm and golden, and the soles of her feet were dirty, a detail Nick had offered to edit out, but she’d refused to let him. With the falls and the valley behind her and the bright blue sky above her, she looked like she was floating, suspended by her own strength above the iconic Australian landscape.

She pulled up Instagram and her eyes bulged at the reshare number. It was everywhere. The official Australia tourism account had shared it, and so had some big-name dancers from the US and the UK she knew by reputation but had never met in real life. One of the recent winners of So You Think You Can Dance had shared it, and so had Hugh Jackman. She kept scrolling. She’d been tagged in a dozen or more photos of young dancers recreating the pose on balconies, and in city parks, on bridges, and even one at what looked like an abandoned construction site. There was also at least one parody post, one made by a man who definitely wasn’t a dancer but who had tried to mimic the pose and had made it look endearingly awkward and uncomfortable.

Heather grabbed her own bag and seized her phone. “Oh my God, you look so good in this one,” she gasped. “And look at all those new followers!”

Carly swiped back to her profile. Her follower count had skyrocketed in the two hours since class began and was now at almost eleven thousand. Her phone buzzed in her hand, and the email icon appeared.

From: Ivy Page, The Sydney Morning Sun

To: Carly Montgomery

Hello, Carly—

I’m a senior reporter on the Morning Sun’s art desk and cover Sydney’s dance scene, and I was wondering if I could interview you and Nick Jacobs about the photos you’ve been posting from around the city. They’re clearly resonating with people, and I’d love to hear more about them so I can write up a short story. Do you and Nick have any time to meet this week?

Thanks,

Ivy Page

Carly let out a shaky breath and held up her phone so Heather could read the email.

“You should do it,” Heather said when she’d scanned the message. “Ivy’s legit. And once she covers it, other outlets might want to, as well.”

“Legit like, she’ll help you pull off a grand public gesture so you can get your man back?” Carly said, slyly. Two years ago, when ANB had fired Marcus for breaking the company’s no-fraternization policy, Heather had given an interview to the Morning Sun in which she criticized the rule—and more or less declared her love for Marcus. And it had worked: the company had revoked the policy and offered Marcus his job back, and Heather and Marcus got their happily ever after.

“Legit like she’s a good journalist who was a pretty serious ballet student, so she knows her stuff,” Heather shrugged. A smile crept over her face. “But, given the errand we’re about to run, you can’t argue with her results.”

“Okay,” Carly nodded. It was working. Their plan was working. She forwarded the email to Nick, then tapped out a quick response to Ivy, saying she’d be happy to speak with her and would get back to her as soon as she knew Nick’s availability. She smiled to herself as she hit send. Maybe Ivy could help Carly get her own HEA: a Happily Employed After.

The bridal shop was a twenty-minute drive from ANB’s studios, an upscale boutique in an even more upscale neighborhood called Double Bay. After Heather pressed a discreet little pearl-white doorbell on the corner of a busy four-lane road, they climbed a set of glossy dark wood steps up to the second floor and stepped onto the plush white carpet of a small, hushed showroom. A chandelier sparkled in the middle of the ceiling, and floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall flooded the place with sunlight while blocking out every trace of the traffic rushing by on the street below. Leanne, Alice, and Izzy had apparently told Heather that the one wedding item she shouldn’t skimp on was the dress, and Heather had taken that advice to heart.

A statuesque blonde woman met them as they entered the room, her long hair in perfect soft waves over a sleek and sleeveless pale pink dress.

“Welcome, welcome,” she smiled. “So good to see you again, Heather.”

“You too,” Heather said. “This is my maid of honor, Carly, who’s in from New York. Carly, this is Jillian.”

Carly shook Jillian’s immaculately manicured hand and looked around. There were a dozen or so mannequins set around the room, all dressed in long white gowns. Beads, lace, and white mesh abounded.

“Can I get you ladies a beverage before we start?” Jillian asked. “Sparkling water? Champagne?”

“Champagne for both of us, please,” Carly said, before Heather could say anything. “We can recreate the moment Heather said yes to this dress, since I wasn’t here to see it.”

“Oh, it was love at first sight for this one, wasn’t it?” Jillian said to Heather. “I’ve never seen anyone decide so quickly.”

“When you know, you know,” Heather shrugged.

“Sure, but I wanted to sit through a whole goofy montage of you trying on dresses, each one bigger and fluffier than the last,” Carly said, as Jillian disappeared into a back room to get their drinks.

“Jillian doesn’t do big and fluffy,” Heather murmured, gesturing around the room. “She’s known for sleek and simple. And I don’t think she approves of goofy montages. This is a very serious business.”

“Well, let’s get down to business, then,” Carly replied, lifting Heather’s dance bag off her shoulder and nodding toward a long silver-grey curtain that had been pinned back to reveal a spacious fitting room with mirrors on all three walls. She sat down on one of several plump velvet love seats in the middle of the room as Heather disappeared behind the curtain. “I’ll be right here with my champagne.”

Jillian floated over and set two slender flutes down on the glass coffee table next to Carly’s couch, then stood outside the fitting room with a leather sewing kit in one hand.

“Ready?” Heather called through the curtain a few moments later, and Carly sat up a little straighter.

“Only since the day you called to say Marcus proposed,” Carly responded, and she heard Heather’s chuckle from behind the curtain. Then Jillian pulled the curtain aside and revealed Heather in a low-cut ivory gown with thin straps and a delicate gathering at the side that accentuated her waist. Beneath the ruching, a narrow slit was lined with lace that brushed against her knee and lower thigh as she stepped out into the showroom.

“You have to imagine it with my hair half up and wavy, and not in a damp, post-class ponytail, okay?” Heather said.

Carly didn’t say anything. Her throat was suddenly thick and clogged, and her nose was stinging as she watched her friend turn and examine her reflection in all those mirrors. The straps crossed over her shoulder blades, and Carly could just see Heather’s heels, still a little pink and inflamed from her pointe shoes, under the fabric. Jillian had clearly hemmed the dress so that Heather could be barefoot on the beach.

“Heather, you look …” Carly started, but she stopped to take a deep sniffle. Heather looked perfect. Perfect, happy, ready for this huge step. Carly sniffed again and took a deep breath before she spoke again, feeling pride and love mingle with anxiety and fear. Heather was moving on, moving forward, again. And here Carly was, standing still, unless she could make something magic happen with that interview. She pushed the thought away and focused on what was in front of her: her best friend glowing with anticipation and pleasure and love, beautiful even with her hair in a damp, post-class ponytail.

“You look so happy,” she said at last. “You look perfect. This dress is divine. And I hope Jillian won’t mind me saying that it makes your ass look spectacular.”

Jillian pursed her lips primly and gestured at the slight gathering of fabric at Heather’s lower back. “The ruching is subtle but effective,” she said.

“Effective at making my ass look spectacular,” Heather said, shooting Carly a conspiratorial smile in the mirror. Jillian said nothing and reached out to smooth out one of the straps, no doubt grateful that Carly hadn’t been present for Heather’s previous appointments.

“I don’t think we need to make any more alterations, but take a lap around the room, please, and tell me how it feels,” she instructed Heather, who obeyed, walking a careful circle around the circle of couches, looking like one of the leggy mannequins brought to life. The dress swirled gently around her knees and ankles, and Carly was reminded of the way the water at Freshwater frothed and spread in lacy white shallows after the waves broke and slid toward the sand. She pictured Heather walking down the beach, hair caught in the breeze, every step taking her closer to the love of her life. Her heart squeezed at the thought of her best friend finally getting the love she wanted and deserved, after everything she’d been through. What, Carly wondered, would that feel like?

After another few laps around the room, Heather and Jillian agreed that the dress needed no further alterations. Jillian laid it gently into a white dress bag and zipped it up, before carefully lifting the bag and holding it out to Heather.

“I’ll take it,” Carly said hastily. “Pretty sure that’s an official maid of honor job.” Jillian looked as if she’d rather not entrust Carly with one of her perfect creations, but Carly reached out and took the dress bag.

Out on the busy, baking street, Heather opened the car, and Carly laid the dress along the back seat with painstaking care.

“Let’s get some lunch,” Heather suggested, and Carly’s stomach rumbled in agreement. A two-hour class followed by champagne on an empty stomach was a recipe for disaster.

They strolled down the bustling commercial street lined with luxury boutiques and chic cafés. Heather led her to an Italian eatery that was serving overstuffed sandwiches and gelato, and they ordered two sandwiches to go.

“There’s a park over there, and a nice little beach,” Heather said, shading her eyes with one hand and gesturing across the road with the other.

“How long would I have to stay to see every beach in this city?” Carly asked.

“I’ve been here two years, and I’m nowhere near done. Come on, I’m ravenous.”

They ate their sandwiches in silence, seated in the shade at a picnic table that overlooked a long, placid beach. As she chewed, Carly watched a silver-haired man wrestle what looked like his grandchild into a pair of floaties before the small child sprinted down the sand and into the shallow water. A few feet down the beach, two small dogs were chasing each other, throwing plumes of sand into the air as they scrambled in circles. There was a row of colorful kayaks lined up near the shore, and Carly watched a pair of kayakers slide over the calm water and out toward the harbor, where ferries and sailboats were crisscrossing on their way to and from the city. Far on the other side of the harbor, she saw the steep, forbidding face of North Head rising from the water.

Carly swallowed a large mouthful of focaccia. Maybe it was the champagne, or maybe the sight of Heather in her wedding gown, finally, but something made her blurt it out.

“I’m sleeping with Nick.”

Heather coughed and spluttered. Maybe Carly should have waited until Heather didn’t have a mouthful of sparkling water.

“Sorry, bad timing,” she winced, and Heather wiped her mouth, and then her watering eyes. “Swallow your water, then I’ll try again.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” Heather laughed. “You just told me you’re sleeping with Marcus’s best man, and I’ve already got Pellegrino coming out of my nose.”

Carly flushed. “Sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t apologize, I think it’s great,” Heather shrugged. “And actually, it’s really very late, since you’ve been doing it for at least a week.”

Carly stared across the picnic table. “You knew?”

“Yeah, Carly, I knew.”

“How?” Carly frowned.

“You stopped fake smiling at him and started real smiling,” Heather shrugged. “You know, that grimace you used to give Mr. K when he’d compliment someone on losing weight? I saw you give Nick that face. But then you stopped. You’re a lot of things, honey, but subtle isn’t one of them. And then Nick told Marcus he and his girlfriend actually broke up months ago. Between that and how much time you’re voluntarily spending with him now, it didn’t take Olivia Benson to solve this one.”

“Right. Of course,” Carly mumbled. So much for her big revelation.

“I kind of wish you’d told me yourself, but I figured it was just another Carly fling, and you didn’t need me to know,” Heather said, screwing the cap onto her water.

Irritation prodded Carly in the ribs. Just another Carly fling. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that Heather hadn’t meant to hurt her. Then another deep breath, because the first one didn’t work. Neither did the second one.

“Another Carly fling?” she repeated.

“It’s not a criticism, I think this is perfect for you,” Heather said emphatically. “A short-term thing, which is what you like anyway.”

Carly raised her eyebrows, exercising all her self-control to stay silent as Heather kept talking.

“It’s just that, you know, you don’t keep guys around very long. I figured that even if you weren’t leaving next week, this would be what you wanted. Short and sweet, fun and then done.”

The prod had become a full-on shove, and Carly could feel her face flushing again, this time with anger. Heather had no idea what she was talking about. Heather thought she chose to live this way? Dating a man for a few weeks or months and then calling it quits when she realized that he was just like the one before, and the one before that? Or did Heather just think that she couldn’t hold on to a man? Who the hell was Heather, with her perfect beach home and perfect principal dancer job and perfect fucking life, to judge her?

She opened her mouth to say all this, rage rising in her chest like a hot wave, but then she stopped. Heather wasn’t judging her—Heather wouldn’t judge her. She just really didn’t know what she was talking about. She really believed all Carly’s relationships were short because Carly had let her think that was what she wanted. Heather didn’t know the truth. And she didn’t know the truth because Carly had kept it from her. Nick had had the courage to come clean to his best friend, and it was about damn time Carly did the same.

Carly took one more deep breath through her nose, and let it out slowly. Then she told her best friend the truth.

“There’s a reason I don’t keep guys around very long. I have something wrong with my pelvic floor. I’ve had it since I was a teenager. It makes intercourse really, really painful. I’m seeing a PT about it and that seems to be helping. But it’s made dating challenging for a while. Forever, actually.”

Heather reached across the table and squeezed her forearm. “Carly, I … I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t know. I’ve never told anyone. Well, that’s not true. I told the last guy I was dating, Carter? I told him I couldn’t do it for a while, because the PT said so, and he just stopped calling.”

“What an asshole,” Heather muttered.

Carly shrugged. “He’s not the only one. The rest of them never even noticed I was in pain. They just kept plowing away, like they didn’t give a shit if I was miserable. Once you realize a man can happily come inside you even if you’re about to cry from pain, it’s hard to keep him around.”

Her eyes burned, and she swallowed hard and blinked away tears.

Heather shook her head, her face crumpled with sympathy. “I’m so sorry, hon. And you never told them?”

“No,” Carly said bitterly. “Look what happened the one time I told someone. Ghosted. I wasn’t ever going to be enough for him, not unless he could fuck me the way he wanted.”

“Did you tell Nick?”

Carly laughed despite herself, and it came out as a gurgle. “Not on purpose, but yeah, Nick knows.”

“Not on purpose? What does that mean?”

Carly sighed. “I kind of … yelled it at him. In public.”

Heather pressed her lips together, as if she was trying not to laugh. “You didn’t.”

“Oh, I did. I yelled at him. About my vagina. In a hotel lobby.”

Heather giggled. “Oh, you didn’t.”

“Of course I did, have you met me? It was classic Carly. But yeah, Nick knows.” She thought about that early morning in her apartment, when he’d come over with coffee and questions that Google couldn’t answer. I want whatever you can give me. Carly let out a shaky breath. “He surprised me. He’s been fine with it. More than fine, really. For a few weeks, at least.” Whether he’d start needing more from her and decide that she wasn’t enough for him, she had no idea. He probably would, but she’d never find out. Their time was almost up. Fun and done, just like Heather had said.

Heather squeezed her forearm again. “The other men might have surprised you, too. If you’d given them a chance.”

Carly sighed. “Who knows? Maybe I should have told them. And I definitely should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Heather stood and came around the picnic table to sit next to Carly, who scooted down to make room for her. As her best friend put an arm over her shoulder and pulled her in for a one-armed hug, Carly breathed out a wobbly sigh. Telling the truth felt like cracking her toe knuckles: it hurt as she was doing it, but the instant relief left her wondering why she hadn’t done it sooner.

“I’m sorry you had to suffer alone all this time. And I hope the PT is helping and one day you can have all the intercourse you want. But even if it doesn’t,” Heather shifted to face her and put her hands on Carly’s shoulder, “you are enough. More than enough.”

“Right, I’m enough and also kind of a lot,” Carly sniffed.

“Yeah, like I said, you’re more than enough,” Heather smiled and hugged her tight.

“Intercourse is a weird word,” Carly said into Heather’s shoulder after a moment. Heather giggled again, and Carly squeezed her. She would miss this more than anything once she was back in New York.