EPILOGUE
ARIELLE
ONE YEAR AFTER MY TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY
KYE: Just be ready.
ME: Ready for what?
KYE: Outside.
ME: That is not a location.
KYE: Eight o’clock, Ari.
I looked at the twist-out spread across my bathroom counter, the two outfits hanging from my closet door, and the makeup bag I had not opened yet.
A year earlier, the message would have made my chest tight. I would have needed the address, parking situation, dress code, lighting, guest list, and at least one picture of the bathroom before I agreed to leave the house.
I still wanted all of that.
Growth had not turned me into somebody who could throw on anything and float into a room without thinking. It had only taught me that wanting time was different from needing perfection before I deserved to participate.
ME: Eight-thirty.
KYE: Eight-fifteen.
ME: Eight-thirty or celebrate without me.
Three dots appeared.
KYE: Boundaries made you irritating.
ME: Thank you.
KYE: That was not a compliment.
I smiled and went back to separating my curls.
By eight twenty-six, I wore dark jeans, a plum bodysuit, and gold hoops. My hair had volume on one side and an opinion on the other. I fixed it twice, reached for the brush a third time, then stopped.
I was allowed to look like a person who had gotten dressed instead of a person who woke up inside a campaign shoot.
My mother leaned into the doorway. “They outside.”
“Who?”
“All of them. And Kye already honked twice, so either go or let me call the police.”
“She is so embarrassing.”
“You been friends with her nine years. At this point, that is a choice.”
I grabbed my purse.
My mother looked me over. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
She waited, probably expecting me to ask whether my hair looked even.
I did not.
Her smile widened. “Look at you.”
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“Too late.”
Kye sat behind the wheel of a white SUV I had never seen before. Jori occupied the passenger seat in jeans and a nursing-school sweatshirt. Nae sat in the back with a garment bag across her lap and a foil pan at her feet.
I opened the rear door. “Whose truck is this?”
“Mine,” Kye said.
I stared at her through the mirror. “Since when?”
“Since yesterday.”
“You bought a car and did not tell us?”
“I told my mother.”
“That is not us.”
“She drove me to the dealership. Y’all would have asked too many questions.”
Jori turned around. “What is the interest rate?”
“See?”
Nae pulled me inside before I could keep arguing. “Happy almost birthday.” She hugged me, careful of the garment bag. “What is in there?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
“That answer has never led anywhere good.”
“It is clothes, not stolen money. Relax.”
Kye pulled away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Put your seat belt on,” Jori said.
“It is on.”
“Then, stop asking questions.”
I looked from one face to another. “Y’all do remember surprises make me itch?”
Nae touched my knee. “We remember. That is why you got a thirty-minute warning instead of being kidnapped.”
“Generous.”
The ride took forty minutes. Kye refused to let me use navigation. Jori changed the subject every time I guessed. Nae checked the parenting app once, saw that Malik had posted a picture of Amir eating pizza at his mother’s kitchen table, and put her phone face down.
She still missed him when he was gone. She had stopped turning missing him into proof that something must be wrong.
Jori’s phone rang halfway there. She glanced at the screen. “The facility.”
“You working?” I asked.
“No.” She declined the call.
Kye looked at her. “Who are you and what you do with Nurse Everybody?”
“I am off until Monday.”
The phone rang again.
Jori silenced it and slid it into the center console. “If the building is on fire, they should call the fire department.”
We stared at her.
“What?” she asked.
Nae reached between the seats and touched her forehead. “You sick?”
“Leave me the fuck alone.”
The highway narrowed into a road lined with trees. When the lake appeared through the dark, I knew where we were going before Kye turned into the driveway.
The same rental house sat at the edge of the water.
The same balcony.
The same wide windows.
The same neon sign glowing through the living-room glass.
GOOD VIBES ONLY.
I stopped beside the SUV.
“No.”
Kye came around the hood. “Before you start, the sign came with the house.”
“I hate that sign.”
“We know.”
“Why are we here?”
Nae lifted the foil pan. “Because we never got our trip.”
Jori grabbed the overnight bags from the trunk. “We discussed whether coming back would feel forced.”
“Without me?”
“It was a surprise,” Kye said. “That is generally how they work.”
I looked at the house.
The first time I had come, four gift bags waited on the counter and every bedroom felt like proof that my friends were not there. I had slept with a lamp on, cried over an email I never opened, and taken pictures of an empty chair because the camera was easier than admitting I felt abandoned.
“We can leave,” Nae said.
No speech. No reminder that they had spent money. No telling me what the night was supposed to mean.
Just a choice.
I looked at her, then at the other two.
“I want to stay.”
Kye clapped once. “Good because this truck payment is rude and I was not wasting gas.”
Inside, somebody had draped a towel over GOOD VIBES ONLY.
On the towel, written in black marker, were the words:
HONEST VIBES. WITH brEAKS.
I laughed so suddenly, my purse slid off my shoulder.
“That was Nae,” Jori said.
Nae lifted her chin. “I have been taking a design class. Respect my installation.”
“You enrolled?” I asked.
“One evening class at the community college. Interior spaces.”
“You did not tell me.”
“I told the chat.”
“You posted a picture of a classroom and said, ‘trying something’.”
“That was me telling the chat.”
Kye opened the refrigerator. “She wanted to wait until she knew she liked it before we started asking about a five-year plan.”
Nae pointed at her. “Exactly.”
The house looked different from the first trip because our things were everywhere.
Jori’s dosage cards sat beside the wineglasses.
Kye’s bonnet hung from a dining chair, even though we had been inside three minutes.
Nae’s sketchbook rested near the window.
My camera bag waited on the counter. I had left it at Kye’s salon after photographing her new storefront keys that afternoon.
She had not opened the storefront yet. The lease began in January. Two styling chairs, a small classroom in the back, and enough rent to keep her humble, according to her mother.
Her old suite would have fit inside the new reception area.
She still checked the rear camera before leaving work.
She still disliked black Chargers.
She also taught two state-board workshops a month and had hired a part-time assistant who was not allowed to call her boss before ten in the morning.
“Did y’all bring me here to cook?” I asked when Nae placed the pan on the stove.
“I cooked,” she said. “Jori brought salad.”
Kye made a face. “Nobody asked for that.”
“I also brought liquor.”
“See? Nursing school has not taken everything.”
Dinner was baked chicken, macaroni, greens, salad nobody touched at first, and a cake my mother had somehow delivered before us. PRETTY SINCE ‘06 was written across the top in plum frosting.
I looked at it twice. “Kye,” I said.
“What?”
“The math is right this time.”
“That is because I ordered it instead of your lying ex.”
Jori covered her laugh with a napkin.
Nae did not bother.
The mention of Cam did not freeze the room.
That surprised me more than the joke.
I had not spoken to him since that rainy afternoon outside Northline. I knew through people who did not understand boundaries that he still hosted events, still looked good in pictures, and had dated at least one woman after Sade.
None of that belonged to me.
My life did not become empty when I stopped monitoring his.
Northline had extended my summer associate role through the school year.
Pretty Enough had traveled to three campuses and one community arts center.
I approved every story before it went public, paid every participant, and stopped companies from turning pain into inspirational captions when the truth was more complicated.
I was still in college.
Still worked too much.
Still took naps hard enough to wake up confused.
Still checked pictures.
I just no longer let a bad one decide whether I had enjoyed the day.
After dinner, Jori cleared her throat.
Kye groaned. “Here come an agenda.”
“It is one item.”
“That is how agendas start.”
Jori ignored her and slid a flat box across the table toward me. Inside was a photo album covered in plain plum fabric.
No title. No glitter. No quote about sisterhood.
I opened it.
The first page held the picture from our eighth-grade promotion. Cheap matching sandals. Shiny faces. Arms locked around one another.
The next was my twentieth birthday brunch, all four of us smiling while secrets crowded the table.
I almost closed the book.
Nae rested her hand near mine but did not touch me.
I turned the page.
A picture of Jori studying in Kye’s salon while Kye worked.
Nae sitting outside family court with Amir asleep across her lap.
Kye beside the new alarm panel, making an ugly face at the camera.
Me at the first Pretty Enough launch with six braids under a scarf and a microphone in my hand.
None of the pictures were polished enough for the version of us we used to post.
Some were blurry.
One cut off half Jori’s head.
In another, Nae had her mouth open because she was yelling at Amir not to lick a railing.
Kye had written beneath that one: MOTHERHOOD’S EMERGENCY.
Nae had crossed it out and written: YOUR NEPHEW LICKS PUBLIC PROPERTY.
I laughed until my eyes watered.
The final page held no picture. Only four small envelopes taped side by side.
ARI.
KYE.
JORI.
NAE.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Do not get scared,” Kye said. “Nobody wrote a letter about how valid your feelings are.”
“Thank God.”
“Each of us wrote one thing we need this year and one thing we can give,” Jori said.
“That sounds suspiciously organized.”
“It was the only way Kye stopped trying to write jokes.”
Kye pointed toward her envelope. “Mine has one joke. It is necessary.”
I opened mine.
NEED: Time to answer before everybody assumes my silence means no.
CAN GIVE: The truth before it becomes a performance.
My handwriting looked strange next to the sentence. I had written it two weeks earlier when they asked for the album and told me not to ask questions.
I opened Kye’s.
NEED: People to ask again when I joke, but not chase me through every closed door.
CAN GIVE: An honest answer, eventually. Also hair, within reason.
Jori’s said:
NEED: To be loved when I do not have the answer.
CAN GIVE: Help without taking over, and a no before resentment.
Nae’s said:
NEED: Help I ask for, not help people force on me and save for later.
CAN GIVE: The plan before I make the emergency everybody’s problem.
Nobody cried immediately.
Then, Nae’s eyes filled.
Kye saw and pointed at her. “Do not start before the toast. Ari already got the birthday crying position.”
“I am not crying.”
“You got one tear sitting on the edge like it paid rent.”
Nae wiped it away and laughed.
At eleven fifty-eight, we carried the cake onto the balcony. The lake was black beneath the moon, with porch lights breaking across the water.
Kye lit twenty-one candles, even though the wind kept taking half.
Jori blocked them with the album.
Nae held the cake.
I stood in front of all of it with my hair swollen from the lake air and frosting on my thumb.
“Make a wish,” Nae said.
“I have to wait until midnight.”
“It is eleven fifty-nine,” Kye said. “Close enough.”
“That is not how birthdays work.”
“You are twenty-one in thirty seconds. Stop controlling time.”
The old defensiveness rose on instinct.
Then, I saw her smile.
Not mocking.
Knowing.
I closed my eyes.
I did not wish for us to stay the same forever.
Middle-school promises had not survived adulthood without changing shape.
We had hurt one another with information only sisters would know.
We had also learned that love could include locked doors, unanswered calls, written agreements, court dates, apologies without deadlines, and asking whether somebody had room.
I wished for the courage to keep telling the truth before life dragged it out of us.
When I opened my eyes, they were all watching.
“Why y’all staring?”
“You crying,” Kye said.
“I cry. This is established.”
“Do not drip on the cake.”
The clock changed to twelve.
They shouted before I blew out the candles.
Kye’s voice cracked.
Nae sang off-key.
Jori tried to make everybody start on the same word and failed.
I laughed through the whole song.
After cake, Kye found one of the disposable cameras left from the first trip. There were four pictures remaining.
“We taking one,” she announced.
“My hair—”
The word left my mouth before I stopped it.
Everybody froze.
Not to judge me.
To let me finish.
I touched the side that had expanded in the humidity. I could fix it. The brush was upstairs. Five minutes, maybe less.
Then, Nae set the camera on the counter and pressed the timer.
“Too late.”
We ran toward the couch.
Jori stepped on the hem of Kye’s pants.
Kye cursed.
Nae reached us with two seconds left.
I was still laughing when the flash went off.
Nobody was centered.
Nobody had arranged their face.
Nobody asked to see it.
THE END