“You live on the tenth floor,” he shouts.
Okay. This is dumb. Opening the door, I poke my head out. She’s not here yet. I hold it open. “Go. Take the stairs a couple floors and then take the elevator.”
He shakes his head as if this is the craziest plan I’ve ever come up with. As if I didn’t once convince him to hold on to the back of a city bus while riding our skateboards. This plan isfine.
He taps my chest. “Good luck, man.” He jogs down the hallway, the opposite direction to the elevators, and just in time, thank fuck. The bell that marks the arrival of the elevator on our floor dings.
Nerves sink like the Titanic into the icy depths of my stomach. Faraz was right. Nora won’t actually be pissed about the tattoo. And the rest? Well, the rest is five years in the making. Longer, for me.
But still.What if?
“Hey.” Nora stands at the end of the hallway, cheeks flushed from the cold, her hair pinned back with cute little barrettes. A reusable grocery bag hangs from her fingers, a couple glass bottles clinking inside, the orange foil on their tops signifying that George splurged way too fucking much on champagne.
“What are you doing?” Nora asks, coming to a stop in front of me. She cups her hand around my waist, the place she always puts her hand when she greets me, lifting on her toes, presenting her red mouth for a kiss.
I wince. Shift away from her hand.
She settles back on her heels, frowning at my midsection. “What’s wrong?”
I wince again. “Tattoo.”
“You got the tattoothere?” Her voice is high and tight. “Why?”
I shrug, playing with the back of my hair. I got it there because she always puts her hand there, but I guess I didn’t really think that through. “You wanna see?”
She nods, a bit begrudgingly. I start to pull up my T-shirt.
“Not outhere.” She looks behind her, like she’s expecting a platoon of paparazzi to pop up and capture the elastic band of my underwear in high-def.
“It’s fine,” I say, turning my hip toward her. The tattoo looks gnarly right now. The clear plastic bandage a window to leaking ink and blood.
“Oh.”
I laugh. Fuck, she’s funny. “It will look better once I take the bandage off and rinse it.”
She nods, her mouth a thin line. “And what…” She tilts her head to the side. “Is it?”
Fair. It looks like a bloody black blob. “You were doodling a little mirror ball the other day when you were on the phone with Bea, remember?”
She shakes her head.
“Party planning,” I prompt. We’re supposed to be hosting the New Year’s Eve party tonight and Nora had Bea on the phone for an hour, asking her about what time she and Meriah were coming, and would four different cheeses be enough. She’d grown increasingly frustrated with Bea’s non-committal non-answers. “That’s what I used.”
She pauses, then inhales sharply, blinking up at me. “You used my drawing?” Her eyes are big, shocked. It’s wild, how shecan still be surprised that I’m totally gone for her. Like I wasn’t ready to quit my job for her. Like I didn’t move back across the world to be with her, job be damned.
“But what if…” She trails off.
Hell fucking no. We’re not going to even finish that sentence.
“That’s actually a perfect segue,” I say. I was nervous before. Now I’m not. “About that New Year’s Eve party…” I open our front door.
Nora locks into prep mode. “Right, so George insisted on supplying us with some of thenicechampagne, which I told her was completely un?—”
It takes a moment for it to register: the candles everywhere; the flowers, a new bouquet of roses to join the ones I gave her for her birthday yesterday. Faraz and I hung mirror balls from the light fixture above the kitchen island. And there’s already a bottle of champagne chilling in the ice bucket, but I still appreciate my sister’s contribution to our night.
Nora turns to me in the entryway. “We have people coming over,” she says, almost apologetic.
I take the bag from her hand, help her with her coat. She toes off her boots but doesn’t step any farther into the room until I take her hand and pull her into the kitchen with me.
