But before I hit send, a banner flashes across the top of my screen.
Ace Kelly posted on Instagram.
My heart stutters.
Immediately, I swipe away from the message draft and pull up his profile. The new post is vague, cryptic, and a carousel of moody images. One is of a goat with glowing paint streaked on its back. Another of fog curling around the base of a bonfire. Another of hands—his hands—lighting a candle behind a black curtain.
Double C.
It’s a nod to what happened tonight without ever saying it.
Before I know it, I’m snooping around his profile, through all his previous posts—a lot of them have photos of us in them—and then, to all the photos he’s been tagged in by other people.
He’s already tagged in a bunch of photos from the party tonight. One of them is him with a pretty brunette I recognize from a sorority—his arm slung casually around her shoulders. Another of him laughing with two girls who are a year older than us and who I know are members of Double C.
He looks happy in the photos, like the Ace I know so very well. The Ace who’s the center of the party. The Ace who I loved with my whole being all while he never stopped to realize that his best friend felt like she was always on his sidelines.
I go back to the message I typed and delete every word.
For tonight, my pride wins.
Sunday, September 21st
Julia
Sunday brunch at the Plaza Hotel is supposed to be a decadent, indulgent experience. Think French jazz in the background, champagne flowing by eleven, little silver butter dishes that shine like they’ve never seen a fingerprint in their lives.
But when you’re brunching with your mother, your smartass little sister, and your sex therapist grandmother who has written four best-selling books on sexual liberation and once said the phrase “clitoral blooming” in a TED Talk—it’s less Audrey Hepburn fantasy and more HBO dramedy with a side of eggs Benedict.
My grandma leans forward, her silk scarf billowing like a cape in the air conditioning, and points her mimosa flute at me. “So, Julia. Are you still experiencing regular orgasms?”
I choke on my orange juice, and my mom is quick to chime in.
“Mom!” she hisses, appalled by my grandmother’s question. Which is wild, honestly, that she can still get that worked up over her sex therapist mother’s random sexual health questions. I’d think she’d be used to it by now. Expected it, even. “Can we please not with the climax talk? This place has white tablecloths.”
“Relax, Georgia.” My grandma rolls her eyes. “It’s the Plaza. Not the Vatican.”
My sister slouches dramatically in her velvet chair, stabbing her fruit salad with a fork. She doesn’t look up, but she does join in the conversation. “Honestly, I was wondering the same thing.”
“Evie!” my mom shrieks.
Grandma just smiles. “See, Georgia? Even Evie is concerned about Julia’s sexual health.”
“Why do I come to these things?” I mutter, half laughing, half dying inside.
Grandma takes a quick drink of her mimosa but doesn’t hesitate to answer my rhetorical question. “Because you know we love you, and brunch without me shocking your mother is just overpriced toast.”
By the time our food arrives—smoked salmon this, truffle aioli that—the chaos has mellowed into something warm and fizzy like the champagne. We’re laughing about how Evie managed to get Big Boobs McGee Heather to take down the website that scandalized our father by contacting one of our parents’ best friends Caplin Hawkins, a very successful lawyer, and serving her lawsuit papers while she was in the middle of class.
Technically, Thatch is the one who served the papers, and that honestly makes it ten times funnier, even though the mere thought of anyone related to Ace sets my chest ablaze.
But then Savannah turns her full therapist gaze on me again. “So. Are you seeing anyone, Julia?”
“Uh…yeah,” I answer around a bite full of eggs. “I am. And you met him, Grandma.”
She stares at me, confused. “Met who?”
“Drew,” I say. “I brought him to brunch at Mom and Dad’s.”
