“Yeah, you are,” Shiloh said, encouraging. “You’ll be a great dad.”
He looked up at her, wrinkling his nose a little. “Do you really think so?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Be specific.”
“Um...” Shiloh clicked her tongue a few times. “Okay. You’re fun.” She looked around—at the still-very-aggravating party scenario. “And you can lie with a straight face. That’ll come in handy.”
He pointed his tongs at her again. “You are going to have so much fun at this party. I swear to god, Shiloh.”
Shiloh did not have so much fun at the party.
She stood by the fire pit and listened to people talk about whether the city would ever get streetcars and how to get a permit for backyard chicken coops.
Then she went inside and listened to people talk about a controversial foundation that was bankrolling tacky—but not thegoodkind of tacky—public art.
Then she went back outside and listened to the chicken coop stuff again. Apparently you had to be careful about raccoons.
These were all perfectly good things to talk about. These were probably good, interesting people.
But Shiloh was done meeting new people. For life.
Her mom was right, you couldn’t make new old friends—but Shiloh wasn’t in the market for newnewones either.
The prospect of meeting someone and small-talking and then following up with them... building tentative bonds, building trust, developing inside jokes... learning the names of their spouses, their kids, their coworkers...
Shiloh honestly couldn’t imagine getting through all those steps.
She’dneverdone it before. Shiloh made friends in school and at work, with people she was trapped with all the time anyway. The idea of making friends in the wild? Inconceivable. And completely unappealing.
If Shiloh wanted friends, she’d rather reach out to all the people she already liked and rarely got a chance to see.
The party moved inside as it got colder. There was talk of charades. Shiloh was, of course, fuckingphenomenalat charades. But she would rather swallow a tick than play charades with strangers. Forfree.
She found a spot by what was left of the fire and drank what was left of her apple cider.
She wanted to go home, but she didn’t want to walk through the house and have to say goodbye to everyone. Maybe she could squeeze through the bushes on the side of the house.
The back door swung open. Shiloh recognized Mikey’s silhouette.
He headed out toward her. She blew air into her closed lips.
“There you are,” he said, when he got close enough.
“Here I am,” Shiloh agreed.
He sat down next to her—she was sitting on a flattened-out log—holding his hands up to the fire. “You really hate parties, don’t you?”
“I really do,” she said.
“I thought maybe you’d like it once you were actually here and saw how nice it was...”
“Sorry, Mikey. I didn’t mean to be rude to your friends.”
“You weren’t rude to my friends. Everybody likes you. One of our neighborsreallylikes you. He thinks you look like a young Cher... which isverygenerous in my opinion.”
Shiloh smiled.
