Helena looked impressed. “Are you going to be a princess?”
Gwen’s face brightened. “Yes. Finally, someone understands.”
Aster snorted. “That is not what being a bride means.”
“It is if the bride has taste,” Gwen said.
That made Helena laugh, and before long Gwen had taken over the sofa, showing her pictures of flowers on her phone while explaining her wedding plans as if she were briefing the government. She was happy in a way that made even her dramatics softer.
“I know I keep saying it,” Gwen said at one point, looking up at me with a smile she could not hide, “but I still can’t believe it. April. A spring wedding. It sounds fake, doesn’t it? Like something I made up to annoy people.”
“It sounds very you,” I said.
She grinned. “I take it as a compliment.”
“You would take a parking fine as a compliment if it came in nice handwriting,” Aster muttered.
A little later, Giselle arrived, and the room shifted again. She came in wrapped in a dark coat, composed despite the cold, and for one second Gwen simply looked at her as if she were deciding whether to approve her.
“This is Giselle, you already know her,” I said.
Gwen’s eyes widened. “The Giselle? Finally, we’re meeting you face to face.”
Giselle blinked. “Should I be worried?”
“Yes,” Aster said from the sofa. “Just not enough to run.”
That broke the tension. Giselle laughed, and I relaxed more than I expected. I had wanted this to go well. I wanted these separate parts of my life to meet without awkwardness, without some invisible line forming between old friends and new ones.
Luckily, they found each other quickly. Gwen liked Giselle within minutes, which was hardly surprising. Gwen liked anyone who could keep up with her and dress well while doing it. Aster took a little longer, watching more than speaking at first, but once she and Giselle began talking, the rhythm came easily. They were both dry, observant, and sharp in a way that did not need to announce itself. I could tell from Aster’s face that she was impressed.
We ate slowly, drank coffee, and picked at sweets while Helena moved between us as if the room had been arranged for her personal entertainment. For a while, it was easy. Imperfect and full of everything waiting outside the moment, yet easy enough that I let myself breathe inside it.
Of course, Gwen found her way back to wedding talk.
“I still haven’t decided about flowers,” she said. “And if anyone says peonies are overrated, I’m ending this friendship immediately.”
“I’m not saying they’re overrated,” I said. “I’m saying you talk about them as if no other flower has ever existed.”
“Because no other flower has tried hard enough.”
Aster looked up from Helena’s coloring book, where she had somehow been assigned the role of official pencil sharpener. “This is why you need supervision.”
Gwen waved that away. “I am happy, and I intend to remain happy. Nobody here is allowed to ruin my mood.”
That was when Aster went quiet. She did not make a scene. She only looked down for a second too long, and I noticed because I had known her too many years not to.
“You’re thinking,” I said. “What happened?”
Aster glanced at me, then leaned back against the sofa. “My family has started again.”
Gwen’s expression changed at once. “About the marriage thing?”
Aster nodded once. The room softened around that.
“They found someone,” Aster said. “Or rather, they found a family, and apparently that was enough.”
Gwen sat forward. “You don’t even know him.”
