The room notices before I do.
I see the room change—people going quiet, looking toward me, conversations pausing mid-sentence—before I see Rhonda. Then she's there. Right there. Two feet away. Eye contact. The whole world narrowing to a single point of focus.
Her hands come up. They find my face—palms on my jaw, thumbs along my cheekbones.
She kisses me.
In the middle of Sandy and Erica's kitchen, in front of everyone.
The room goes quiet.
Riley, behind me, takes a step back. "Whoa!"
Jani goes very still. She doesn’t gasp but her eyes find mine across the crowd and hold on, and I watch my unshockable sister be, for one second, undone.
We move onto the balcony. The air is cold, and city noise below. Rhonda's hands still on my face, even though we've stepped away from the party.
"I'm done," she says. "I love you, Lena. I’m sorry I've been handling it badly. I'm not going to do that anymore."
"I love you too," I say, and my voice cracks ontoo.
Her forehead against mine. Our breathing in the cold air, visible, rising like twin plumes. The city spread out below us. The party carrying on inside, the room processing what just happened. All the people who just watched that kiss, who just had the entire invisible relationship made visible in one moment.
"I'm sorry," she says. "for asking you to be invisible. I locked you in a cage, and you deserve better than that."
"It had good hot chocolate."
She laughs. We stand on the balcony with the party noise behind us and the cold air around us and her hands on my face, my arms around her waist.
"I was terrified," she says. "That you would choose Riley. “
“What? You know I’m just a fan right?”
Rhonda’s ears went red. “I know but I thought you might choose her instead of?—”
"Instead of what?"
"Instead of me."
"Rhonda." I lift my hand to cup her face. "You're not hiding anymore."
"Yeah."
"And I chose you. I've been choosing you every single day for a year. I chose you even when you put me in a cage."
Rhonda leans her cheek into my hand. "What have I done to ever deserve you?"
"Because you're worth it. Even when we were hiding, you were the most real thing in my life. You were the only thing that made sense."
She steps closer. She wraps her arms around my waist. I lean into her. We stand like this for a long moment, holding each other against the cold, holding each other in the open.
"Lets go back inside?" Rhonda asks eventually.
"Yeah. Okay.”
She doesn't let go of my hand as we walk back through the sliding glass door. She holds my hand as we rejoin the party. She holds my hand as people congratulate us, as Jani hugs us both, as the room accepts the new arrangement of things.
She holds my hand like it's the most important thing she can do right now.
