After a while Steph noticed that I was peeling the label off my beer instead of drinking it, and when I admitted I didn’t really like it, she took it away and reappeared a few minutes later with a cup of punch and Mel and Roxy in tow. The yard was growing more crowded now, and people were shouting over the music, and I realized Steph was drinking my beer.

  Talia came out and joined us, and Mel asked her about her work. Talia was a student at the Art Institute, and she lived in the flat upstairs. “I’m painting everyone I know,” she yelled at Mel. “You should sit for me!”

  I was aware at all times that I was only a few feet away from Steph. I saw her hand on my beer, her mouth at the bottle’s small curved lip. The punch was so strong, but it went down like candy. I finished my first cup.

  Lisa was tugging at Steph’s hand, pulling her toward the steps to go back inside. She turned back toward us and I could read her lips in the Christmas lights hanging above: Let’s dance. Janelle Monae was on, and we all followed Lisa back into the house and crowded into the living room, where the lights had been turned down low and the furniture was pushed against the walls. The music was so loud it muffled all my thoughts. Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, their voices demanding. Mel pulled me into the middle of the floor, and we were dancing together. Roxy joined us, laughing at the cheesy moves Mel was making. Roxy’s hair smelled like apples, and as we danced together, I felt like she’d tell me what I should do if I asked, but I couldn’t put my question into words.

  M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” came on; the bass thumped. Lisa was shimmying up against Steph and I turned away so I didn’t have to see it. I bumped into a woman with short bleached-blond hair and backed away, mouthing, Sorry. She was wearing a black muscle tee that exposed tattoos of vines crawling up her biceps. She looked at me, really looked, and when she put one hand on my waist to pull me closer, I let her. Her other hand followed, and soon she was angling her hips so that I had to move with her. I was intensely aware anyone could see us—including Steph—and my heart thudded with the beat. The back of her shirt was damp with sweat; I felt her thigh pressed against mine. She bent her face close to me, and I knew what she was about to do, but at the last moment her mouth slipped to my ear and she asked, “Do you want to get some air?”

  “Yes,” I shouted back, and she took my hand and I let her lead me out of the living room.

  * * *

  —

  Her name was Casey. She said she was friends with Roxy from SF State, and I told her I knew Steph. We grabbed bottles of water from the ice bath and went down to the yard looking for a quieter corner. We ended up in the back next to a shed painted with a mural that I couldn’t make out in the dim light. My ears were ringing from the music. When I leaned against the wall of the shed, Casey leaned in.

  The last person I’d kissed was Jacob. I’d never kissed a woman before, but here was a woman who clearly wanted to kiss me. She was softer than Jacob—her lips, her tongue, the touch of her hands on my waist, pulling me into her. I could recognize that she knew how to kiss me with her whole body, not just her mouth, but I felt like I was splitting inside. Half of me was kissing her back and the other half was shrinking away.

  I didn’t know Casey. I wasn’t even attracted to her. She was an experiment for me.

  I felt like a monster.

  I pulled away, dragging her hands off me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.” I fled before she could do anything, practically running back toward the house.

  I saw Steph and Lisa in the yard, Lisa gesticulating with her cigarette. I thought I saw Steph’s gaze flicker toward me, but I didn’t go to them. I went upstairs and back inside. There were people everywhere, and they all seemed to be getting in my way on purpose. I pushed my way through the kitchen and into the living room. The floor seemed to heave as everyone in the room danced to Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger.” They were all singing the chorus in unison.

  I had to get out of here. I edged around the room, trying to avoid people’s drinks as they raised them in the air. I kept feeling Casey’s hands on me. Why had I let her? I felt sick about it, as if I’d cheated on someone. On Steph.

  Behind me there was motion, as if someone were coming after me, and I was afraid it was Casey. I pushed through the crowd faster, and finally I reached the front door. I burst out onto the front stoop. The door to the second-floor flat was propped open with a shoe, and I glimpsed Christmas lights wrapped around a banister leading upstairs.

  I went inside, climbing up to a dimly lit living room. The music was muffled up here, although the bass still reverberated through the floor. A few people were lounging on a wide L-shaped sofa, talking quietly. They glanced at me as I appeared at the top of the stairs, and then went back to their conversation.

  Tealight candles had been placed along the floor, lighting the way down a hall past another kitchen to more rooms. I followed them, expecting to find a bathroom to hide in, but the door I opened led into what seemed to be a storage room.

  I went in and pushed the door almost shut so I could still peer out through the crack. No one had followed me. I took a deep breath to calm the pounding of my heart, and I smelled paint. I turned around. In the dim light through the single window, the room gradually took shape. Large paintings were hanging on the walls: portraits of big, shadowed faces. An unfinished canvas was attached to an easel by the window, and when I went to get a better look, I thought I recognized Roxy. This must be Talia’s work. But she hadn’t painted these portraits in naturalistic colors. Roxy’s eyes were gold, her hair purple. Another painting showed a woman with spiky orange hair and blue skin.

  The door opened, and I whirled around.

  Steph stood in the doorway. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Now I was sure that she’d seen me with Casey. “I’m fine,” I said, feeling guilty.

  Steph came into the room and shut the door behind her with a click. “I saw you with . . . Did she do something?”

  My stomach dropped. “No. Everything’s fine.”

  “Did you want to hook up with her?”

  Her tone was sharp. I realized, suddenly, that she was jealous. Her face was barely lit in the shadowed room, but I didn’t need to see every detail to recognize what she was feeling. It seemed palpable in the air between us. Inevitable.

  “No,” I said. “I only want you.”

  I felt as if I’d lit myself on fire.

  Steph said nothing, and her silence made me bold. I took three steps across the floor of the small room, and I was standing right in front of her. I smelled the spice-and-citrus scent on her skin, now cut with cigarette smoke.

  She could have stopped me, but she didn’t.

  I put my arms around her neck as if we were slow dancing in a high school gym. I felt the swaying of her body into mine as if we were moving to music. In my new boots we were the same height. It was as though gravity were conspiring with us because I didn’t feel like I was standing on firm ground until her mouth met mine.

  I have replayed this moment in my memory over and over. It has, over time, been honed down to a few bright fragments.

  The cold, bright taste of her. Ice and lime.

  The fine soft hairs on the back of her neck, my fingertips raising them from her skin in an electric charge.

  Her hands sliding around my back to press me into her, and she feels so good I forget everything else. There is only her.

  Her phone rang. It was loud and insistent, and at first, we ignored it. Her hands were slipping beneath my shirt, raising goose bumps on my skin, and then suddenly she backed off and I was standing in the middle of the tiny room, blinking, while she stared down at her phone.

  “Shit,” she said. “Fuck.”

  I was dazed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Lisa left.”

  “What?”

  Steph’s phone shed a ghostly light over her face. Behind her, the painted pink eyes of the blue-skinned woman seemed to glare at me. I moved toward Steph and reached for the phone, but she pulled it away before I could see the message.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “If she took the car, I—I don’t know.”

  She was at the door before I understood what she was doing, and now the door was open and she was leaving.

  “I’m sorry,” she called back to me. “I have to go find her.”

  She was gone.

  I was stunned. I could still feel her mouth on me. I ran out into the candlelit hallway and into the quiet living room. Everything looked the same as before. I didn’t see Steph, but one of the people on the sofa noticed me and pointed at the stairway, and I realized it was Talia. She looked knowing, and I went downstairs before she could say anything.

  Steph was out on the sidewalk, gazing down the street. She began to run, and I went after her. She stopped at the end of the block, where she stared at an empty parking space on the street.

  “She took the car,” Steph said flatly. “Fuck.”

  * * *

  —

  Mel gave Steph the keys to her Jeep. “I’m staying,” she said. “You can borrow it. I hope Lisa’s okay.”

  I said goodbye to Mel because there was no way for me to get back to San Rafael and my car if I didn’t leave with Steph. I thought being alone with her on the drive would lead to something more—at least an acknowledgment of what had happened between us—but she was grim as we headed out of the city. She told me she and Lisa had fought, and Lisa had gone home angry, and then she didn’t say anything else.

  I couldn’t make sense of it. She had kissed me, but now she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I felt like she had punched me in the stomach, and an ache began to build there, a combination of frustrated desire and bewilderment. The longer we were silent, the harder it was to break it, and I ended up saying nothing the whole way to Mel’s house.

  She pulled up behind the Honda and left the engine running. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Don’t say it,” I muttered. I got out and slammed the door shut before she could respond. My eyes burned as I walked to the car. As soon as I was in, Steph drove off. I sat there alone in the dark, tears spilling out of my eyes.

  * * *

  —

  When I got back to Woodacre, the house was dark, but the motion-sensor outdoor lights snapped on as I opened the gate. The ferns on the side of the path were washed in whiteness, all their color leached away.

  I opened the front door, and Analemma came down the stairs to nose at me. I petted her half-heartedly and went upstairs. She followed as I went to my room and dropped my purse on the dresser and took off my boots. The world seemed to wobble, and I realized I was hungry.

  Analemma followed me into the kitchen. I opened the fridge and saw the brown paper bag from lunch with my mother. There were still a couple of steamed buns left. Moving automatically, I took one out and wrapped it in a damp paper towel to microwave it. When it was ready, I sat down at the kitchen table and pulled apart the steaming white bun, revealing the glistening red barbecued pork inside. Analemma put her head on my thigh hopefully. There was something about the mournful look in her golden-brown eyes that startled a laugh out of me.

  “You are shameless,” I whispered, and pulled out a piece of pork and fed it to her.

  She continued to drool onto my thigh while I took my first bite.

  Sometimes a memory will overtake you so unexpectedly it’s as if you’ve been instantly transported back in time. I was eight years old and Tasha was at our apartment in Wellesley after school, and we’d just eaten some pork buns. My dad had brought them back from Chinatown in Boston and reheated them for us.

  Afterward, when my dad shut himself into his office to write, we went into my bedroom to play house. Tasha wanted to be the mommy, and even though I didn’t want to be the daddy, I told her I would because Tasha only ever wanted to be the mommy.

  Tasha said, “You have to come home from work, and I’ll bring you a drink,” and I knew this was because after school we sometimes watched a TV show in which the dad came home from work, calling, “Honey, I’m home!” The mom always appeared in an apron and greeted him at the door with a kiss and a cocktail. I couldn’t get enough of watching the dad settle his kids’ inconsequential arguments while the mom served up a casserole dinner. The show had been mesmerizing to me because it felt like the opposite of my parents. They were always rushing here and there, packing suitcases, bringing home takeout, and closing doors behind which they had tense-sounding conversations. And now they were divorced. The parents on the TV show were exotic in comparison, and always, in every episode, they kissed each other hello.

  Maybe that’s why I suggested to Tasha, “You have to kiss me when I come home.”

  In my memory, I came through the door of my bedroom and called out, “Honey, I’m home!”

  Tasha, waiting inside my room, came to greet me holding a plastic tumbler full of water. She beamed as she said, “Welcome home, dear.” She had tied one of my sweatshirts around her waist with the sleeves, like an apron, and I had to put down the empty leather briefcase we’d borrowed from my dad’s closet before I took the tumbler from her. Then I approached Tasha for the kiss, and right before I leaned in I knew I shouldn’t kiss her like this, and I put my hand over her mouth to create a barrier, my palm against her lips, and I kissed the back of my hand.

  I had forgotten about our game until that night in Joan’s kitchen, with Analemma still drooling on my leg, and the pork bun steaming on the napkin in front of me. I couldn’t eat any more. I fed the rest to Analemma and went to bed, still hungry.

  The ringing sounded like an alarm and I jolted awake, scrabbling for my phone, which for some reason was in my bed under the covers. When I finally found it, the screen said DAD. I meant to silence the call, but I accidentally hit the wrong button. I heard his tinny voice through the speaker: “Aria? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  I sighed and lifted the phone to my ear. “Hi. Yes I can hear you.”

  “Sounds like you’re half asleep.” He laughed. “It’s almost noon.”

  “Really?” I blinked and looked toward the window. The blue curtain was outlined by bright sunlight that made me squint.

  “Up late?” he said, sounding amused.

  The party. Steph. Shit.

  “Aria?”

  “Sorry, yeah, I’m here.” I sat up, rubbing my face.

  “I’d offer to talk later but I only have the landline for a brief time.”

  “Okay.”

  “How was lunch with your mom?”

  I groaned involuntarily. “Do we have to talk about that?”

  “She called me afterward.”

  The blankets were hot and scratchy, and I shoved them away. “What did she say?”

  “She told me she’s engaged. And she told me about her offer to help pay for MIT.”

  His tone was too even. “How do you feel about it?” I asked carefully.

  “I’m happy for her,” he said, but he still sounded so neutral that I wondered if he was lying.

  “Really?”

  “Of course. I’m glad she met someone she wants to marry. But how are you feeling about it?”

  I wished desperately that we weren’t having this conversation. “I don’t know. I haven’t been thinking about it.”

  “She’s very glad you’ve agreed to be in their wedding.”

  “What was I supposed to say?”

  “You could’ve said no.”

  “No I couldn’t.”

  He exhaled. “It is your choice. If you need me to tell her that, I will.”

  I felt tears well up in my eyes. “Dad, can we please talk about this later?”

  “It’s not a good idea to avoid it.”

  “I’m not avoiding anything, I’m just—I just woke up. That’s all.”

  “She’s really trying now,” he said, ignoring me. “Her offer to help with MIT is very generous. I would think about accepting it.”

  “I don’t want to be beholden to her.”

  “It’s her money to give. She gave you as much as she could in the past, and she’s still trying to.”

  “Why are you always defending her?” I snapped. “She left you, didn’t she?” I flinched as I heard my own words, but I couldn’t stop. “How can you expect me to forgive her for what she did to you, and to me?”

  “That’s not fair—”

  “You’ve never even gone on a date with anyone since you guys got divorced. Aren’t you still in love with her? Isn’t that why you can’t finish your novel?”

  There was total silence over the phone. In rapidly dawning horror, I realized what I had just said. “Dad, I’m sorry—”

  “Aria, your mom and I split up twelve—no, thirteen years ago,” he said. He sounded tired. “I’m not in love with her anymore. And she’s not the reason I’ve been having trouble with my book. But it’s almost done now.”

  I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” He exhaled. “I’m sorry if I’ve given you the impression that I still wanted to be with your mom. I really don’t.”

  I was uncomfortable. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

  “No, we do. If this is what’s holding you back from working things out with her, we do. Listen. Your mom and I have both moved on, and I have gone on dates since we divorced. I don’t tell you everything, Ari. Nothing serious developed because—well, I’ve been busy.” He gave a short, rueful laugh. “I had five years of writer’s block, and tenure to go after. And I had you to take care of. I didn’t have the time or the inclination, and probably I would have made some bad decisions if I let myself get involved with anyone seriously. It’s been my choice. It’s not your mom’s fault.”