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“Noah is going to die,” Rosalie warned Coral. “Like literally. Are you sure you want to kill him before you’ve even married him?”
Coral laughed, her dark eyes sparkling with glee and joy. “Oh, he’s got you all fooled by his soft side,” she said, “but he’s made of stronger stuff than that.” Her voice went sultry.
Rosalie smiled but swallowed a lump in her throat. She was thrilled for Coral - beyond thrilled - to see her strong, independent friend find her perfect match, but frankly it was hard sometimes being surrounded by people so gleaming with love and lust.
She watched Noah change color as Coral fixed her eyes on him as she drifted down the aisle.
“Oh shit,” she heard him stutter, the sound of a man understanding on a cellular level, exactly how lucky he was. Brynn stood beside him as best man but she seemed to have forgotten her role in the ceremony because the gaze between her and Savannah in that damn dress never once stopped crackling with heat.
The ceremony was a dream but as the couple said, ‘I do,’ something in Rosalie cracked. If Coral, her fiercest and most staunchly single of friends had jumped across the divide, then why couldn’t she? She put her loneliness aside and let her love for her friend take the lead as she watched Noah kiss her with a kind of joyful awe in his face and she felt her eyes fill with tears at the sight.
Afterward, Rosalie found herself alone at the edge of the dance floor, having rebuffed the hopeful advances of one of the groomsmen. Amongst the swaying couples she could see Coral cheek-to-cheek with her new husband, and Brynn with her hands on Savannah’s waist, pulling her in close. She sighed.
“Gross,” said a voice from beside her and Rosalie smiled.
“It is, isn’t it?” she agreed.
Lane sniffed, adjusting their suit. They’d started filling out since going on T, their new muscles attracting some admiring glances. Rosalie loved seeing Lane become more and more themself the older they grew, buoyed by all the love and support in their life.
“Weddings are ridiculous,” Lane said, rolling their eyes. “Like what, you’re really going to love one person for the rest of your life? Who even believes that?”
Rosalie shrugged. Privately she agreed, but part of her still had her Role Model hat on and as the first grownup Lane had ever trusted, her opinion still shaped them.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s kind of romantic to know it’s hard as hell but to try anyway?”
Lane raised one eyebrow. “Is that what you really believe?” Lane was too smart for their own good, that had always been their problem.
“No,” Rosalie sighed, pushed into a moment of truth. Lane smirked. “But I do think that love is worth it, whether it lasts for fifty years,” she looked over at her friends as they danced, “or for five.”
“Five months?” Lane suggested. Rosalie watched their gaze zero in on a cute girl across the room. “How about five hours? Five minutes?”
Rosalie nudged them with her elbow.
“You,” she said, “are far too young to be this cynical.”
Lane just laughed.
When the town car dropped her off it was almost 3AM. She’d asked the driver to drop her off at the end of the street, enjoying the fresh air as she swayed down the sidewalk, the taste of champagne lingering on her tongue. It had been a stunning wedding and a glorious night. She’d been supposed to stay the night in one of the many, many spare rooms at Savannah and Brynn’s mansion but she’d found herself longing for home.
She’d once imagined her own wedding, back when she was very young. It had felt like a weird concept, even back then, but she’d liked the idea of that moment, when the whole party was wrapped up and the guests had all gone. She imagined what it might feel like, waking up the next morning and knowing you had your person, your partner in crime, right there to hold your hand forever. Knowing you’d both go back to your lives stronger because there wasn’t one thing you’d ever have to face alone again.
That wasn’t how relationships had ever felt to Rosalie. Instead, it felt exactly like being alone - even with someone right there in her bed - only lonelier, for never feeling seen.
She thought of Savannah and Brynn’s wedding in four months and the other news Savannah had whispered in her ear tonight, her tone hopeful, despite all the loss that had come before. She could already see it, Savannah glowing with new life, flowers in her hair, kissing Brynn under the summer sky.
Rosalie wiped back an unexpected tear at the same moment she heard a small squeak. She frowned. The squeak sounded from inside a local coffee shop’s dumpster, out on the curb for collection. She wasn’t the biggest fan of rodents, but she didn’t think they should get tipped into a trash compactor either.
When the sound came again, she flinched and gripped the dumpster handle. Mindful of her expensive red dress, she heaved open the lid, waiting for whatever it was to come scurrying out, but nothing moved.
She peered in and a rustle came from the far corner, something struggling to move. She gasped. It wasn’t a rodent, but a kitten: filthy, small and bedraggled, the remains of a plastic bag tangled around its hind legs.
“Oh,” she whispered and it squeaked again as she reached gingerly into the trash to pull it out. The little creature mewed, nestling against her neck for warmth as she struggled to free it. “Okay,” she said, trying to stay calm as the slightly sticky, probably flea-ridden and definitely bad-smelling little thing butted its head against her chin. She pulled it away and looked at it in the dark. It looked… bad.
“Oh buddy.” She flinched. “You’re so…gross. Okay. Okay, we got this.”
She walked the rest of the way home trying not to let the creature touch her face, then with extreme care bathed the little thing in her bathroom sink, a scenario the creature did not appreciate remotely. After applying a couple of bandaids to her fingers and then towel drying the kitten, she surveyed it as it hungrily demolished a small can of tuna she’d found. Honestly it didn’t look a whole lot better even after the bath. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was starting to feel hungover or if it really just was the weirdest cat she’d ever seen. There was also an odd little kink in his stumpy tail that made her wonder if it was broken.
Both utterly exhausted, she fell asleep to its outsized rumbling purr as it pushed its face into her neck from beside the pillow.