Page 28

The small stained glass window in the center of Sullivan’s front door glowed from the foyer light within, her concession to seeing the front steps without adding another light bulb to the city’s light pollution.

She held the door for Kia. After living in the house like a ghost—not even a toothbrush in the bathroom—Kia had started to leave a few things around: AirPods on the kitchen island, a sweet-smelling hair cream in the bathroom.

It was hard to remember that this fun wouldn’t last and that a lawsuit was hanging over their heads.

Sullivan should go to bed with a quick good night.

“You want a glass of wine?” she asked instead. “Red or white?”

“Got anything pink in a can?”

Sullivan glanced over her shoulder. Kia grinned. She was cute.

“Ugh. I’ll Grubhub you some.”

“I’ll have red.”

Sullivan poured two glasses and picked up the bottle. She gestured to the living room. She opened the slider to the porch, letting in the cool night air.

“This will be wasted on you,” Sullivan said as they sat at opposite sides of a love seat.

They should have sat on the sofa. But they sat down at the same time, as if they always sat a few feet apart on the comfortable furniture, Kia with her feet tucked under her, Sullivan with one arm draped over the back of the sofa.

Kia dabbed her lipstick on the back of her hand before swirling the wine and taking a sip.

“Bordeaux. Late 2010s. You should have kept it another five years. It’s too young.” Kia reached for the bottle Sullivan had set on the coffee table. “Chateau Cazauviel 2017. I’m right.”

“Lucky guess.”

“I know my wines, Chef. I can still cook paté en cro?te. Even if you haven’t learned how to deep-fry a tursnicken.”

“I will never cook tursnicken,” Sullivan said.

“But I do like the idea that Chef Guillaume’s best student is churning out turducken knockoffs.

You should drop into the alumni newsletter with that.

Serve him right for all that You will never be a true chef until you’ve cooked at Restaurant Mirazur . ”

Kia laughed. “I was his favorite.”

“I will not admit that you were the best.”

“You don’t need to,” Kia said in a teasing, singsong voice. “I know.”

Sullivan swatted the air in Kia’s direction. “Brat.”

They sipped their wine. A comfortable silence gathered around them. Finally, Kia pulled a mustard-yellow scarf out of a pocket in her hoodie and wrapped her hair up as if getting down to business.

“Want to look at the pictures Deja took? See what you want me to post?”

A sip of wine burned the back of Sullivan’s throat. Kia was right. It was too young.

“Can you just not tell me anything about them?”

They’d had fun at the Tennis Skort. She didn’t want to see it curated for social media, her real memories filtered, emphasized, or erased for someone else.

Aubrey’s posts cascaded through Sullivan’s mind.

“Sullivan?” Kia placed her open hand in the space between them. “Why do you hate social media?”

“Fake news. FOMO. The servers have a huge environmental impact even if the companies say they’re using sustainable energy.”

“The day we got married, Opal pulled me aside and suggested that if I put you on social media, she’d kill me.”

“Opal would never say that.”

“She didn’t say it. Opal didn’t tell me what happened. She just said you had a bad experience.”

Sullivan should brush it off. Bad experience.

No big deal. The memory of Kia’s fingertips lingered on her face, and her body was a longing, lonely creature that didn’t know anything about the legacy clause and just wanted to feel Kia touch her again.

She wanted to hear Kia tell her she was perfect exactly as she was.

“I was with a woman, Aubrey. She was the first woman I’d dated seriously.

It was all new, and it was… great. She liked all the same things I did.

She loved backpacking, and she worked for Blue Sky Clean Air, an environmental nonprofit.

And she loved social media. At first, we’d go hiking out of cell service, and when we got back to the car, she’d post a hundred pictures.

“Then one day we were camping. We always brought a few of those survivalist food packs. We didn’t eat them.

They were just for emergencies. But I made one to see if it was any good.

It was so bad, it was funny. We took videos of each other’s reaction as we tasted it.

She’s so animated. Her smile was the best. When she smiled at me…

but this time, she made the video look like I’d served it to her for real.

She pretended to like it, and then when I turned around she made this great face.

Have you ever seen someone taste Malort for the first time? ”

Kia chuckled. “Yeah. It’s terrible.”

“It was like that, and the video was funny, and we both cracked up about it. And it went low-key viral. She loved that. So she kept making these videos. They started out sweet. Just things we did that she thought were cute and funny. Our handle was Love Sullivan n Aubs.”

Sullivan stroked the velveteen surface of a throw pillow Aubrey had bought to add color to living room scenes. So many times she’d longed for real affection, only to find Aubrey holding a camera to capture their kisses.

“At first, I was flattered. She posted nice stuff about us. But then everything became about her social media. We had to redo everything because I didn’t stand right or look happy enough.

Or I had to change clothes because my sweatshirt wasn’t on-brand.

It felt like everything I did was wrong.

I lost my confidence. I’d never lost my confidence before that. ”

“Not even by point six percent?”

Sullivan’s hand rested on the back of the sofa, and Kia covered it gently with her own, as if to let Sullivan know that her teasing was just a way of saying she cared.

She was saying, I can tease you because you’re strong, because you’re still you .

Kia’s skin was warm, and Sullivan felt that warmth suffuse her body, like Kia could keep her safe.

Sullivan turned her hand over so she was holding Kia’s.

She half expected Kia to pull away, but instead Kia stroked Sullivan’s wrist with her thumb, looking at her tenderly.

“No. Not even when a ridiculously talented prodigy beat me by point six percent.”

“Good.” Kia squeezed Sullivan’s hand. “What happened then?”

“Aubrey quit her job to become an influencer. She wasn’t making a lot of money, but the restaurant supported us fine.

That wasn’t the problem. The thing was her channels became everything to her.

We stopped having sex. Why do it since we weren’t putting it online?

All I wanted was for her to kiss me or touch me or give me a compliment or a present that wasn’t for her reels. ”

Tears suddenly threatened Sullivan’s eyes.

“Oh, Sullivan.” Kia’s expression was soft with kindness.

“It ended when I had a celebration of my grandfather’s life.

I like to do it once a year. Some friends of his come over.

Miss Brenda makes his favorite biscuits.

We say a few words about him, read from his botanical journals.

He wrote the most beautiful things about the forest. He was really important to me.

Is really important to me. I was feeling sadder than usual.

I don’t know why. I told her I needed her present with me.

No phone. No videos. No social media. I did not want to be Love Sullivan n Aubs. ”

“And she put it online,” Kia said with an infinite gentleness.

“Yep. She said sadness was trending. Other influencer couples had posted crying videos and they’d gone viral.

I didn’t find out until Nina saw it. She knew I’d told Aubrey not to film.

And the comments people had posted were actually really sweet.

A lot of people who’d known my grandpa commented.

It’d almost have been okay, except when I told Aubrey I’d seen it, she had all these bullshit excuses.

She hadn’t asked me to change anything about the day.

I should have noticed her filming at the ceremony.

Why did I care that she was filming; I never looked at our feed anyway?

This was her dream, and I just treated it like some annoying hobby.

We fought that night. I hate fighting. Finally, I asked her if social media disappeared, and there was no Love Sullivan n Aubs, would she want to be with me.

She said it was a stupid question because social media wasn’t going away. ”

“Did she say she loved you?”

“Not that night. She said it when she realized I was breaking up with her the next morning; she said it over and over. I almost took her back. I was just about to. Then she said, What happens with Love Sullivan n Aubs if we break up? She was more upset about losing her influencer status than she was about losing me.”

Kia’s arms were around her before Sullivan had drawn another breath.

“I will dox her until she leaves the country.”

“Don’t get yourself arrested. She’s not worth it.”

Kia leaned in and caressed the back of Sullivan’s head where the barber shaped her hair into a short undercut.

It was an intimate touch, the kind of touch Sullivan would never expect—or want—from Opal or Nina.

Sullivan felt a wash of pleasure and release.

Her shoulders loosened. Kia squeezed her closer.

“Alice Sullivan, you are so easy to love.”

It felt like Kia was trying to press the words into Sullivan’s heart with her embrace, like she wanted to hold Sullivan and the sentiment in her hands until they melted together and Sullivan believed her entirely.

Then Kia froze as if she’d realized she’d crossed a line. She pulled away. Sullivan wanted to pull her back. Say it again. Hold me.

“I get why you don’t like social media,” Kia said with a nervous cough.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s your job.”