Page 8 of Fall into Place

“For me? My stars!” Joni affected a blushing belle. The bag held two bottles—Joni pulled out the first and cracked up laughing. “Oh my god, Party Girl Frosé™! The literal worst bottle of alcohol we ever consumed! Where did you even find this? I thought they recalled it!”

“Oh, they did, you absolutely can’t drink that,” Tess deadpanned. “I had to promise the guy at the shadowy warehouse I would never tell anyone he smuggled this out for me.”

Joni opened the little card tied to the bottle’s neck.

“For fun,” she read aloud, then reached into the bag to pull out the other bottle. “Which means that this one is…”

“For real,” Tess finished the sentence as Joni extracted a gorgeous bottle of Perrier-Jouët rosé champagne, painted with pink anemones.

“Damn, Tess.” Joni looked up at her. “This is like, a really good bottle.”

“Well, you’re like, a really good friend.” Tess tried to hold Joni’s gaze, but her emotions were too intense. After a moment, she looked away.

“Hey, you need a drink!” Joni enthused. “You have to have some blood punch—that was your idea, remember? Nasser found this recipe for sparkling tart cherry punch on Martha Stewart, he’s like totally obsessed with it, it looks so bloody and gross. I can’t tell him how much I love it because he already won’t shut up about how great it is.”

“It sounds delicious.” Tess laughed, but she stopped short when she saw the glass punch bowl on the counter.

“Is something wrong?” Joni asked.

“No, I just—the punch is just sitting out,” Tess said stupidly, not knowing how to explain the way her insides were currently seizing up.

“Yeah, it’s punch, it kinda has to be in a bowl?” Joni said, obviously confused. She ladled some punch into one of those clear plastic cocktail cups. “Try it, you’ll love it.”

“Oh, thanks.” Tess held the cup, stared at the little bubbles fizzing at the surface. This wasn’t a problem. It was ridiculous to act like this was a problem. But she couldn’t make herself take a sip of that fucking punch. She put her cup down on the counter.

“Tess?” Joni asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” Tess cleared her throat. “Totally. I just—you know what? It was a really long train ride. I have to pee.”

“Okay…” Joni said warily. “I assume you remember where it is?”

“Yeah, yeah of course.” Tess smiled too broadly. “I’ll see you in a few, okay?”

But Joni was already being pulled aside by some new group of friends walking through the door and screaming happy birthday. Tess marveled at how many people were here—when she and Joni lived together, it was mostly just the two of them. They went out with people from their cohort often enough, but they never came close to liking anyone else as much as they liked each other. But now Joni was well on her way to finishing her dissertation and graduating, surrounded by people who adored her. Maybe this was the way things were supposed to work out, Tess thought. Maybe it was for the best she’d left when she did.

“Tess? Is that you?”

Tess turned to see Oscar Matson, a quiet guy from her cohort whom she’d never gotten to know all that well. Oscar was Black and chubby with a warm, kind energy; he wore soft gray jeans, a white button-down shirt under a Fair Isle cardigan, and round thin-rimmed glasses that looked like he’d borrowed them from someone’s dad in the ’70s.

“Hey, Oscar.” Tess peered at his getup. “Is that…a vampire outfit?”

“I’m Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows,” he said shyly. “I know he’s not technically a vampire, but he’s my favorite.”

“He’s awesome.” Tess smiled brightly, feeling grateful to be in less complicated company.

“So how have you been?” he asked. “We’ve missed you at school. What have you been up to?”

“Oh, um, nothing that exciting. I moved to Brooklyn, I’ve been working for a hotel. The Georgia? In Williamsburg?”

“Oh yeah? I went there for drinks once, that’s a really cool spot. Makes sense they’d hire you.” Oscar took a sip of his beer, and Tess caught a bit of a flush creeping up his neck. It was absolutely news to her that Oscar had ever noticed anything about her, let alone that he’d formed an opinion on her level of coolness. He looked up at her. “Have you been reading or writing at all?”

Tess laughed. “Only if you count getting into fights on reddit about Blood Feud conspiracies.”

“Wow, so you’re really into this vampire stuff, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re like my brain candy, you know? Total comfort food.”

“Definitely,” he agreed. “And what are the conspiracies? Are the vampires secretly gnomes or something?”