Page 111 of Main Event

They came in together with my parents, but within five minutes, they’ve claimed the corner of the living room as theirs—talking about something that makes them both laugh until Kelly has to wipe her eyes.

I don’t interrupt. That safe corner is theirs tonight. It always will be.

Shane arrives with Will, and the two of them fill the kitchen the way they always do—Shane running at full volume, Will taking up physical space, the two of them reverting immediately to whatever dynamic exists between people who have known each other for years and don’t need to perform it. They’re good with my family, in the easy way of people who know how to be in a room. My mother likes Shane immediately and tells him so, which delights him.

Mack finds a chair in the corner of the living room and holds court. That’s what Mack does at parties. He sits and lets people come to him, and they always do. At some point, my father sits beside him, and they’re still talking when the cake comes out.

The cake is from the place on Peachtree that Andi mentioned once, five months ago, in passing. She said the lemon one was the best cake she’d ever had and then immediately said she didn’t know why she was talking about cake. I wrote it down.

She sees it and looks at me.

“You remembered,” she says.

“I remember everything about you,” I say.

Katie lights the candles. Christina starts singing before anyone is ready, which is her particular gift—forcing the moment to happen before anyone can think too hard about it. Everyone joins in, some better than others. Mack’s version is somewhere between a growl and a hymn, Shane’s is genuinely good, and Will’s is surprisingly tender.

Andi stands in the middle of her living room, surrounded by her people. She looks at the candles and closes her eyes.

I don’t know what she wishes for.

I know she blows out every candle on the first try.

The room goes up—the cheers of a group of people who are glad to be in the same place at the same time, a moment that is rarer than it should be and more valuable than most things.

Later, when most people have gone, and the kitchen is being cleaned up by Brandon and Shane, who are arguing about the right way to load a dishwasher, Andi finds me on the deck.

She leans against me. I put my arm around her.

“Twenty-nine,” she says.

“How does it feel?” I ask.

She thinks about it. Genuinely considers it, the way she does everything she decides is worth considering.

“Like I earned it,” she says.

I pull her in.

“You did,” I say. “Every single day of it.”

The Atlanta night does what it does in late October—cool enough to need each other’s warmth, clear enough to see the stars over the pool. Inside, Brandon wins the dishwasher argument. Mack and my father are still talking. Kelly and Deja have moved to the kitchen table with their cake.

Andi is twenty-nine years old.

She’s alive. She’s here. She’s surrounded by people who chose her.

That’s everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ANDI

Marin doesn’t disappear completely.

That surprises me, actually. I expected her to run the way she did the night Brandon walked out of her apartment—clean, overnight, no forwarding address. She’s too good at managing situations to stay in one that’s turned against her.

But she surfaces on Thursday, the day the second piece runs.