Page 6 of The Beautiful Collision
“Having fun?” I ask, wrapping her in a hug that I hope might transfer some of my chaotic energy to her.
As usual, her expression does that thing where concern and admiration wrestle for dominance. “How are you paying for this? I just saw the receipt for?—“
“Creative financing.” I shrug, then press a fresh drink into her hands to cut the interrogation off. “Where’s Mike? Being responsible?”
Her face transforms at his name—that particular luminescence of women who’ve found their someone, the person who sees past their facade and chooses to stay anyway—and I love every microscopic change in her features, because if there’s one woman in Pine Barren who deserves to be happy, it’s her.
“Team stuff.” She smiles. “He said to say hi, and that he might stop by later if he can?—“
Movement in my peripheral vision draws my attention from Sophie: a couple stumbling toward my bedroom with unmistakable intent.
“Absolutely not!” I intercept with the efficiency of someone who’s blocked this particular play a dozen times tonight. “No, no, no, no!”
The guy starts to protest. “Come on, just?—“
“Let me explain something.” My smile could etch glass. “Behind my bedroom door is lava, as far as you’re concerned. As far asI’mconcerned, there’s a Frette duvet cover that cost more than your tuition. And if you get any bodily fluids on it, I will make your remaining years at Pine Barren socially radioactive. Clear?”
They retreat toward the balcony.
“You’re terrifying,” Sophie observes.
“It’s a gift,” I say, then notice she’s giving me a look. “What?”
“Nothing. Just… you seem…extratonight.”
Extra.
Like I’m a coffee order.
Like my entire existence can be reduced to an adjective.
I’m extra because ordinary wasn’t enough to get their attention. Because being valedictorian of Chesterson Prep just meant I was meeting expectations. Because choosing nursingover law was considered a character flaw rather than actual character. Because—as my father tells it—I’m not carrying on the Hayes tradition like my siblings, as if emotional constipation is a desirable hereditary trait.
“Maya?” Sophie’s hand on my arm burns through designer silk. “Everything alright?”
“You said we need more ice.” I pull away with another perfectly calibrated laugh. “Can’t have warm Grey Goose.”
I escape before she can press further, navigating through my apartment like a general surveying successful carnage. The flat screen I bought with Daddy’s “emergency expenses only” card displays music videos that would make my mother clutch her pearls.
Two football players square off near my sound system, all testosterone and no sense. One demands more hip-hop, the other insists on house music. A freshman girl hovers between them with the kind of desperation that makes me simultaneously sympathetic and disgusted.
“Gentlemen.” I slide between their bulk, knowing both of them will back down. “You’re both wrong. What this party needs is throwbacks.”
I queue upTalkand watch 200 drunk twentysomethings morph into flirty seventeen-year-olds. The football players stop posturing and start slow-grinding. The freshman girl looks at me like I’ve read her mind, wishing she could read mine.
“How do you do that?” she asks.
I smile. “Practice.”
I don’t mention the years of studying group dynamics like a survival skill. How reading a room became necessary when expressing actual emotions was considered poor form. How family dinners were a knife fight. How I learned to be whoever people needed me to be because being myself was never quite enough.
Someone has to do it.
My father’s words, delivered with surgical precision when I announced my nursing career, proving once and for all that I wasn’t enough. Not ‘I’m proud of you’ or ‘Follow your dreams’, just acknowledgment that someone, somewhere, needs to handle the messy realities of human existence.
Just, preferably, not his daughter.
With the change in tune, bodies move with the kind of uninhibited joy I can only approximate. Even here, hosting the party everyone will talk about tomorrow, I’m performing. I’m the social architect, chaos coordinator, the girl who makes everything more fun just by showing up.
