“We’re going to a party tonight, by the way,” she said, standing up, stretching, her white T-shirt rising to show her tanned, taut stomach. “It’ll be different. More suits. You know, older people. But I promise, you’ll have fun. We’ll both have fun.” She rubbed the fleshy spot between her thumb and the back of her hand. “You’ll meet my boyfriend finally, by the way. He’s excited to see you.” And she flounced over to the bathroom, to take it over before Kitty could. To see you. As if he knew Odilie, as if he had met her before. She followed Peri into the bathroom.

He was still a mysterious figure, someone who seemed to be constantly at the edges of Peri’s existence, extending an arm or exerting his presence in quiet, unobtrusive ways. Odilie had seen pictures of him, on Peri’s phone, on her Facebook, on her Instagram. He was handsome in a classic way, a little too smooth and polished, but that was to be expected.

Once, when Odilie and Peri were walking home from their strip of shore, hair salty and wet, Odilie had asked Peri, “When did you know you were in love?” Odilie herself had been in love once, with a boy she dated the summer after junior year of high school, whom she met at a party. He had been sweet, good to her, she’d felt happy and relaxed in his presence, their conversation never stilted or forced. He was only in Wyneck for a year. He ended up transferring schools for senior year, going up north to Maine. She hadn’t spoken to him since, but she kept up with him on socials, noticed his new girlfriend. It used to give her a pang, of what might have been. But it didn’t anymore. When she thought of him all she recollected was empty space.

Peri had turned to her. “You know, I don’t think it’s all about love. Sure, I love him. I’ve gotten the little butterflies, the mooning, maybe in the very beginning. But now, now it’s more like a partnership. We just work well together. We have our own lives and we collide when we need to.” Collide, Odilie had thought. What a strange way to put it. But she thought she understood what Peri was saying, that if their relationship wasn’t exactly one of convenience, then it was something similar to that. And maybe that was normal in Peri’s world of general exuberance. Not in Odilie’s where the women she’d grown up with craved love, craved affection.