He had me. I laughed and dipped my finger in the glowing green bowl he held out, a vintage jadeite saltcellar, piled high with flat, crystalline flakes that melted on my tongue and tasted like hair spray. I dipped again as we started chatting—and again—and again—until the world was a glassed-in ripple, warm as the tropics.

I plucked a section of vine from the wall. It vibrated with life. Tyler helped me circle the blossoming green rope of it into the cloud of my hair like a crown, and then we wandered into the backyard, an acre of clean-cut grass surrounded by stone walls overflowing with lilac and honeysuckle bushes. There was a huge bonfire in the center and the lawn was dotted with lounge furniture, most of it aggressive and modern looking, save for a huge vinyl blob covered in pillows. I took off my shoes to let the cold, soft grass grow between my toes, and it did, in long, silky tufts. Northern grass. Like everything up here, it was better, because it got to die and come back fresh. Everything in Florida is made out of knives, because there are no seasons and nothing and nobody ever leaves.

The garden wall was a pile of fieldstone, like an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture; it probably was one, I realized. When Tyler climbed on it I clapped my hand over my mouth in shock.

“Don’t worry. It won’t break.”

I refused to follow, and, drawn instead to the vinyl blob and its nubby wool pillows, I sprawled across one end. The pianos played Haydn, and the notes scattered over us in bursts, like handfuls of birdseed falling on cobblestones.

I curled my mouth into a circle and took clean, cold breaths while the gentle hum of the party waved around me like a nest of seaweed. I remember feeling the way the embroidery of my dress scratched against the tops of my thighs, and the way the vinyl stuck to my skin, the woolly fur of the pillows in my arms. I was so grateful to be surrounded by people—by their noises and their sneezes and their footsteps in their jeweled slippers—that it almost didn’t matter that it all belonged to Max.

*  *  *

Though it felt like days, I lingered on the blob for no more than fifteen minutes until Tyler lay down on the other end, our heads nearly touching, like a capital A. I became very aware of him, of the shape of him, though I didn’t dare look in his eyes.