His fingertips squeezed my hips, firm and grounding. “She did. It’s okay. They’re happy tears. She’s thanking you.”
My entire body relaxed.
On stage, Birdie squared her shoulders, the tears refusing to stop but her voice finding a strange, beautiful strength. “You probably can’t tell from these pictures,” she started, gesturingupward and outward at the glowing shots of me and Adam, “but my sister absolutelyhatesgetting her photo taken. Not in a false modesty way, she actually breaks out in hives if she has to be in front of a camera. But the shoot was almost cancelled and she did this…” Her voice snagged on a sob, but she smiled through it. “She did this for me, because that’s what she does. It’s what she’s always done, since she was four years old when our mom died and our dad left us.”
There was a wave of gasps and awes, and although I appreciated my sister’s words, I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Right now.
Birdie took in a shaky breath. “Billie stepped up. She raised us, even though she was barely older than we were. She gave up her childhood, her teen years, her twenties, and even her early thirties for us, and neveroncecomplained. No one asked her to do it, and I don’t think we could ever thank her enough. So, I’m telling you now, Sissy, thank you.” She sniffed and turned back to the crowd. “People say I’m brave, fearless, strong, and independent. I would be none of those things without my sister’s sacrifices. I never had to worry about anything,ever. I knew I could fail, and fall and have a soft place to land because of Billie. But she never had that. She had to succeed, be the strong one, the steady one, the safe place.” Birdie’s voice broke again as she looked back at me. “Every single thing I am, every award I win, every dress I design and bride who feels the most beautiful, the most confident, the most herself on her wedding day, it’s all because of you. I am onlyme, because I had you. I love you.”
The room was silent at first, perhaps stunned by a rare moment of raw emotional sincerity. Then the applause hit, a rolling thunder across the warehouse, punctuated by the sound of glasses clinking and more than a few sniffles.
Birdie rushed down from the stage and headed straight at me, her heels not slowing down. She threw her arms around my neck. I hugged her back, my eyes misty with emotion.
Bailey popped up beside us, out of nowhere, clutching a glass of champagne in one hand and a crumpled tissue in the other. “I want in on this,” she said, and the next second she was squeezing herself into our embrace, all three of us a single, united mass of siblingness. I could feel Bailey’s tears soak the side of my neck, and Birdie’s hand gripping mine, and for a minute I remembered what it felt like to be a kid again, in a world where the three of us were all we had, and yet, somehow, it was enough.
Knowing this could go on forever if I didn’t stop it, I said, “If either of you get snot on my dress, I’m sending you the dry cleaning bill.”
Both girls started laughing as the editor tapped Birdie on the shoulder and asked her for photos and quotes about her win. She pulled Bailey to tag along with her and I watched them go with more gratitude, pride, and love in my body than I knew what to do with.
I pressed my hands to my stomach and turned to catch my breath and was met with a flood of people, party goers, different industry professionals, stylists, all offering congratulations and compliments. Someone told me I was “an absolute icon of functional trauma” and another person said the photos were “the emotional heart of the campaign.” Agents gave me cards and recommended me hypnotherapists to get over my fear of being in front of a camera because I had a “face for fashion.” I smiled and nodded and made the right noises, letting all of it roll over me. Each one making me feel more and more claustrophobic.
Just when I thought I actually couldn’t breathe, Adam was right there, his arm snaked around waist.
“Do you need to get some air?” he asked, so quietly only I could hear.
No, I needed to throw up, cry, and nap for a week, but air sounded like a good starting point. Without waiting for me to answer, Adam expertly extracted me from the three marketing execs pitching me a reality show with my sisters and gently steered me out of the party, down a back hallway lined with linen-draped serving tables and crates of unused glassware. He found a door at the end, looked inside, and guided me into what turned out to be a storage closet the size of a generous walk-in pantry. It smelled like lemon cleaner and faintly, inexplicably, of rosemary.
He closed the door and pressed me up against it, shutting out the hum of the party. He was standing only a foot in front of me and started to lean down, but then he moved back, all the way to the other side of the room. He leaned against the shelves.
“Better?”
No. It was better when you had me pressed up against the door.
41
ADAM
There wasno force on earth stronger than the gravitational field between me and Billie in that moment.
She stood braced against the closet door. Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow arcs, her cleavage pressing against the fabric. The gentle glow from the light bulb above her was a halo on the crown of her head, picking out a glimmer in her brown hair and the heated flush at her jawline. It had taken every ounce of self-control not to take her up against that door, which is why I’d backed away from her.
She didn’t say anything at first, just kept her eyes trained on a point somewhere over my shoulder, the way you did when you’d just gotten off a roller coaster and needed to convince yourself the ground was real. I let her have the quiet. I curled my hands into fists and wedged them into my pants pockets because I wasn’t sure what else to do with them. If I left them at my sides, I’d touch her. If I crossed my arms, I’d look defensive. I didn’t want her to think I was mad or frustrated. I was just affected.
“Thank you,” she exhaled, breaking the silence after a long moment. Her voice vibrating at a register just above a whisper,but it was a real thank you. Not the kind people said when they didn’t mean it. “That was a lot.”
I nodded, trying to keep the movement subtle, like if I made too much noise, it would fracture the delicate vacuum of the moment. My hands, now officially liabilities, got jammed even further into my pants pockets. I focused on the scuffed linoleum beneath our feet, tracing with my eyes the faded, hexagonal pattern and the small black scuff marks from years of boots, barstools, and probably the occasional mop bucket.
If I looked at Billie right then, I’d come apart. There was a rawness to her that called every protective instinct in me to the surface, but the part of me that wanted to touch her was less noble, less filtered. It was more like a compulsion. So I kept my gaze in the safe zone, in my own little patch of shadow.
The silence between us wasn’t just a pause, it was a living thing, breathing in the warm, closet-flavored air. I could hear her steady exchange of oxygen, the faint catch and release of each exhale, and the shuffle of her shoes as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. There was a kind of intimacy in letting her have the space to recalibrate, like standing at the edge of a wild animal’s territory and waiting for it to decide if you were friend or foe. It didn’t feel awkward, more like necessary. Like if I said the wrong thing, she’d bolt, or worse, fold back into herself and shut me out for good.
So, I stood there, taking up as little psychic real estate as possible, and waited for her to orchestrate the next move. If she needed to talk, I’d listen. If she wanted to pretend we were just friends again, I’d play along. Hell, I’d do the moonwalk in steel-toed boots if it meant she’d feel less exposed.
But the stillness had an expiration date, and when she finally spoke, her voice was a little rough at the edges, smoothed out by the effort of holding it together.
“Why aren’t you talking?” she whispered.
I exhaled and realized, only then, I’d been holding my breath. “I’m giving you time and space.” I was careful to keep my tone neutral, like a babysitter reporting the weather to a nervous parent.
