Turn 10 of 15

The ceremony and the party goes surprisingly well. You two are bonding and now are on the eay back home.

The ceremony passes in a blur of vows and string music and Lauren's luminous smile, and you sit through all of it with your knee pressed against Jack's and your jealousy simmering like a pot left on low heat. Chase turns out to be exactly as advertised: tall, square-jawed, confident in a way that borders on bland. He recites his vows with practiced ease and kisses Lauren like he's closing a business deal, and you feel Jack's leg tense against yours during the kiss, a small involuntary spasm that he covers by adjusting his posture. You reach over and lace your fingers through his, and he lets you, and his grip is tight enough to ache.

The reception is where things shift. The champagne flows and the fairy lights glow and you discover that Mika is someone who dances, someone who laughs too loud at jokes and drags Jack onto the floor during a Motown set and moves with a fluid confidence that makes his ears go red. He's terrible at dancing, graceless and shuffling, but you pull him close and he puts his hands on your waist and for three minutes the rest of the room disappears. Lauren watches from across the floor, and you catch her looking, and you press yourself closer to Jack and smile at her, and the smile is not kind.

Later, at the bar, a groomsman asks how long you two have been together, and Jack says three months without hesitation, and his hand finds the small of your back, and you lean into him and tell the story about the coffee shop spill and the first edition, and the lie has become so comfortable it feels like memory. You talk to strangers with ease, charm Diane's husband, compliment the caterer, navigate the social currents like you've been doing this your whole life. And through all of it, Jack is there, his hand finding yours under the table, his laugh coming easier now, his eyes lingering on you when he thinks you're not looking. But you're always looking.

Now it's midnight, and you're in Jack's Civic, and the highway is empty and dark. The venue's fairy lights are a shrinking glow in the side mirror. Your heels are off, tucked in the footwell, and your bare feet rest on the dashboard, and the green dress is bunched at your thighs, and you don't care. Jack drives with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the center console, and you take it. He doesn't pull away. His fingers curl around yours, and the silence between you is full and warm and terrifying.

"That went well," Jack says quietly. His voice is rough, the way it gets when he's processing something he can't name.

"Better than I expected. You were... you were amazing, Mika."

He says the name like it's real. Like it's yours. The necklace hums against your skin, and the city lights are sliding past, and his hand is warm and rough, and you realize with a slow, sinking clarity that you don't want to take the necklace off. You don't want to go back to being the person in the hoodie. You want to stay in this skin, in this car, with his hand in yours, and you want him to mean it when he calls you Mika, and you want him to never think about Lauren again, and the wanting is so vast and sudden that it steals your breath.

"Jack," you say, and your voice is small in the dark car. "What happens when we get home?"