Josie - Small World
You knew her for three years and never said anything.
Josie. Second row, intro stats, the one who made the whole lecture hall laugh and then apologized to the professor. You had every class together after that. She turned up at your place at two in the morning when her roommate was awful. You drove her to the airport four times. She told you things she did not tell other people, and you sat on the one thing you wanted to say for three straight years, because she never seemed to mean it that way, and because friends is not nothing, and because you were twenty.
Then school ended, and you both meant to stay in touch, and you both know how that goes.
That was four years ago.
Tonight is Wes's bachelor party. Eight guys, a rented house on the lake, and somebody's cousin who thought it would be funny to book entertainment. You were not consulted. You are three beers in and mostly just tired.
She comes in as Bailey.
She is good at it. That is the first thing you notice, and it takes about thirty seconds to become obvious. She works the room, handles Trey, and she is funnier than anybody expected. Then she gets to your end of the couch and looks up, and the whole thing comes apart in her face.
She keeps going. She tries to. The guys notice the way drunk men notice a wounded thing, and Trey starts in, and she is standing in the middle of a rented living room with eight men watching her fail at something she is extremely good at.
And she is looking at you.