One Night on the Balcony

Valerie had planned on spending her twenty-eighth birthday the way she'd spent the last few: a bottle of wine, her phone face down, and the skyline doing the entertaining. The rooftop terrace belonged to her building, technically shared, practically hers after ten on a Thursday in late August. She was about thirty-four minutes into the night when the door to the stairwell banged open.

"Happy birthday, you antisocial gremlin."

Candi. Of course Candi. She came through the door with two men behind her, one tall with a bartender's easy slouch, one shorter carrying a paper sack full of something cold. Valerie stood up from her folding chair so fast her wine sloshed.

"How did you even get up here?"

"Satya in 4B let me in, because unlike you, I'm charming." Candi held out a small gift bag like it was a peace offering, which from Candi it absolutely was not. "Happy birthday. We're Ambrose and Walt. You remember Ambrose, sort of, from New Year's."

Valerie did remember, faintly, a man mixing drinks in somebody's kitchen and calling everyone by made-up nicknames. Ambrose had a face that suggested he'd heard every line before and enjoyed most of them. Walt just waved the sack. "Beer and popsicles," he said. "The good kind, with the actual fruit."

"Sit down, all of you, God!" Valerie pulled the extra chairs into a rough circle. The string lights overhead buzzed faintly, and somebody three floors down was burning burgers again, the whole night smelling like charcoal and cut grass. "I thought we agreed you'd take me to brunch on Sunday."

"We did. But brunch is for people with futures, and tonight is for people turning twenty-eight." Candi dropped into a chair and crossed her legs, wearing that dress she knew looked illegal under string lights. "Besides, your last three birthdays were wine and wallowing, and I heard about it from Noor, who heard it from you, apparently, because you talk when you drink."

"I do not talk when I drink."

"You narrate. It's worse."

Ambrose laughed out loud at that, a real laugh, and Walt cracked two beers and handed them around like communion. Valerie took hers and pointed the bottle at Candi. "Fine. You're here. Stay. But if you're planning to needle me about my dating life all night, I'll push you off this roof and tell Satya you tripped."

"Oh no, the dating life!" Candi turned to the men like a talk show host. "Six months. That's her record since Dominic. Six months of dating apps and then, I quote, 'they all have weird feet.'"

"They DO have weird feet!" Valerie said, and Walt choked on his beer. "I'm sorry, I have standards. It's a disease."

"It's a hiding place, is what it is." Candi sipped, watching her over the rim. "You used to be fun. You used to be the one who climbed the water tower."

"We were nineteen and I was drunk on one wine cooler, that's your example?"

"It's the foundation of my entire thesis." Candi set her beer down. "My thesis is that you've spent six years being careful because of one bad thing that happened at twenty-two, and it's my birthday gift to you to point out that I'm also twenty-eight and I've stayed reckless and I'm happier."

"You're not happier, you're louder."

Ambrose held up both hands. "I'm going to say, as a neutral party, that I've known her two years and she is exactly as happy as she is loud, meaning a lot."

"Traitor," Candi said fondly.

Walt leaned back, popsicle stick in his teeth, looking between them like a man at a tennis match. "So what's the bad thing from twenty-two? I feel like I need context."

"You don't," Valerie and Candi said together, and then Candi shrugged. "We fought over a guy. Both of us. He chose neither. It was stupid and it worked out perfectly, because look at him."

"Look at him," Valerie agreed, and they clinked bottles over the empty chair between them, which was as close to an apology as either of them had ever gotten or needed.

* * *

The night got warmer instead of cooler, the way late August does, and around midnight the party on the far end of the roof packed up and left, and the terrace went quiet except for the lights and the city hum. Walt found a bottle of Candi's bourbon in the paper sack (of course she'd brought bourbon) and refilled everyone's glasses in the darker corner by the railing, where the skyline stacked up orange and blue.

"Okay," Candi said, settling on the wide bench, her shoulder just touching Valerie's, an old habit neither of them mentioned. "New topic, since we've settled the feet thing. Fantasies. Real ones. Because Walt here has been dying to tell someone his all night."

"I have not been dying," Walt said. "I have been passively willing."

"Tell us," Valerie said, because the bourbon had reached the part of her brain that liked proving Candi's thesis wrong.

Walt turned his popsicle stick over twice. "Hotel staff. Like, a guest calls down and asks for the concierge, and it's all very proper on the phone, and then they open the door and it's all very improper. That's it. That is everything. It's not even the outfit, it's the, like, the pretending to be strangers part."

"That's a good one," Ambrose said, surprised, like he'd expected worse. "Mine's dumber. Somebody watching. Not like, creeps in the bushes. Somebody invited. Somebody I know watching me with someone and enjoying it, and me knowing they're there." He took a drink. "It's a trust thing when you actually think about it."

"It is a trust thing," Candi agreed, unexpectedly serious, and Valerie felt the bench shift under them all, the air going from party-talk to something with weight.

"And you?" Walt asked Candi.

"Winning," Candi said, and everyone laughed, and then she said, quieter, "No, actually, it's a tie. Losing. To someone specific. Where it's a real contest the whole way and then I lose on purpose and we both know it and it doesn't humiliate me, it just... ends the argument. Six years of arguments, gone, in one night."

The lights buzzed. Down in the street a cab door thumped shut.

"That's a fantasy about Valerie," Walt said slowly, "isn't it. It's been about Valerie the whole time."

"See, this is why I bring him places," Ambrose said.

Candi didn't deny it, just turned her head and looked at Valerie, and Valerie looked back, twenty-eight years old and feeling about nineteen on the water tower again, except this time nobody was drunk on one wine cooler and everybody knew exactly what they were doing.

"Say it," Valerie said. "Out loud. If you're going to spend my birthday psychoanalyzing me, say it."

Candi turned to face her fully, knee coming up on the bench. "I think you and I have been having the same argument since we were twenty-two, and I think neither of us has ever once lost it, and I think tonight, on your birthday, with two handsome witnesses and a bottle of my good bourbon, one of us should finally lose." Her mouth curved. "I'm offering to lose."

"That's not losing if you offer," Valerie said, and her voice came out lower than she meant it to.

"Then offer something back."

Ambrose and Walt had gone very still and very interested, and Ambrose raised his glass slightly, like a man toasting a coin flip. Valerie took a breath, felt the humidity sit on her chest, felt the whole warm night leaning in.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. But we do this my way, on my roof, with rules, and nobody rushes anybody. And Candi? You're still going down."

"So what are the rules exactly," Ambrose asked, setting his glass down on the bench arm. "I'd like to know what I'm allowed to do with my hands before my hands decide for me."

"You can watch," Valerie said. "For now. Both of you."

"For now," Walt repeated, and there was a grin under it, but he said it politely, like he was signing something.

Candi laughed, low and real, and leaned back against the arm of the bench so she was facing all three of them. "Ambrose. Come here. You've been hovering for ten minutes and it's ruining the mood."

"The entire job of a bartender," Ambrose said, but he came around the bench and sat on her other side, and he looked at her, a question in it, waiting. "Yes?"

"Yes," Candi said, and he kissed her, unhurried, his hand coming up to her jaw, and Valerie watched because that was the arrangement and because she couldn't not. Candi made a small sound into it and pulled back with her eyes still closed for a second, which was a look Valerie had not seen on her face since the water tower, and it did something warm and unfair to the back of Valerie's neck.

Then Walt's hand landed on Valerie's knee. Light. Just resting there, clearly asking a question.

"Is that okay," he said.

"Yeah," Valerie said. "That's okay." His palm was warm through her dress and she left her leg exactly where it was, and the air on the terrace changed