Then came the part that seemed like nothing at the time. Later, after Ryan was gone, its meaning would change, as if by magic, every time Katie thought about it:
Ryan, dark-haired and grinning, took Katie’s hand, spun her once, twice, three times, to a power ballad she remembered from age fourteen, an art-class infatuation, a fumbled encounter behind the shop room, then another girl and her heart breaking.
Before she knew it, though, Hailey was grabbing him back, a wink and a gleam in her eye like, Don’t you dare, he’s mine!
At some point, she lost Devon, but there was Eric talking to Gwen Weaver on the chilly loading dock, sharing a purloined cigarette and laughing like they’d been shouting for hours.
Everyone was smoking, it turned out. She’d even caught Ryan sneaking a puff in the hallway, the back door propped open, the cold air giving her goose bumps.
Ryan, who smelled like soap and had the nicked, brambled hands of a cook.
And she’d ended up in some long conversation with someone about something, and she never could remember anything about it after except the feeling of sticky, pineapple-streaked wall against her back.
Finally, she and Eric shared one last dance before everything broke, and pressing against his shirt she smelled candle wax and a dozen perfumes; he was teasing her about the coconut husk furred onto her chest from the dance with Greg Siefert, or Bobby, or Ryan, who’d since been charged with making something called a momtini, carrying a tray for all the ladies.
“He is a momtini,” whispered Kirsten Siefert, nearly rubbing her hands.
Crushed cocktail parasols gathered on the sills and crumpled leis collected in the corners like parade remnants catching on her feet, heels too high, too narrow, and she found Devon in the restroom, washing her face, washing all the performance makeup away.
Turning to her mother, she looked oddly blank.
For a second, Katie wondered about that look, but the second passed, and then there was more dancing, and more visits to the punch bowl, and the next morning she would puzzle over when she’d even been outside, finding grass blades between her toes, dried mud on the pad of her foot.
The ride home, Devon covered her head and wouldn’t speak, and they thought she probably had had more than one glass of punch but left her to it.
And then Drew, gorged on coconut cake, threw up into Katie’s hands.
But none of it mattered, everything felt wonderful and she and Eric laughed and laughed.
Back in the bedroom, Eric standing over her, his face hidden in the dark.
“Wait, wait,” she asked, remembering what Greg had told her, “did you get into an argument with that dad after the meet? The creep who called Devon that name? In the parking lot, did you—”
“Who told you that?” he said, laughing, his hands hooked around her legs, throwing her back on the bed. It reminded her of when they first met, that laugh. She’d sold him cotton candy at the Kiwanis fair.
That was more than sixteen years ago, and now, sometimes, they didn’t see each other for days other than in the blue hours of late night and predawn. They knew each other most deeply through body-warmed sheets and the tangle of half dreams.
You might think it would doom the marriage, unless you pondered it for one more beat. Consider the prospect that your spouse could forever remain slightly other from you, his body never too familiar, his hands on you almost wholly to seduce you. You were mysterious to him and he was mysterious to you.
Other moms, in the confidences of long huddles in the stands, waiting in line for the restroom during a meet, would confess sexless stretches lasting for months, barren and mutual. Katie could only nod kindly and say nothing because Eric still felt like her secret lover, furtive and surprising, a bristly mouth on her neck, half-asleep murmurs and, in the morning, the soft welt on her shoulder, the lingering shiver of her legs.
They had been together more than sixteen years, so long, and a part of it was this. They had shared it long past when all the other couples they knew had stopped sharing anything other than credit-card debt and casual, or focused, resentment.
Strangely, in part it was because of Devon. They shared so much in sharing her, her endeavor. She held them together, tightly.
The morning after the party, Katie turned over and saw a violet smear on her pillowcase.
It took her a while to remember. After midnight, trundling Drew across the ice-ribbed parking lot and into the car, Eric still inside, trying to find Devon, saying final good-byes.
A tap on the shoulder and it was Ryan Beck again. Smiling that chipped-front-tooth smile.
“Devon’s?” he asked. Dangling from his open palm was a familiar lei, purple and green orchids, petals shredded. “I found it over by the dumpsters.”