Completely (New York 3)

“How many?” Kal asked.

“No.” Cath shook her head. “That’s not the question. The real question is, how many times have I had to use them? And the answer to that question is four. Three times, I took that bus. I love that bus.” She took one last drag off the cigarette, snuffed it out, and hopped down off the wall. “I need to eat something.” She pulled Rosemary into a brisk hug, bussed her cheek, and said, “I love you guys. Thanks for coming to my wedding. Get the hell out of here before they eat you alive.”

She swished back into the kitchens, her dress trailing in the dirt.

“I wish she’d been around earlier in my marriage,” Rosemary mused. “I could have used a friend like her.”

“So…this bus?”

“Right. The bus. It’s at the end of the drive.”

“It’s a long drive.”

Rosemary leaned down to unfasten her shoes. “We’ll have to run.”

“Won’t that hurt your feet?”

Shoes dangling from her fingers, she smashed her mouth onto his and squeezed his bum. “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Come on.”

They rounded the corner of the house. The party had spilled out into the circular driveway and across the front garden, heated with portable elements, illuminated with twinkling lights. Rosemary spotted her daughter and Winston. She saw May and Ben in the crowd, alongside various ex-relatives from the years of her marriage.

More than one person called her name, but nothing had the power to pull her back when everything she wanted was in front of her.

Crumbled bits of asphalt bit into the soles of her feet.

The night air rushed over their skin, and they huffed and panted, running through the stitch in her side, through Kal’s laughter and her own ecstatic excitement, toward the lights of the oncoming bus.

Together. Alive.