The board game ends with Camilla declaring herself the winner despite everyone else having a different opinion about that.
"I won," she announces, stacking the cards into a messy pile.
"You literally knocked the board over in the last round," Juan points out.
"That was strategic."
"That was your elbow."
"Same thing."
Daniel starts gathering the game pieces and Anna helps him, sorting the dice into the small plastic cup while Camilla begins arguing her case to anyone willing to listen. Alma is already on her feet, collecting empty glasses from the table.
I stand up and take two from her hands before she can protest.
"I've got it," I say.
She gives me a look like she is going to argue but then decides against it and goes back for the rest.
Everyone falls into the rhythm of cleaning without anyone actually organizing it. Juan folds the blanket that somehow ended up on the floor. Anna finds the cardboard box for the game and starts fitting everything back inside. Daniel picks up an empty juice bottle and just stands there holding it, looking around for a bin.
"Bin is in the kitchen," Alma calls without looking at him.
"How did you know I was confused?"
"Because you always look like that."
He makes an offended face and disappears into the kitchen.
Someone connects their phone to the Bluetooth speaker to put on background music while they clean. That someone is Camilla. Which explains what happens next.
The first three seconds are fine. A normal song. Something upbeat.
Then Camilla bumps her phone while reaching across the counter and suddenly the playlist shuffles.
A slow song comes on.
Not aggressively slow. Just that gentle, warm kind of slow that creeps into a room and changes the temperature of everything in it.
Everyone pauses.
"Oh no," Juan says flatly.
Camilla's face does something complicated. Then she grins.
"Oh yes."
"Camilla, no—"
She has already grabbed his hand.
"Camilla—"
"Move your feet, Juan."
"I don't dance."
"Everyone dances."
"I physically do not dance. It's medical."
She ignores him entirely and pulls him into the small space between the couch and the coffee table, which is not exactly a dance floor but Camilla has never cared about logistics. Juan looks like a man facing something much worse than a slow song but he is also, very clearly, not going to win this.
He puts one hand on her waist with the energy of someone defusing a bomb.
She puts both arms around his neck immediately.
He sighs.
She smiles.
They start swaying.
Daniel watches from the kitchen doorway still holding the empty juice bottle. Anna is standing beside the shelf where she finished packing the game away. They look at each other for a second.
Daniel sets the bottle down on the counter.
"Don't look at me like that," Anna says.
"I'm not looking at you like anything."
"You have a face."
"I always have a face."
She laughs despite herself and he crosses the room toward her. He holds out his hand in that easy way he does everything, like embarrassment is not something that exists for him.
Anna takes it.
They find their own small corner of the living room and Anna rests her head against his shoulder and that is that.
Which leaves Alma and me standing near the table with nowhere obvious to look.
She picks up a glass. Puts it back down. Looks at the speaker. Looks at Camilla and Juan. Looks at Daniel and Anna. Then she turns to me with an expression that is trying very hard to be casual and not quite managing it.
"Well?" she says. "Are we just going to stand here?"
I blink.
She raises her eyebrows.
"Alma—"
"Don't make it weird, Gael."
"I'm not making it weird."
"You're standing there like someone asked you to solve a math problem."
I exhale slowly. From the couch, Lucas would have had something unbearable to say right now but he is not here and I will be grateful for that later.
I close the space between us.
She steps forward at the same time and we nearly crash into each other and she laughs, quickly, surprised at herself. I catch her arm before anyone goes stumbling into the coffee table.
"Okay," she says, still smiling. "Try again."
I put my hand on her waist. She puts hers on my shoulder. Her other hand finds mine and her fingers settle between mine like they have done this before.
We start moving.
It is not graceful. The space is too small and the table is at an inconvenient angle and at one point her sock slides a little on the floor and she grabs my shoulder harder for balance and mutters something under her breath that I do not catch.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing. Just. Socks. Bad choice."
"You could take them off."
"Then I'll be shorter."
"You're already short."
She pinches my shoulder.
I bite back a smile.
From across the room Camilla is watching us with the most obvious expression in human history. Juan has noticed too but he has the sense to look away. Daniel is not looking because he is saying something quiet to Anna but I catch him glance over once.
Alma doesn't notice any of them.
She's looking somewhere around my collarbone, not quite at my face. Her hand is warm in mine. She smells like vanilla again, the same soft warm scent from earlier, and I become very aware of how close we are standing.
The song continues.
She shifts her weight and I adjust without thinking, following her movement the way you do when something becomes natural before you realize it.
"Your cousin is nice," she says after a while.
"Daniel?"
"No, your other cousin."
"I only have one cousin."
"Then yes, Daniel."
I glance over at him. "He is tolerable."
"Anna is lovely."
"She seems it."
Alma tilts her head slightly. "She kept looking at him like he was the most interesting person in the room."
"He has that effect on people. He'll explain how he does it if you ask him. For about forty five minutes."
She laughs softly. The sound goes straight through me.
"You and him are so different," she says.
"I'm aware."
"Not in a bad way. Just. He takes up a lot of space. You know?"
I don't answer that. Partly because I don't know what to say. Partly because she is right and I have never minded it, the way Daniel fills a room and I prefer the edges of one.
"You're better at being quiet," she says, like she is still working it out. "Like comfortable quiet. Not uncomfortable quiet."
"Is there a point in there somewhere."
She looks up at me then.
"You're easy to be around," she says simply. "That's the point."
I hold her gaze for a second then look away first.
She rests her head against my shoulder without announcement. Just leans in, like it is not a significant thing, like we have done this before too.
My hand tightens slightly on hers without permission.
The table is still at an inconvenient angle. The song is still playing. Camilla whispers something to Juan and I catch the tail end of it, not the words but the tone, and I know without looking that she is saying something about us.
I choose not to care about that right now.
"I always feel safe with you," Alma says.
It is quiet. Casual. Like she is commenting on the weather or the food she ate earlier. Like it is just a fact she is reporting.
But it lands somewhere in my chest and stays there.
I don't say anything immediately. I don't trust what might come out if I do.
"Since when?" I ask eventually, because I need to say something and that is the safest thing I can find.
She thinks about it. "I don't know. A while."
"You have terrible judgment."
She pinches my shoulder again, harder this time. "I'm serious."
"I know."
"So you could just say thank you like a normal person."
"Thank you."
She makes a sound that is somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "Hopeless."
I spin her once, slowly, just to interrupt whatever direction that conversation was going. She wasn't expecting it and she grabs my hand with both of hers to catch herself, laughing again, genuinely surprised.
"Warning next time," she says.
"Where's the fun in that."
She shakes her head but she is smiling and she steps back into the slow movement again like we never stopped.
Across the room Daniel has dipped Anna dramatically and she is laughing loudly trying to pull herself back upright. Camilla starts clapping. Juan looks at Daniel with the expression of a man who respects someone and resents them for it equally.
"I want a dip," Camilla announces.
"Absolutely not," Juan says.
"Daniel did it."
"Daniel has a different relationship with physics than I do."
The song shifts. Still slow, just a different one. Nobody moves to turn it off.
Alma lifts her head from my shoulder but she doesn't step back. She tilts her face up and she is close enough that I can see the small exhaustion still sitting under her eyes from earlier in the evening, the softness that only appears when she has stopped performing for anyone.
"Thank you for tonight," she says. "Dinner. The food in the basket. The drive."
"You were asleep for the drive."
"I know. That's how comfortable I was."
There she goes again. Saying things like they are small when they are not small to me at all.
"Your mother is wonderful," she adds.
"She would adopt you immediately if I let her."
"Maybe let her."
"Absolutely not."
She looks almost offended. "Why not."
"Because then you would be my sister and that would be—" I stop.
Alma stares at me. "Would be what?"
I search for a word. Any word that is not the word. "Complicated."
She narrows her eyes. Not like she's suspicious. More like she is turning the word over in her mind and examining it.
"Complicated," she repeats.
"Yes."
She seems to accept that, or at least decide not to press it, and she rests her head back against my shoulder.
My exhale is slow and quiet.
Daniel catches my eye over the top of Anna's head. He does not say anything. He just gives me a look, the kind that has a full paragraph behind it, and then very deliberately looks away.
I hate him sometimes.
The song keeps going and we keep moving in that small impractical space, occasionally navigating around Camilla and Juan, once almost stepping on a stray game piece neither of us noticed on the floor.
Alma steps on it first.
"Ow."
"Are you okay?"
She hops slightly. "It's a dice. Who leaves a dice on the floor."
"Daniel," I say without hesitation.
"Daniel!" she calls.
"I'm not listening," he calls back.
She grumbles something and I reach down and find the dice near her foot and pocket it before she steps on another one.
"Thank you," she says.
"See. Useful."
She smiles. "Very useful."
The song ends.
A beat of silence before the next one starts, something upbeat this time, and the mood in the room shifts immediately. Camilla cheers and spins herself away from Juan. Daniel lifts his arms like someone celebrating a victory. Anna starts laughing again at nothing.
Alma and I separate.
Not quickly. Not like something snapping. Just the natural way the moment fades and you step back into the world where everyone else exists again.
She smooths the front of her sweater. I look at the wall for half a second.
"Okay," Camilla announces, falling backward onto the couch, "that was the best accidental playlist in history."
"Your elbow deserves a trophy," Juan tells her.
She nods seriously. "It really does."
Alma picks up the stray glass from before, the one she put down when the song started, and heads toward the kitchen. She pauses at the doorway and looks back at me.
Not for long.
Just a second. Just enough.
Then she smiles and disappears into the kitchen and I hear the tap running and the sound of her humming something quietly, just to herself, not for anyone.
I stand in the living room in the space where we were dancing thirty seconds ago.
Daniel appears beside me with a glass of water he absolutely did not need.
"Not a word," I say before he opens his mouth.
He holds up both hands. "I was just going to ask if you wanted water."
"No."
"Right." He sips from his own glass. "So how long has this been going on."
"Daniel."
"What? It's a simple—"
"Go stand somewhere else."
He grins. The infuriating effortless grin that has been annoying me since we were eight years old.
"You were looking at her," he says, "like she invented the concept of standing in a room."
"I will end you."
He pats my shoulder and walks away still grinning.
From the kitchen I hear Alma's voice asking if anyone wants tea.
Everyone says yes.
I sit on the couch and look at the ceiling for a moment and think about the word safe.
She said it so easily.
Like it was already decided. Like it had been true for a while and she was just reporting it now, the same way you mention the weather when you step outside.
I feel safe with you.
And the unbearable thing, the thing I cannot say to anyone, not even Daniel who already suspects everything, is that she has no idea what she does to me when she says things like that.
None. Zero. Absolutely none at all.
"Gael!" Alma calls from the kitchen. "Tea or coffee?"
"Coffee," I call back.
"At this hour?"
"Yes."
A pause.
"Okay but if you can't sleep tonight that's not my problem."
And somehow even that, even just that, makes me smile.