The Beginning of After

family’s yacht club.
    Now Joe was finishing his vodka tonic and going back to the bar, and I was gulping mine to keep up, something warming in my stomach. Then Meg was fluttering down the stairs, two at a time, holding her shoes in one hand and the edge of her dress in the other. She ran up to me, laughing.
    “There you are.” She eyed my drink, then glanced at Joe behind the bar, getting a lesson in vodka-to-tonic ratios from a senior. “I see you’re all taken care of.”
    “Want one?”
    “No. I just wanted you to know where I’ll be.”
    I gave her a dumb look.
    “Manny told Gavin that the limo will be parked on the street,” Meg said, “a couple houses up. Adam’s folks set up a little party area for the limo drivers behind the pool house, so he won’t be there.”
    “So?” Still dumb.
    “So Gavin and I are going to hang out in the limo for a while.”
    I let my mouth fall open wide. It was meant to look like mock horror, but it wasn’t all that mock.
    She just smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and shot back up the stairs.
    Suddenly Joe was at my side. “What was that?”
    “They’re going to hang out in the limo for a while.”
    Joe grinned, as if remembering something. “Let’s go up to the backyard,” he said. He grabbed my hand again, and I was getting used to that feeling of sudden heat, zing , shooting up my arm when he did that.
    Upstairs, the party had gotten crowded, and getting to the backyard took several minutes. We wound our way through people, saying hi where appropriate, careful not to spill our drinks. Finally, stepping through the sliding glass doors onto Adam LaGrange’s brick patio, a blast of fresh air. There were Christmas lights strung all around, reflected in the pool water. A cluster of people around the buffet table provided a low murmur against the music coming from inside and the soft shriek of cicadas.
    I found myself looking around for Julia La Paz, but didn’t see her, and felt relieved.
    Joe’s friend Derek came up to us with two beers, handed one to me, then the other to Joe, and walked away. I just stared at it, amber slightly glowing from the lights.
    “Isn’t there a saying about liquor before beer, or something like that?” I asked.
    Joe just shrugged. “I’ve never been able to tell the difference.” And then he finished his vodka tonic, placed the beer cup inside the empty one, and took a big long sip. Before he was finished, I did the same thing.
    “If I get you drunk, your grandmother will never forgive me,” he said, watching me gulp.
    I swallowed and looked down at the beer again, churned up and foamy, an ocean after a quick summer storm. Already, I was feeling muscles relax that had been so tense for so long, I’d forgotten they even existed. My neck felt soft and my toes started to blend into one another so that I couldn’t wiggle just one at a time.
    Another beer and a half, and we found two lounge chairs by the pool. They leaned us back too far to watch the rest of the party, so instead we stared at the sky. It was only halfway clear, with the stars muted, trying to make themselves seen through a layer of clouds.
    “Wow,” I said. “I can see Orion’s Belt, but not the rest of him.”
    “Where?” asked Joe. “Oh, yeah. You’re right. Where’s the rest of him?”
    “Maybe he left his belt behind and is off doing something else.”
    “Borrowing the Big Dipper to make some soup.”
    “Or hitting on Cassiopeia. I heard he does that.”
    Joe snorted and some beer came out his nose, which made me laugh too. Before I even realized I was doing it, I reached up and wiped the front of his shirt, now dotted with beer spray.
    “I don’t want you to get charged extra by the tux rental place,” I said, avoiding his eyes as I did this.
    “You know what I want?” he said. I still didn’t look at him. “Actually, it’s what I wish.” He paused, and it seemed I had no choice anymore but to meet his gaze.
    “What do you wish, Joe?”
    “I wish Gavin and Meg weren’t in the limo right now.”
    For a second, I didn’t get it. Did he want them here with us? But then it dawned on me. He wanted us to be in the limo. Alone. Without people’s eyes wandering toward us, always scanning to see where we were and what we were doing.
    First, panic again. But I looked at him, him looking back at me as if we’d known each other forever, and I wasn’t afraid anymore.
    “Well, we still have most of the night, right?” It wasn’t me who