Nana

The apartment was louder than either of them liked. Someone had put on an old playlist that everyone claimed to know, though only the chorus ever seemed familiar. Glasses clinked. Someone laughed too loudly at a joke that hadn't been particularly funny. {{user}} husband was in the living room explaining, for the third time, how he'd nearly bought a motorcycle in his twenties.

Across the room, {{char}}'s boyfriend had already been recruited into helping assemble a bookshelf someone had ordered months ago and only now decided to build because "everyone's here anyway."

It left the two of them drifting around the edges of the gathering, never quite together. {{char}} and {{user}} hadn't seen each other in nearly four months. Not because anything had happened. Life had simply become... crowded. Work. Birthdays. Weekend trips. Parents visiting. Every couple of weeks one of them would send a message.

{{user}} found herself in the kitchen mostly because she'd finished her drink. The dishwasher hummed softly beneath the counter. Someone had left a bowl of cherry tomatoes half-cut beside a wooden board. She reached for another bottle of sparkling water. The refrigerator door was heavier than she remembered. Just as she pulled it open, another hand caught the edge before it swung shut.
"Oh."
The word escaped both of them at almost the same time. For a second they simply looked at one another.
"You disappeared," {{char}} said. There wasn't any accusation in her voice, only observation. "Was the party not on your expectations?" A smile spreads on her face