Archive of Our Own

"Stel-la," a voice sang softly in her ear, jogging her out of her sleep. "Hey, Stella."

Stella groaned and tugged the pillow over her head. "'M sleeping," she muttered.

"C'mon, Stell," the voice wheedled. Warm hands with ice cold steel bracelets around the wrists slid under her shirt, against her belly.

Stella bit the pillow to keep from shrieking and let out an indignant squeal. "Quit it, quit it, quit it- it's cold!" she heard herself whine. She squirmed away in her blankets and drew her knees up to protect her abdomen. "C'mon, Ray, I'm tired!"

Ray straddled her ribcage and pitched his voice a little louder. "Get up, get up, get up--"

That got her to sit up.

"Shhh!" Stella hissed. "My parents don't know you're here!"

Ray raised his eyebrows at her. "You're kidding, Stella," he said. "I had no idea. See, I thought my night in your room after we climbed in the window was totally parentally censored--"

"Sanctioned," she corrected. Over the last five years, she'd learned how to tell what he was trying to say when he messed a word up.

"Yeah, that, that's what I said," Ray said. "You got me up here under false pretensions--"

"Pretenses," she said.

"I'm gonna have to dock you some girlfriend points for that," he said, giving her a wide, teasing smile.

She snickered and rolled over. "Oh, shut up," she said. She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and pulled him down next to her. "It's early. C'mon. Just a little longer."

Ray laughed a little and wrapped his arms around her. He propped his chin on her shoulder. "I gotta go, Stell," he said. "I gotta get out of here before your ma comes to get you up for school."

Stella squinted in the general direction of her bedroom window. "It's still dark out," she said, as if that made a difference. It was nearly a week after Thanksgiving now; the sun was down as early as 4:30 and didn't rise again until seven, when she was already supposed to be up and ready to go, if not out the door. It was possible that her mother would be in at any minute.

But Ray was warm, and the bare skin of his chest against her back and neck felt good, and it was freezing outside. It was the kind of day where she wanted him to hide under her bed while she called in sick to school, so they could stay under the covers here all day.

"Five more minutes," she said, curling against him. She tilted her head up and kissed him- once, twice, a third time where she delved her tongue deep into his mouth. Ray moaned into her mouth and rolled over so he was on top of her.

"Jesus, do you ever get enough?" he asked, chuckling under his breath.

They had spent most of the night before at O'Banion's with Ken and his girlfriend, dancing to the Dadaistics and drinking more beer than any one of them should have been reasonably able to stomach. The most sober of the group, thanks to a lost cointoss, Ray had driven her home around two in the morning and helped her scale the side of her house to sneak back into her bedroom. (Stella's curfew these days was ten thirty on school nights, but neither of her parents stayed up to make sure she actually got in then, trusting her to stick to it based on seventeen years of good behavior.) She hadn't meant to beg Ray to stay- but he had been so warm and lovely while he put her to bed that she dragged him onto the mattress with her, and they had both fallen asleep before she knew it.

She had used "just five more minutes" then, too.

"What if I said no?" she asked, kissing his cheekbones.

"Then I might have to stay and think up a real good lie," he said, dropping his head to nibble at her neck. "Maybe I'll just tell 'em I came by for breakfast."

She kissed his lips. "No one would ever buy that."

"Why?" Ray asked. "You always this hard to wake up?"

Stella opted to cuddle more into his arms rather than answer. She was still semi-drunk and very sleepy. She wondered if she could persuade Ray to go back to sleep with her for another hour.

"You make staying out of trouble real hard sometimes, you know that?" Ray groaned.

"I'm worth getting in trouble for, as I recall," she said, nipping at his shoulder.

Ray laughed. "Yeah, yeah," he said. He kissed her ear lobe, then her jaw. "C'mon, Stell. It's not like I want to get out of bed, either. We got things to do."

"Like what?" she asked, making a face. Stella couldn't think of anything on her itinerary for the day that would be worth getting out of bed.

"I gotta go to work," Ray said. "And you gotta go to school and act like you're not hungover so your ma'll let you out two nights in a row. Soolin wants to get us all into Oz tonight, remember?"

Soolin was Ken's girlfriend- a pretty Korean girl from Albany Park that was going to Shimer. Mrs. Kowalski adored her utterly. (Denied by God the daughters she'd wanted, Barbara Kowalski tended towards throwing herself into loving the girls her sons brought home. Soolin was second to Stella only because she hadn't been around as long, and the fact that she was a bona fide college girl was nearly enough to overtake her.) Soolin was a fan of Siouxsie and the Banshees, and modeled her hair and clothing on Siouxsie Sioux. She knew some of the best places to hang out and had a lot of opinions on the best records to buy.

Stella liked Soolin, and Ken, both for themselves and for the side benefits hanging out with them provided- drinks, rides, and passable adult supervision in the eyes of all four parents. (Ken was twenty-one to Ray's eighteen, Soolin a year younger than Ken.) She didn't usually miss an opportunity for her and Ray to go out with the two of them, but even that was proving a poor motivator for letting Ray out of her bed.

"Five more minutes," she repeated.

Ray groaned and buried his face in her shoulder, laughing. "And people think I'm the bad influence." He pressed a series of kisses to the side of her neck, squeezed her one last time, then climbed over her to get out of bed.

"You're going?" she asked, watching him hunt for his shirt in the dark.

"Yeah," he said, pulling it over his head as he found it. "I gotta, Stell, I told you--"

Ray cut himself off abruptly as they both heard the sound of footsteps down the hall.

Wide awake now, Stella sat up in bed, heart pounding. She jerked at the bedclothes to make room for him to get under it. "Hide," she hissed.

Ray didn't need to be told twice. He dove under her bed as if a bear was chasing him. "Shit," she heard him say through her boxsprings. "Shit, shit, shit, shit!"

"Be quiet," she said. She dropped the bedclothes back down and burrowed herself into her blankets, feigning sleep.

"This is not good, Stell," Ray muttered under the bed. "This is not good at all. This is pretty much the opposite of good."

"I know that," she said. "Don't you think I know that? Shush!"

"They're never gonna believe that I spent the night and we didn't do anything," Ray said. "I don't even believe that and I was there."

"If you ever want to do anything when you're spending the night, shut up," Stella said.

Ray shut up.

The footsteps in the hallway paused just outside Stella's door. She rolled over to face away from it, sure that neither of her parents would buy that she was asleep if they could see her face. She tried to force her breathing into a calmer, more sedate rhythm that wouldn't give her away.

The door creaked open little more than a crack, and Stella cut a whiff of her dad's aftershave. That was unusual; getting her out of bed in the mornings was almost always something her mom did. He must be checking to see if she was home and alone, possibly because he'd heard her and Ray talking. Stella held her breath.

The floor creaked a little as her dad peered in the room, but she didn't hear him come any closer. Then the door closed and he continued down the hall. Stella exhaled.

Ray crawled out from under the bed. "Fuck, that was close," he said. He stood up. "Can I go now before I get killed, please?"

Stella raked her nails through her hair. "Yeah, of course." But then something in her brain shoved and she felt a renewed sense of fear. "Wait, no!"

Even without being able to see his face in the dark, she could tell that the look Ray was giving her was incredulous. "Are you kidding?"

"He's going downstairs," she said. "He'll hear your car pull out of the driveway."

Ray groaned. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck." He paced a little, agitated. "What the hell are we gonna do?"

Stella tried to think. It was hard to do, between panic, exhaustion, and lingering alcohol. "Um- okay, is there anything at all that you could've forgotten with me last night that you need before you go to work? Maybe you could just go out the window, move around the front, and say you're just getting here to get something back."

Ray drummed his fingers wildly on his thighs. "My jacket," he said. "You never bring one. I'll just tell him you snitched mine and it's cold and I need it."

"I don't always take your jacket," Stella said.

"Stell," he whined sharply.

"No, right, fine," she said. "That'll work. He'll be annoyed, but he'll buy it. So--"

"Out the window," Ray said. "Okay." He moved over to the window and started prying it open. A sharp breeze filled up the room in under a second, chilling everything so she could see Ray's breath as he started to climb out. Then he groaned again. "Oh, fuck, no."

"What is it?" Stella asked.

"It snowed," Ray said. He drew back away from the window. "It fucking snowed!"

"Well, that's okay," Stella said. "If it snowed, then you really need your jacket."

"No, no, no, Stell," he slapped his hands over his face and rubbed at his temples and forehead, as if he were overwhelmed by migraine. "Your dad's gonna answer the door, he'll see my car, there's gonna be all the- the whatchacallit, the--" He snapped his fingers a few times and then gestured like he was smoothing out a blanket.

Stella felt her stomach sinking with dread as realization set in. "The accumulation," she said.

"Right," he said. "My car's gonna be covered in snow. He's gonna know it's just been sitting there all night."

"Fuck." Stella tugged her pillow over her head to muffle a frustrated noise.

"I can't just wipe it off," Ray added. "It'd take too long. He'd know I was here and parked for a while before I came to the door."

"What are we gonna do?" she asked, rubbing at her own temples and forehead. She was starting to be too hungover for this.

"I don't know!" Ray started pacing again. "Fuck."

"Saying that over and over again isn't helping," Stella said.

"It's literally all I can think right now," Ray said.

Stella started drumming her fingers on her own knees. "Okay," she said. "Go out the window, put it in neutral and just push it out of the driveway. You can wipe it down and then drive up. It'll be fine." She didn't know why she wanted Ray to drive back if they were just going to push the car out of the driveway, but to her slightly hungover brain, it seemed to make sense.

"Can't do it on my own," Ray said. "You wanna push a car out of a driveway, you need someone to steer and someone else to push."

"Well, then, I'll go with you," she said.

"They'll notice you're gone," Ray said.

Stella bit her lip and thought. Then she pointed at the door to bathroom. "Go turn on my shower and lock the hall door. If anyone comes in, they'll think I'm in there."

Ray stopped his pacing to stare at her. Then he moved to the side of the bed and kissed her. "You're brilliant," he said.

Stella smiled a little at the familiar compliment and wished she had time to kiss him several more times. But she gestured to the window instead. "Go, quick. I have to get dressed."

Ray moved over to the window and started opening it back up again. "They're not gonna see us, are they?"

Stella started digging around her bureau for something warm to wear. "No," she said. "Dad'll be getting coffee. You can't see the driveway from the kitchen." In theory, he ought to know that by now, but over the last five years, Stella had been to Ray's house far more often than Ray had been to hers.

Stella found a sweater in the drawer and pulled her t-shirt over her head. Almost immediately, there was a thump that drew her attention over to the window.

Ray was rubbing his head and biting his lip to keep from snapping. "Damn," he muttered, teeth clenched. "Damn, that hurt."

Stella stared at him. "Did you just stop climbing out the window to watch me get changed?" she asked, trying not to laugh.

"Not, like, on purpose," Ray said. "I looked and your shirt was off. What was I supposed to do?"

She rolled her eyes. "Do we have time for that right now?"

"I don't know," Ray said. "I forget what time it is when there's a bra in the room."

Stella was torn between blushing or laughing. "Just get out of here," she said. "I'll be down in a second."

"All right, all right," he said. "I'm going." He ducked his head and one leg out the window. Stella pulled the sweater on and waited for a second, listening for the sound of any more footsteps that might be headed their way. It would be just like her mother to come in at exactly the right time to ruin their getaway. (While it hadn't happened yet, if it was going to, Stella was sure it would be her mother that found them. She was nearly always home and nearly always prying into Stella's business, in particular since she had caught them making out on the porch back around Halloween.)

No feet. Her mother wasn't up yet.

Stella swapped her miniskirt for a pair of jeans as fast as she could, put her shoes on without socks and started her shower running. She bit her lip and hoped that no one would think it was weird that she had woken up this early on her own and was in the shower already. As far as Stella could remember, that had literally never happened before. She started climbing out the window.

Stella had gotten good at climbing in and out of that window and up and down the trellis over the last few months, but she had never done it in snow before. The stuff crunched under her feet and felt slippery and unsteady. Dizzy, she remembered for the first time in ages just how high up her room really was.

Ray was already halfway down the trellis and he called, as loud as he dared, "C'mon, Stell. It's fine. Don't think about it."

Ha. "That's never really been something I'm good at, Ray," she said. Against her will, every school lesson she had ever had on gravity, wind resistance and terminal velocity came back to her at once, and she remembered the time her sixth grade science teacher had told the class as interesting trivia that if you dropped a penny off the Empire State building, it could leave a small crater on the street. That's if it didn't hit anyone, which was guaranteed to be deadly.

Stella knew she wasn't up high enough to kill anyone or leave any craters, but she realized that she was exactly high up enough to break her leg and then be murdered by her parents when she had to explain what the hell she was doing climbing out the window in the first place.

"C'mon, egghead," Ray said in a soft, soothing sort of tone. "Forget about the ground and just climb. Like the first time."

Stella remembered the first time they had climbed into her window. It was in the summer, back on her birthday- her and Ray's more or less official anniversary- and she had been fine for most of the climb up. But somewhere around the halfway point, she'd looked down and back to see Ray and seen just how much distance there was between her and the ground. She'd frozen just like this then. She hadn't been able to go any higher until Ray swore on every meaningful thing he could think of (God, the saints, the Cubs, his mother, and Stella's perfect ass, in that order) that he would catch her if she fell.

Stella nearly laughed at that and asked, "You swear on my ass you won't let me fall?"

Ray leaned his forehead against the wall while he snickered. "Yeah, sure, Stell," he said. "I swear on your ass."

She crunched her way over to the trellis and began climbing down.

"Looks good, by the way," Ray said. It seemed he was looking up at her climbing down while he made his own way.

Stella snorted. "Thank you, Ray. That helps." She didn't want to admit at the moment that it really did help. Ray was good at distracting her by being his regular, kind of crazy about her self. It was probably indelicate that she could forget the imminent threat of broken legs by complimenting her ass.

"I wish I got a better look when you were wearing a skirt," he added.

"Are you getting all that good of a look now?" she asked. The sky was starting to lighten with pink streaks at the horizon, but it was still pretty dark.

"Good enough for not having glasses on," he said.

Stella frowned. "Where are they?" While Ray hadn't liked to wear glasses to school, only wore them as needed at work, and never put them on when they were out in public, he always wore them when they were alone. He liked being able to see her.

"Think I left 'em on your dresser," he admitted.

Stella sighed. "Well," she said, "I guess that's another thing you can tell my parents you forgot."

"I'll say they were in my pocket," he said.

"Cool," Stella said. She wondered how close she was to the ground now. The trellis seemed like it went on forever. But she didn't dare look down. She wasn't at all sure that it'd help to have Ray compliment her ass twice.

"Hey, Stell?" Ray asked.

Stella took a few deep breaths and told herself not to look down, not to look down, not to look-- "Yeah, Ray?" she asked, gritting her teeth.

"Not that I'm a perv or anything," Ray said, "and no pressure if the answer is no? But I was kind of wondering if you meant that, back there in your room."

"Meant what, Ray?" He was insane if he thought she could remember anything right now that wasn't how much wall was above her and how much there probably was below her.

"You know," he said. He actually sounded awkward.

"No," she said with as much patience as she could muster. This is a bad time, Ray, she thought. It is a really very bad time.

"You know," he insisted. "That thing when I was under your bed."

"I really can't remember what you're talking about right now," she said. "I really can't think about anything right now."

"Seriously?" He sounded wounded this time.

"Kowalski," Stella snapped, officially out of patience now. "Sense the tone."

"That thing," Ray said. "About- you know, doing stuff sometime when I spend the night."

Stella nearly fell off the trellis. "You want to talk about this now?"

"Hey, it came up," Ray said.

Stella wondered if she was close enough to him and to the ground for it to be safe to kick him. Boys really never thought about anything else, did they? Fucking- boys.

Stella drew a breath sharply through her nose, then let it go as slow as she could. "Can we talk about this when we're on the ground?"

"Right," Ray said. "Yeah. Sure. Of course."

Stella breathed in and out, forcing herself to keep to a rhythm. She didn't know which thing bothered her more right now, the possibility she was going to fall and hurt herself, or the fact that she and Ray were going to have a serious conversation about their relationship when they reached the ground.

The thing was, for all that they'd been together for five years- a pretty long time for any relationship, especially one that began when they were as young as they were- and had sneaked around a lot to see each other, had made out in every poorly-lit corner they could find, and now had even spent the night together...

...well, they had never gone all the way.

It wasn't like Stella had never thought about it. It had crossed her mind in Health class four years ago. It had crossed her mind again that same year when she had started her period. She thought about it when the rumors went around about one girl or another at school who had lost it at a party she wasn't supposed to go to, and she had thought about it the first time she and Ray had been present when Ken was buying rubbers for himself and had flicked one in their direction with a laugh.

Being honest, she had thought about it a lot more lately than any other time in the last few years.

But they'd never talked about it. And until this moment, she hadn't really thought about whether or not Ray was thinking about it, too. He'd never pressured her, not even once. He'd never asked her about it and never tried to go any farther with her than wherever she put his hands herself. She'd been sort of smug about that- while other girls she knew complained about their boyfriends whining and hounding them, she had a boyfriend who clearly didn't want just the one thing. It was almost a shock now to realize that Ray thought about having sex with her.

Without even realizing how she'd gotten there, Stella found herself taking one more step down the trellis that turned out to actually be the last step on the ground. Startled, she stumbled backwards and fell into Ray.

"Hey, hey, easy," he said, wrapping his arms around her so she wouldn't fall.

Stella breathed in and leaned back against his chest. She wanted to laugh a little. Whatever else might happen, she could count on Ray to be there to keep her from falling. She pulled Ray's arms around her tighter and smiled when she felt him brush a kiss on her temple. "I didn't know you thought about it," she said, quiet.

"Sorry," Ray said. "Didn't want to freak you out. I just kinda thought, maybe..." He trailed off.

Stella couldn't help herself. She did laugh a little this time. "It's okay," she said. "I've thought about it, too."

"Yeah?" Ray asked.

Stella turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. "You sound surprised," she said.

Ray gave an uncomfortable shrug. "I didn't know you thought about it, either," he said. He snorted. "I didn't know girls thought about that at all."

Stella made a face and gave him a shove. "Of course girls think about it," she said. "Why wouldn't girls think about it?" She tugged her way out of his arms and began heading over to the car.

"I don't know!" Ray said, sounding defensive. "It's not like you hear about girls talking about that kind of thing!"

"We talk about all kinds of things amongst ourselves that we don't tell you about," Stella said. "What do you think Soolin and I talk about when we go to the bathroom?"

Ray stared. "You talk to my brother's girlfriend about sex in the bathroom?"

In fact, Stella and Soolin usually talked about music and smoked cigarettes in the bathroom. The most sexual their topics had ever turned was one time Soolin had casually mentioned she was thinking of bringing Ken into that bathroom later on if they had time. Stella had been so caught off guard by Soolin confiding something important to her that she hadn't been able to say much of anything. But for the moment, that was close enough to count, especially when Ray was being an idiot.

"Sometimes," she said.

"You ever talk about doing it with me?" Ray asked.

Stella glared. "I haven't done it with you."

"Soolin doesn't need to know that," Ray said.

Stella glared more. "Ray."

"Okay, okay, okay," he said. "I'm sorry." There was a beat. "Do you ever talk about what doing it with me would be like?"

"Ray," Stella said, and it came out like a whine. She was beginning to regret the bluff.

"Fine," Ray said, sounding sulky. "Keep secrets."

"What I talk about with Soolin is private, Ray," Stella said. Not that she and Soolin ever had discussed much that was, but there was the principle of the thing.

"Yeah, well, so's the stuff I talk about with Ken," Ray said.

Stella turned to look at him. "You talk about having sex with me to Ken?"

"Well, it's not like I told him we're doing it," he said. "Just, you know. Sometimes guys talk about stuff."

Stella couldn't tell if he was bluffing as much as she was. She couldn't really call him on it, either, after being so insistent that her conversations with Soolin were sacrosanct. She tried to hold onto that principle for about a minute before curiosity got the best of her. "What kind of stuff do you talk about?"

"It's private," Ray said, looking smug.

Stella really hated it when he was in the position of being right. "Fine, then," she said.

"Well, good," he said. "I didn't want to talk about us doing it, anyway."

Stella gave an incredulous laugh. "You brought it up!"

"Only 'cause I wanted to know if we were going to be getting on that any time soon," he said.

Stella stopped and bit her lip. She had never figured out how Ray did that- said or did the exact thing it took to completely change the vibe in the air, turning something light and playful into something important and serious. It was scary and amazing at the same time.

"Do you want to?" she asked, sounding vulnerable even to her own ears.

Ray looked caught off guard, like he was suddenly worried that he he had hurt or frightened her. Ray would cut his own fingers off than do either of those things, and she could see that in his face. "I dunno, Stell," he said eventually. "Do you wanna?"

Stella thought about that- about all the times she'd ever thought about it before, usually with reluctant curiosity, sometimes with fear, but sometimes... sometimes, she did want to know what it was like. And she knew that if she was going to do it with anyone, Ray Kowalski was the one person she was interested in doing it with.

"Kind of," she said, very quiet.

Ray looked at her, a little stunned. "Really?"

"It's you," Stella said. "It's- it's us."

Ray looked at her with a mix of love, tenderness and fear. He took a breath and said, "I'd like to make it with you more than anything else in the world."

"Oh," Stella said. She wasn't prepared for how that made her feel- for the mix of flattered and thrilled and nervous and excited that washed over her all at once. She stepped away from the car and threw her arms around him.

Ray laughed and held her close. "That's okay?" he asked.

"That's okay," she said. She rubbed her cheek against his chest and said, "Soon, okay?"

"Really?" he asked.

"Really," she said. How weird it was to have come to the decision, just like that. To jump in with both feet after one conversation where they didn't even weigh any pros or cons or discuss any particulars. He wanted her. She wanted him. That was all that mattered.

"C'mon," Ray said, rubbing her back. "Let's move this fucking car before we get murdered and it becomes an academical point, huh?"

Stella laughed. "Yeah."

She sat in the front seat and steered while Ray pushed the car backwards about a block. She watched him the whole time through the windshield and wondered how it was possible to love someone this much.

She doubled back around the block on foot and scaled the trellis into her room faster than she ever had before. She climbed in the shower to obfuscate that she hadn't really been in there, and hated herself for the brilliant idea the second she got in. The water had run cold while she was out there deciding to have sex with Ray.

She put her jeans and sweater back on, as well as her shoes- with socks, this time- and went down to the kitchen rubbing a towel through her hair.

"Good morning, darling," her mother said brightly when Stella reached the table. "You're up early. Did you have a good time with Ray?"

Stella grinned a little to herself. "Yeah, Mom, I had a great time."

---

It didn't take much convincing to get her parents to let Stella go to Oz with Ken and Soolin. Her mother, it seemed, was proud of her for getting up so early on her own.

"You're really growing into being responsible for yourself," her mom had said. "I'm glad to see that."

Stella had felt only a minor twinge of guilt for that. Even though it was based on a small lie, she had gotten out of bed, gotten herself ready and to school on time, and gone through the school day without acting hungover. So it was still an accomplishment that merited the reward of getting to go out again.

Besides, Stella thought, she needed to talk to Soolin, and badly.

Oz was a different sort of club from O'Bannion's. While both were punk, Oz was for the more hardcore contingent. It had already been shut down and forced to move once because the place pissed the police off. The bar there didn't card, and the whole place was something of a known unknown- it didn't put signs out front or advertise. Its clientele heard about it through word of mouth, so everyone who turned up had more or less been vouched for by someone else.

It was a little hard for them to find, but once they did, it was like a miraculous haven of cheap beer, a good dance floor, and pretty okay music. Not to mention the slight thrill of the illicit Stella got just thinking about where she was. Her parents would flip if they knew anyone had brought her here.

"Try not to act like amateurs," Soolin said when they came in. "I don't want you to embarrass me." The last part seemed to be mostly directed at Ken, who was the most ridiculous when given enough beer.

"This place is great," Ray said. Not unlike Stella, Ray tended to love any place he wasn't supposed to be. While the Kowalskis were a lot more hands off than her own parents, Stella couldn't imagine that Mrs. Kowalski would be okay with either of her sons being in a place like this. Especially not Ray, who was still the baby in her eyes, even now when he worked, smoked, and had grown four inches taller than her.

"Don't talk to anybody over twenty-five," Soolin warned him.

Ray snorted. "I'm not an idiot."

"Yeah, you are," Ken said. "Just not that kind of idiot." He ruffled Ray's hair.

Ray made a face and jerked his head away. "You gotta fucking do that?" he asked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, I think I gotta," Ken said. "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be here, Stanley. Put up with being the little brother or get the fuck out."

Ray looked ready to retort with shoving, which would lead pretty inevitably to a fight, which would get them kicked out pretty damn fast, so Stella grabbed his wrist. "It looks better messed up, anyway," she said, leaning over to kiss him on the ear.

Ray closed his eyes and exhaled as she did. It was still a pretty reliable spot for turning him right into putty. "Only you," he said, shaking his head.

"Better be only me," she said, teasing. Then she turned to Soolin. "I gotta pee. You?"

Soolin was already distracted by the music and almost didn't hear her. She looked at Stella and opened her mouth to say something- but then she looked at her again and shrugged. "I could fix my make-up," she said.

"Cool," Stella said. She let go of Ray to transfer to Soolin's side.

"Get us beer," Soolin told Ken. "And if you mess with that kid and get kicked out while we're gone, I'll kill you."

Ken gave her a lazy grin. "What do I get if I behave?"

"Your ass unkicked by a girl half your size," Soolin said. "C'mon, Stella." She took her by the wrist and started leading her towards the bathroom. It was a harder journey than it should have been; they had to squeeze past quite a few people in varying stages of inebriation.

Stella hadn't been making up the part where she had to pee. She picked the stall that was least dirty, shut the door and sat down.

"What'd you want to talk about?" Soolin asked from over by the sinks. There was a slight pop sound that told Stella she was uncapping her lipstick.

"It's a little awkward," Stella said, wishing Soolin had waited until she was out of the stall to start this conversation.

She snorted. "I figured," she said. "What with wanting to ditch the guys and all. You need a tampon?"

"No," Stella said, unrolling the toilet paper from the roll sitting on the back of the commode.

There was a scrape and a swish, like she was fixing her mascara now. "You need an abortion?"

"No!" Stella cried. She flushed and made her way over to the sink next to Soolin to wash her hands. "Jesus, why would you ask that?"

Soolin gave an unapologetic shrug. "It seemed like the next logical step from not getting your period."

Stella made a face at her in the mirror. "I'm not late," she said. "I'm just not on it."

"Good for you," she said. "So what do you need?"

Stella found herself squirming a little and cursed her family for not bringing her up to just spit things out. She always felt caught off guard dealing with more straightforward people. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it.

"Lemme bum one," Soolin said, nodding at Stella's hand.

Stella held the pack out to her while she dragged off her own. Stella was still new to smoking and got dizzy whenever she did, but at least she had gotten past the part where she coughed like she had the plague. Soolin took her cigarette away from her to light her own, then handed it back. "Thanks," she said.

Stella shrugged. She dragged again for a moment, then fixed Soolin with a look. "You and Ken are doing it, right?"

Soolin snorted. "No," she said, deadpan. "We're waiting until we get married."

"I'm serious," Stella said.

"Yeah, but you know that," Soolin said. "So get to the point."

Stella looked studiously at the mirror so she could address Soolin's reflection rather than the real girl. "Ray and I are gonna," she said.

Soolin's eyebrows arched. "Congratulations," she said. "You mean you weren't doing it already?"

"No," Stella said. "And we only decided it this morning." She blew a cloud of smoke at her own face in the glass. "I was hoping you could give me some advice."

"Wait and see if he gets the place he's looking at first," Soolin said. "It sucks to try and do it at anybody's parents' house."

Stella gave a small laugh. "Thanks," she said. "That wasn't what I had in mind."

"What did you have in mind?" Soolin asked.

"I don't really know how it works," Stella said. She felt weird and relieved about just saying that. Like ripping off a Band-Aid- she had said it and the worst was over.

"He sticks it in you like you'd stick a tampon in you," Soolin said.

Stella cringed. "Do you have to make it sound like that?"

"Why not?" she asked. "You're asking me in a punk club bathroom. Did you want me to dress it up for you?"

"No, I guess not," Stella said. She wrapped the end of her hair around one of her fingers. "But, I don't know, I mean--" She sighed. "Does it hurt?"

"Some," Soolin said. "Not too bad after a while. Might take a couple tries to get used to it." She started putting eyeliner on one-handed while she kept smoking with the other. "Make him eat you first," she said. "It's nicer that way."

Stella gave her an uncomprehending stare.

Soolin looked at her and sighed. "I'll make Ken talk to him about it," she said. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay," Stella said. She drummed her fingers on the sink. "Um."

"What else?" she asked. "C'mon, you got this far."

"Heh. Yeah, I guess," Stella said. She bit her lip. "What do you need and where do you get it?"

"Rubbers are good," she said. "I can give you guys some."

"I was actually thinking, maybe something else," Stella admitted.

"What, like the pill?" Soolin asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Like the pill." She didn't know why, but the idea appealed to her more. Maybe because it felt more like she'd be preparing herself, instead of hoping Ray would get it right.

"Pill's good," Soolin said. "Harder, though. My sister got hers from the clinic in Pekin."

Stella winced. "That's kind of far," she said.

"Yeah," she said. "There's things you can do closer to home."

"Yeah?" Stella asked.

"You can get it from a doctor," she said. "Ask your ma to book an appointment for you with her gyno."

Stella couldn't help it. She shuddered. "God, no," she said. "I'd rather hang myself."

"You don't like her doctor?" she asked.

"No, I just don't want her to know that I'm trying to get the pill," Stella said. After how paranoid her mother had become just from catching them make out, she was sure that there was no way her mom would help her get on the pill. Even worse, she might forbid Stella from seeing Ray again if she even asked. "Asking her is just not an option."

Soolin nodded. "I didn't ask my mother, either," she said.

"You're on the pill?" Stella asked, surprised. "I thought you and Ken used rubbers."

"Both," Soolin said. "I'm not taking any chances. Fuck that."

"So how'd you get yours?" Stella asked. "The clinic in Pekin?"

Soolin was silent for a moment, checking her eyeliner again in the mirror. Then she said, "I asked old lady Kowalski to make me an appointment with her doctor."

Stella recoiled. "Are you kidding? Ray's mom? You asked Ray's mom?"

"Boyfriends' moms are different," Soolin said. "They don't have to worry about your virtue. They just gotta worry about where their sons are putting it. She doesn't want you to get knocked up anymore than you do."

Stella tried to imagine asking Mrs. Kowalski to help her go on birth control. Mrs. Kowalski, who'd known her since she was twelve and often treated her as much like the baby as she did Ray. Helping Soolin was a different proposition for Mrs. Kowalski than helping Stella would be; Soolin had popped into her life a caustic, opinionated adult with a wicked sense of humor. She had never been a little girl to Mrs. Kowalski.

Soolin watched her think and said, "The worst that can happen is she says no."

"You don't think she'd tell my mom?" she asked, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. "They're not best friends or anything, but--"

"'Course not," Soolin said. "You think she wants you to get packed off to boarding school in Canada? Not a chance."

Stella reluctantly thought that that did make sense. Her own parents were sort of ambivalent on the subject of Ray, especially lately, but Mrs. Kowalski had never had anything for Stella but warm approval. "How do I ask her?"

Soolin shrugged. "Just go for it like you did with me. You don't have to beat around the bush about it. You two are pretty much married after all this time. She probably thinks you're doing it already."

Stella made a face again. "I hope not," she said. "I'd hate for her to think I'm asking for an abortion. She'd have a heart attack."

Soolin laughed. "Yeah, maybe. C'mon, though. You gotta figure she's seen this coming."

"Me asking her for the pill?"

"You and Ray doing it," she said. "Pretty much married, remember?"

"We are not," Stella said. "And even if we were, pretty much married isn't as good to parents as actually married."

"Good as doesn't matter," Soolin said. "Don't think about it too much. Just ask her."

Stella took a breath and let it go. "I hope you're right."

Soolin patted her shoulder. "You'll be fine. Let's go dance before your boy and mine get to irritating each other again." She stubbed her cigarette out in the sink basin and walked back out the door.

Stella looked at her reflection again. She really hoped Soolin was right. And she really, really hoped that Mrs. Kowalski liked her as much as she thought.

---

Stella really would have liked to put off asking a little longer, so she could accumulate a little courage before she had to do it, but Tuesday was the best day to talk to Mrs. Kowalski alone. Ray and Mr. Kowalski both worked late on Tuesdays, and it was Mrs. Kowalski's day off from the dress factory where she worked evenings.

It was awkward to even contemplate, because Stella had never actually been round Mrs. Kowalski without Ray as a buffer. For all that Mrs. Kowalski was always delighted to see her, they had never had a private conversation even once in five years. Most of their talk revolved around Mrs. Kowalski telling her to tell Ray something while he was sitting right beside her protesting, or else dragging up the subject of college and what Stella's plans were. The latter always involved Mrs. Kowalski praising her intelligence and ambition in the same breath that she told Ray, "See? Stella's going to make something of herself, Stanley. You better keep up with her if you wanna keep this girl."

Stella almost wished that she could just sneak in and leave a letter on the kitchen table so that she wouldn't have to be in the same room with Ray's mother when she got the news that they were planning on making it before they were married and would like her assistance in making that possible.

She took first the L and then her bike over to the Kowalskis' house and tried to think of a plausible pretense just to get in the door. Her parents, not too familiar with the Kowalskis' schedules, had been willing to believe that she was going to see Ray, although her mother hadn't been thrilled about it. "You've been with him two nights in a row already," she had pointed out. But her homework was done and she hadn't misbehaved that they knew of recently, and there was no reason not to let her go. Mrs. Kowalski would be harder; she knew that Stella knew that Ray wouldn't be home.

She didn't get much of a chance to think about it. When she pulled into the driveway, Mrs. Kowalski was already outside, taking the garbage out.

Stella cringed and was just wondering if she could get away with circling around the block until she had the courage for this when Mrs. Kowalski spotted her.

"Hey, honey!" Mrs. Kowalski called, waving at her.

Stella waved back at her feebly. There was no hope for it now. She rode the rest of the way into the Kowalskis' driveway and plastered on what she hoped was a nice, pleasant smile. She thought she probably looked like she was having a stroke. "Hi, Mrs. K."

Mrs. Kowalski dropped the can on the curb and came over to hug her. "Look at you, so pretty!" she said. She pulled back to look at her and comb her fingers through Stella's hair. "You really should think about cutting this, sweetie, it's getting so long. No? Well, could you tell Stanley to cut his? I don't even remember what his ears look like anymore. He's not here right now, but he will be later, unless he's going to go moon over that apartment again. Didn't you just see him last night?"

Stella tried not to laugh. There was never any use talking to Mrs. Kowalski in the first five minutes of any visit. "I did," she said.

"Honestly, you might as well live here, you've been seeing so much of each other these days," Mrs. Kowalski said. Then she looked horrified at herself. "Not that I have a problem with that or anything. You know I love you, dear, don't you?"

She couldn't help laughing this time. "Yeah, I know."

Mrs. Kowalski beamed. "Good, that's good. You wanna come in and have something to eat? I was just going to make some soup and sandwiches to have while I watch my programs. I can make some extra."

"I'm not really hungry," Stella said.

"Don't be silly," she said. "You're thin as a rail. You need to eat something. You want tomato or mushroom? I like the tomato better with grilled cheese, but I've got a nice pastrami that'd go pretty good with the mushroom if you want to eat that while you're waiting." She took hold of Stella's arm and began maneuvering her into the house. "It's early for you to come wait for Stanley, isn't it? I don't mind having you, but goodness, it's gonna be hours, honey."

"I know," Stella said, fully aware that Mrs. Kowalski probably didn't hear it anyway.

"Did you come here straight from school?" Mrs. Kowalski asked. "You know we promised your poor mother that you wouldn't do that—"

"No, I didn't," she said. "I went home and did my homework and told them where I was going and everything."

"Oh, that's a good girl," Mrs. Kowalski said approvingly. "That's a very good girl." She rotated Stella through the living room door and started nudging her towards the kitchen. "Why don't you sit down, sweetie? I'll make the soup now. Did you want the mushroom or the tomato?" She looked thoughtful. "Maybe I should make the mushroom so there's some when Stanley gets here, he likes pastrami. You like pastrami, don't you? I just hope it doesn't get cold while we're waiting—"

Just lay it out for her, Stella thought. Just be honest, that's all you have to do. "I didn't come here to see Ray, actually," she said. "I came here to see you."

Mrs. Kowalski paused her chattering to blink at Stella in surprise. "Me?" she asked, giving an incredulous little laugh. "That's sweet of you, dear, but what on earth would you want to see me for?"

Well, there was the sixty four thousand dollar question. Stella bit her lip. "Well," she said. "I- I kind of need your help."

Mrs. Kowalski switched gears from pleased to worried at a speed race car drivers would envy. "My help?" she asked. "With what, honey? What's wrong? Your grades are going okay, aren't they? You didn't have a fight with Stanley, did you?"

"No, nothing like that," Stella tried, but she was cut off before she could get any farther.

"Are you in some kind of trouble?" Mrs. Kowalski asked. "Or- oh, is it a school thing? If you've got Home Ec problems, I can show you how to cook and sew, no problem. I know those things aren't really your mama's strong suit, bless her heart."

"No," Stella said, trying to sound more firm this time. "Nothing like any of that. It's..." She wished suddenly that she'd brought Soolin along for this. She could really use a person who got right down to business straight away right now. She leaned her back against the kitchen counter and tried, "It's kind of personal."

Mrs. Kowalski looked baffled. It was hard for Stella to blame her- not only had Stella never asked her for anything before, but Mrs. Kowalski had a deep admiration for her parents and the thought that Stella could have a problem they couldn't help her with didn't fit into her worldview. What kind of problems were there that the manager of multiple banks and his ex-movie star wife couldn't solve?

Mrs. Kowalski sat at the table and gave her an okay, I'm listening look. "What do you mean by personal?"

Stella chewed on the insides of her cheeks and thought. "Okay," she said. "Well. I was talking to Soolin, and she said that you helped her out with this before, so I thought, maybe..."

This didn't seem to clear anything up for Mrs. Kowalski. Her puzzled frown grew deeper. "What, did you get in a fight with Ken?" she asked.

For a moment, Stella was distracted by the mental picture of Mrs. Kowalski moderating a fight between Ken and Soolin, which was about the most improbable thing she had tried to imagine lately. Then she shook her head. "No, it's—" She felt agonized. This was the stuff of nightmares, she was sure of it. Stella sat at the table so she could lay her head on its surface and not have to look directly at Ray's mother. "I want to get birth control pills."

All of the air seemed to rush out of the room at once so it could be replaced by tension. Mrs. Kowalski said nothing. Stella thought she could feel the older woman's eyes boring into the back of her own head.

"Oh," Mrs. Kowalski said eventually.

Stella lifted her head to shoot her a pleading look. "I didn't want to ask my mother," she said. "I don't think she and my dad would ever let me see Ray again if they knew we were..." She trailed off.

Mrs. Kowalski looked aghast. "Are you?" she asked, in a high, yelping voice.

"No, not yet," Stella said. "But- well, we want to soon, and—"

"Are you kidding me?" Mrs. Kowalski cried, horrorstruck. "Stella, honey- you're so- and you two aren't- oh, my God!" She buried her face in her hands.

Stella stared at her. "But- you will help me, won't you?"

Mrs. Kowalski looked as if she were the one who felt agonized now. "Oh, Stella, honey, I don't know—"

She knew it was childish before she said it, but the words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them. "You helped Soolin!"

"She told me that was for cramps!" Mrs. Kowalski said.

Stella wanted to die. Why hadn't such an obvious and easy lie occurred to her? She could've gone to her own mother with a lie like that. "Oh," she said.

"So you mean they weren't—?" Mrs. Kowalski groaned and planted her face in her palm again. "Of course they weren't, Barbara. Oh, Jesus."

Stella cringed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you knew."

"I guess I suspected," Mrs. Kowalski said. "But oh, Stella, honey. You're such a little thing. Soolin's a college girl. She and Ken could get married if anything happened. You're still in high school."

"Only for a few more months," Stella said, and then immediately wished she could take it back. This wasn't the time to get defensive about her age. "Anyway, Ken and Soolin have only been together for eight months. Ray and I have been together for five years. We could get married soon, if we wanted to." Stella carefully avoided saying "had to." The whole point of the pill, if she still had any chance of getting it, was avoiding any "had to"'s that could arise.

Mrs. Kowalski looked reluctant. "Yeah, I guess that's so," she said. "But still, Stella, I- I don't know how to feel about this. I'm a good Catholic."

That argument, Stella felt safer countering. She gave Mrs. Kowalski a shrewd look. "A good Catholic with only two children?"

Mrs. Kowalski actually blushed and gave Stella a look. "I meant because you two aren't married yet."

"We could be someday," Stella said. "He's already asked me." In a manner of speaking, anyway. That may have been five years ago, but something told Stella that Ray's opinion on the matter probably hadn't changed in the interim, and Mrs. Kowalski didn't need to know the details, anyway. Unless she asked. Stella hoped she wouldn't ask.

Mrs. Kowalski's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Well, yeah," Stella said. She stopped herself from adding "kind of."

"What'd you say?" Mrs. Kowalski asked.

Stella thought back to her twelfth birthday party and being in Ray's arms while Jim Croce played on the turntable. She smiled as she thought of the boy he'd been, too vain to keep his glasses on so he hadn't even been able to see her when he asked. She shook that off and gave Mrs. Kowalski a reluctant smile. "I said I'd like that."

"Aw, honey," Mrs. Kowalski said, looking touched. "You could've led off this conversation with telling me you two got engaged. I wouldn't have worried so much if you'd started with news like that."

"Well, it wasn't like engaged engaged," Stella said. "It was more like a promise to be engaged someday—"

Mrs. Kowalski wasn't listening. "Sheesh, give me a heart attack like that. Honestly!" She gave Stella a fondly irritated look. "I know you were brought up with better manners than that, Stella Marie Dubois."

"Look, don't tell Ray I told you this, okay?" Stella asked. She hadn't meant to lie, but now she saw no easy way to take it back. She hadn't even made up what happened. She'd have to explain it to Ray later- probably to Ken and Soolin as well, in case Mrs. Kowalski accosted either of them to ask if they knew about this. Stella had the sinking feeling that she was going to be made fun of- loudly and at great length- for the foreseeable future.

"I'm gonna tan his butt for not telling me himself," Mrs. Kowalski said.

"Please don't tell my parents," Stella said. "It'd just worry them, and it's not like it'd be soon, anyway—"

"No, you've got college first," Mrs. Kowalski said. "I remember. Of course you should wait until you're at least off at school, and there's nothing wrong with a long engagement."

Stella let go of a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. At least she didn't have to worry about that. She bit her lip and tried to get back to the subject at hand. "So... about the pill?"

Mrs. Kowalski looked at her, obviously torn between her usual opinion on the subject and how it felt different under the new circumstances. "Well, I guess, if—" She sighed. "Yeah, all right."

Stella couldn't believe it. "Really? For real?"

"Yeah," Mrs. Kowalski said. "I'll call Dr. Parrish in the morning. He's been my doctor for years. He delivered both my boys. I'll see if he can get you in by Friday."

Stella dove across the table and flung her arms around her. "Oh, thank you," she cried. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Mrs. Kowalski chuckled in a resigned sort of way and patted her back. "You're welcome, honey. I guess I haven't got a leg to stand on in this one. Damien and I didn't wait until we were married, either."

Stella pulled back to look at her, surprised. "Really?"

"We were engaged," Mrs. Kowalski said, a little defensive. "A lot of people did that back then. You just didn't talk about it if you wanted people to think of you as a nice girl."

"That's hard to imagine," Stella said. "I mean, my parents—" She cut herself off as she realized she didn't actually know that. She had just assumed.

Mrs. Kowalski laughed. "Please," she said. "Kids today, you think you invented everything. I bet your mother could tell you stories, if you wanted to hear them."

Stella made a face. "I don't want to think of my mother having stories."

"No one ever does," Mrs. Kowalski said, shaking her head as if this was something to be pitied. "You'll feel different about it when you're older. I want all my mother's stories now."

Stella blinked. "Your mother was born in the twenties," she said. "How many stories could she possibly have?"

Mrs. Kowalski gave her a grin Stella was only used to seeing on Ray.

Stella burst out laughing. "Mrs. K," she said, affecting a mock-scandalized tone.

"I told you that you kids think you invented everything," she said.

"I don't think I invented sex," Stella said. "I'm not even an expert. I had to get the bare bones of how it works off Soolin."

"You could've asked me about that," Mrs. Kowalski told her, looking wounded.

Stella made a face. "Really?"

"Well, if you can ask me for birth control pills," Mrs. Kowalski said.

"I was scared to death to ask you for birth control pills," Stella said. "I'm still surprised I did. I almost pretended I didn't see you outside and rode off."

Mrs. Kowalski laughed. "Aw, honey. You didn't need to worry so much."

"I know that now," Stella said. "I didn't ten minutes ago."

"Well, now that you do know, is there anything you want to ask me?" Mrs. Kowalski asked.

Stella hesitated. She could think of a lot of things she didn't know and would like to, but the thought of asking Mrs. Kowalski- even when she was making her an open offer- was intimidating. Even more so than asking for the pill.

But Mrs. Kowalski was giving her one of those kind, helpful looks that made Stella eat soup and sandwiches when she wasn't actually hungry, and Stella could sort of see far enough past the awkwardness that it might actually be helpful to talk to a grown-up.

"What's it like?" Stella asked.

"It's a beautiful thing," Mrs. Kowalski said. "Scary the first time. I was so nervous, I almost wet myself. I'd never seen anybody naked before unless I was changing a diaper." She shook her head with a nostalgic laugh. "And I didn't know where anything went. It wasn't like I'd ever asked anybody. You didn't talk about it then."

"I heard it hurts," Stella said.

"Yeah," Mrs. Kowalski said, giving her a sympathetic grimace. "The first time, it did. You have to take it pretty slow. And there might be a little blood, but that's not so bad. Less than you'd get with a cut."

Stella nodded. "How'd you know what to do?"

"It comes natural," Mrs. Kowalski said. "You just sort of figure it out as you go along. You gotta pay attention to how you're feeling, so you can figure out what you like." She paused. "That can take a long time. Don't be disappointed if you don't get it perfect the first couple times, okay?"

"Okay," Stella said. "I can do that." At least, she hoped she could. She knew from past experience with other things that she could be too exacting in her standards for herself. It was going to be hard to put that aside.

"It may not last too long the first time, either," Mrs. Kowalski warned. "Young guys, they have a hard time with that."

"How hard of a time?" Stella wasn't even sure how long was normal.

"Put it this way," Mrs. Kowalski said, "if you can go longer than a song the first time, you actually did pretty good."

Stella laughed. "Any suggestions for songs?"

"You're on your own with that," Mrs. Kowalski said, laughing. "I don't even know how you can call what you listen to music."

"Yeah, yeah," Stella said, rolling her eyes. But she was smiling. "Any other pointers?"

"Don't drink first," Mrs. Kowalski said. "It's no good if you're drunk. And you tell him to stop or slow down if you need to. Don't just grit your teeth and bear it." She tapped her finger on the table for a second, then said, "Give the pills a couple weeks to kick in first. They're no good on the first day."

Stella did some quick math in her head and found herself giggling. "So maybe around Christmas," she said.

Mrs. Kowalski laughed, shaking her head. "Yeah, maybe," she said. "Just don't tell me. I can answer your questions, but there are some things a mother doesn't want to know about her son, you know?"

Stella laughed. "Okay," she said.

Mrs. Kowalski got up and moved around the table to hug her. "I'm glad my Stanley's marrying you," she said. "You're a good girl, Stella. Anyone would be proud to have you for a daughter-in-law."

Stella hugged her back. "Thanks, Mrs. K," she whispered.

"Drop that after the wedding," she said. "I been there since you were a real itty bitty thing and I love you like my own. You call me Ma like my own do, once it's legal."

"Okay," Stella said. "You don't want me to start that now?" At the moment, she was so grateful and felt so loved that she almost wished Mrs. Kowalski really was her mother. It'd be so nice to have a mother she felt like she could talk to without her flying off the handle.

"You can drop the missus," she said after a moment's thought. "I guess my first name's okay now."

"Okay," Stella said. "Barbara."

"It's a start," Barbara said.

—-

They were at Oz again that weekend when Stella wanted to show Ray that she had the pill now. True to her word, Barbara had gotten Stella in to see Dr. Parrish on Friday. He was a nice old man, approximately a hundred years old, who had regaled Stella with the story of Ray's birth during the appointment and congratulated her on their engagement when he gave her the prescription. She was willing to bet Ray would find the story hilarious, at least if he paid attention past the part where she was on the pill now.

She hadn't ridden over with Ray- avoiding her mother's vocal displeasure that she was hardly spending any time with anyone that wasn't him anymore, she had fabricated a girl's night out with Soolin that required her to meet up with him later. She regretted that decision the second she realized just how hard it was to find anybody inside Oz on a weekend.

"Where do you think they are?" she asked.

"Hopefully not getting drunk without us," Soolin said. Her eyes narrowed with annoyed suspicion. "I am not taking Ken's dumb ass to the hospital if he's jumped off something again."

Stella tried not to laugh. Ken was what Ray called a stunt drunk- three to six beers convinced him that he was Evel Knievel. Over the summer, they had taken him to the hospital twice- first for jumping off a motel balcony into its pool, then for falling off the hood of his car after convincing another partygoer to drive around the parking lot while he rode it. To Stella's great relief, Ray was a self-described love drunk. Three to six beers turned him sloppy and affectionate, hanging onto anyone who would stand still for it while he cuddled them and told them over and over that they were his favorite person ever.

Stella considered Oz, and offered, "I don't think the roof here is high enough for him to get hurt if he jumps off, at least?"

"If you say so," Soolin said, looking unimpressed. She had great faith in Ken's ability to injure himself if she left him unattended for more than a few minutes.

They kept looking around for the guys, but after half an hour of searching, Stella was forced to concede that they very well might be getting into some kind of alcohol-based mischief. She was a little worried. What might Ray get up to if he exceeded his normal limit with only Ken for company?

"I'm worried," she said out loud for Soolin's benefit.

"I'm not," Soolin said. "I'm pissed off." She started prodding her way through the crowd for people who knew her. "You seen Ken?" she asked someone with a mohawk. Stella had trouble keeping Soolin's friends straight, but she thought it was maybe Aaron Smalls, who had offered to sell Stella and Ray pot one time.

"Ken?" Maybe-Aaron asked, looking a bit glazed around the eyes and like he wasn't sure he recognized either of them.

"Ken," Soolin repeated, snapping her fingers. "Ken Kowalski?"

"Oh, the dude you're doing," Maybe-Aaron said as comprehension set in. "I think he took off with Stevo a while ago."

Soolin paled. Stella couldn't tell if it was from fear or fury. "He went off with Stevo?"

Maybe-Aaaron gave them a buzzed smile. "Yeah?"

"Fuck," Soolin said, grabbing Stella's arm and dragging her straight for the door.

"What is it?" Stella asked, stumbling to keep up. "Who's Stevo?"

"He's a dumb fuck," Soolin said. "He is a dumb fuck that specializes in one thing Ken better not be getting."

"What?" Stella asked. As far as she knew, Soolin had a pretty laidback attitude regarding anything Ken or anyone else wanted to drink, smoke, snort, or swallow. She disapproved of crystal for rotting the teeth, and of heroin because she knew somebody who'd gotten hepatitis from the needles, but otherwise, she seemed to view it as mostly an inconvenience that Ken and others had to be babysat.

Soolin pulled a sour face and spat, "Ink."

Stella blinked. "You mean tattoos?" She was baffled. "I thought you liked them." At least, it had seemed safe to assume Soolin liked them; she had at least six that Stella had seen, and more that she hadn't.

"Not whatever Ken's gonna get when he's wasted," Soolin said. "He'd probably get racing stripes down his forehead." The example sprang to her so readily that it sounded like something Soolin had already had to talk him out of once.

"Oh, no," Stella said, groaning.

"You're right, oh no," Soolin said. She dragged Stella out to her Impala in the parking lot. "I hope we're not too late or I'll have to melt his face off."

Once in the car, Soolin drove them to a place a few blocks away. From Soolin's description of Stevo, Stella had been expecting a tiny, rundown apartment in some frightening part of the neighborhood, but Soolin pulled up in front of a fairly nondescript tattoo parlor. It was brightly lit, the door open, with a large painted window that said it was called Viper. Through the window, Stella could see Ken lying shirtless in the chair, while Ray stood behind him and a wiry, blue-haired man was bent over Ken with a needle.

Soolin's eyes narrowed and she made a frustrated noise as she parked the car. She climbed out of the driver's seat and began stalking into the tattoo parlor. Stella climbed out her side of the car and followed.

Ken beamed when he saw them. "Hi, baby!" he called to Soolin brightly, with the dazed look Stella had come to recognize on him as the result of a combination of alcohol and quaaluudes. "Hey, Stella!"

"Hi, Ken," Stella said, shooting an uncertain glance at Soolin. She wasn't sure how much longer Ken had to live, or whether or not she was supposed to speak to him.

"Hey, Stella," Ray said- quieter, less glazed; he was only a little buzzed. He sauntered over to her and wrapped his arms around her. "Cool, huh?"

Stella tried to warn him off praising Ken's decision with a shake of her head.

Ken was still beaming at Soolin. He gestured at his chest with floppy waves of his arms. "Look what I got for you!" On his chest, over his heart, was the sticky outline of a transfer that hadn't been tattooed on yet. It was a short set of Asian characters that looked familiar to Stella, but she couldn't quite place why. Ken looked at Soolin, more ecstatic than ever. "'S your name! See? I traced it off your necklace!"

Recognition set into Stella's brain. One of Soolin's necklaces was a chain with a silver pendant her dad had had specially made for her, spelling her name in Korean. It was about the only piece she wore all the time, while all other jewelry she owned was in a constant rotation.

Soolin was silent, her face unreadable. Stella took hold of Ray's shirt in her hand and tugged him backwards a step, just in case.

"Do you like it?" Ken asked, with an eager smile that showed he couldn't conceive of the possibility Soolin wouldn't like it.

Soolin's expression finally changed, into a deep glare. "Don't put that on him!" she snapped at the blue-haired man, who Stella guessed was Stevo. Soolin turned to Ken. "You idiot, you were about to put it on backwards!"

Stella suppressed the urge to laugh. Ray did not; he buried his face in Stella's shoulder, alternating between snickers and giggles in a way that made him sound a little like Ernie from "Sesame Street."

"Backwards?" Ken asked, as if he didn't know what the word meant.

"Backwards," Soolin repeated. She looked at the transfer of Ken's chest, then at Stevo, before she pulled her necklace off and hung it around Ken's neck. "If I'm going to be branded on you, you're going to spell it right." She licked her fingertips and began rubbing the transfer off Ken's chest. She looked over her shoulder at Stevo as she did. "You do it from that, and if you get it wrong, I'll make you eat it."

"Whatever, man," Stevo said, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry, baby," Ken said, looking at Soolin like a wounded puppy who had only just realized he was in trouble.

"Don't be sorry," Soolin said. "Just be grateful I caught you before you had backwards Korean on your chest for the rest of your life." Somewhere beneath the prickly exterior, though, Stella could tell that Soolin was touched. Their relationship was a turbulent one, marked by bickering and light-hearted insults, without a lot of public tenderness to it. She didn't know how permanent either of them viewed their relationship, but she guessed that it must be getting there. Ken had to have traced Soolin's necklace sometime when he had a steady hand and the ability to sneak around her without her knowing. The tattoo wasn't an impulsive decision born of being high; he had to have been planning this for a while.

Stella felt her own eyes misting over a little. She felt silly and told herself that it was probably the hormones from her new birth control pills making her more susceptible to romantic gestures. She swiped at her eyes with her knuckles to try and obliterate the tears before anyone saw.

Wiping her eyes was a mistake. Ray caught the gesture instantly and gave her a curious look. "Hey, you crying?"

"No," Stella said, with as much sternness as she could.

Ray looked at her oddly and let out a funny little laugh. "You are," he said.

"Shut up," she said. She tried to glare at him.

"Aw, Stell," Ray said, hugging her close and rubbing her back while he kept laughing into her shoulder.

Stella laughed, too, embarrassed. "Quit it," she muttered. "It's not funny."

"Yeah, it is," Ray said. "Stella Dubois the Super Composed, crying her eyes out because my dumb ass brother almost got a backwards tattoo for love."

Stella shoved at his shoulder, but gave up arguing. It was hard to blame him for making fun of her; she kind of deserved it.

Ray kept rubbing her back while behind them, Soolin was giving Ken and Stevo orders about the proper way to handle the tattooing, the needle was buzzing and Ken was letting out some operatic howls.

Stella was cringing over the various noises when Ray said into her ear, "I was thinking of getting one."

Stella blinked and jerked her head back. She stared at Ray in surprise. "Really?" Ray had mentioned wanting a tattoo to her before, but that had been a long time ago. Back when they were kids, deep in puppy love before it had become something real, Ray had confided in her fantasies of getting an anchor on his arm ("Like Popeye?" she'd asked; "Like my dad," he'd said, giving her a sour look). Or maybe something cool, like one of the four symbols from the cover of Led Zeppelin IV. He hadn't mentioned it in at least a year that she could remember.

Ray shrugged. "Yeah," he said. He looked a little guilty and said, "Not your name, though."

Stella was too stunned at the revelation to be hurt by that. "What were you thinking of getting?" she asked.

Ray hesitated, and rather than answer, asked, "Would you mind if I got one?"

"Of course not," she said. "That'd be really cool." Stella hadn't really given thought to what it'd be like if Ray had a tattoo, but it seemed to her now that it was almost like something he ought to have, something that'd been missing that'd make him look complete. And hot. Very, very hot.

Ray beamed at her. "Do I tell you enough that I love you more than life itself?"

Stella laughed. "I could stand to hear it a little more," she said. She eyed his body through his clothes, wondering where he'd put a tattoo. It'd look nice on his chest, like Ken's, or low on his abdomen, where he had the barely-defined musculature she liked to run her hands over. She supposed what'd look better depended on how big it was. "What do you want to get?" she asked again.

Ray gave her one of his sneaky grins, like he did when he was thinking of pulling one over on one of their respective parents. "Would you flip if I wanted it to be a surprise?"

Stella frowned a little, wondering what exactly he was up to. "No," she said. "I guess not." She was curious. It had been a while since Ray had tried to pull off a surprise.

"There's another guy who works here," Ray said. "He went out for smokes, but he'll be right back."

"Now?" Stella asked.

"Yeah, now," Ray said, as if this should have been obvious. "Why not now?"

Stella glanced over at the others. Ken was still howling and Soolin had progressed to holding him down. She had the feeling that taking home two newly tattooed and whiny Kowalskis would be fun. For the value of "fun" that meant "long, hard and frustrating." Still, she looked up at Ray's eager face and found herself melting into a puddle. Stupid, stupid pills. "Okay," she said. "Why not?"

The other guy turned out to be a big, biker-looking type, one and a half times as tall as Ray and weighing probably as much as the four of them combined. He had a bushy beard and a ponytail, and one milky-looking eye. Both of his arms were covered in scattered, mismatched tattoos. He intimidated Stella a little, but Ray didn't seem to mind him. He handed the guy his driver's license and a slip of cardboard from his pocket that Stella couldn't see.

He scrutinized Ray's license for a moment, then said, "Thirty bucks."

Ray paid him, and Stella wandered off to look at the designs on the walls while they got started.

Stevo finished Ken's tattoo while she was waiting, and Stella eavesdropped a little while Stevo explained to Soolin (because Ken was still whimpering) how to bandage it and keep it clean and everything else he needed to know while it healed. While Ray wasn't screaming from his tattoo at all, she still wasn't sure he'd remember any of these instructions when they were given to him.

Ken and Soolin seemed surprised to discover that Ray and Stella were still here, as if they had forgotten the two of them existed while Ken was getting his work done.

"Where'd baby boy go?" Soolin asked.

Stella nodded her head at the other chair, where Ray was lying very still, eyes fixed on the ceiling. His shirt was halfway off- unbuttoned all the way down, with one arm out- to give the other guy access to his shoulder.

Ken groaned. "Aw, man," he said. "Ma's gonna kill me."

"Probably," Soolin agreed. She looked to Stella. "What's he getting?"

"He said it's a surprise," Stella said.

Soolin snorted. "You let him get away with that?"

"I wanted to see what he was going to get," she said.

"Ma is gonna turn me outside out and kill me," Ken said.

The three of them sat down in a row of chairs across from Ray and watched him hold still while he got his work done. Ray never moved, never flinched, and never said a word. He kept watching the ceiling fan above him like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Stella found herself thinking back to the day of the bank robbery, to the stone cold look she had always imagined Ray had had before he turned around. It looked a lot like that expression he had on his face now. She felt a swelling sense of pride in him. To her, Ray had always seemed like a combination of Jester and Knight- the funny, goofy guy who made her laugh as easy as he breathed, with a hardened, chivalrious hero lurking underneath that he could switch to whenever he wanted. He was skinny and of no more than average height, but Stella always touched his body with a sense that she was touching so much held back power, a stretched out spring ready to snap if the occasion called for it. He looked like a painting of a warrior. Stella bit her lip and pressed her knees together, and tried not to think about how much of a turn-on that was.

When the tattoo was finished, all three of them got up to look at it. Ray held up his hand- a little sweaty and shaky now; he had been clenching his fist the whole time- and said, "Stella first. You two can look after."

Stella smiled to herself, pleased, and went over to look. Ray tangled his free hand in her hair as soon as she was in reach, looking up at her with a slightly vulnerable expression, like he was seeking her approval. She gave him her best reassuring smile before she looked at his shoulder and let out a little gasp.

It was red and black, shaped a bit like a tiny banner. It was a little hard to read with the swelling, but she was able to make it out- the exact word she would have used to describe Ray any day she was high enough to be so uninhibited: Champion.

"It's perfect," Stella said, staring at it in open delight. She bent over him and kissed Ray as hard as she could. "It's great, Ray- I love it—"

Ray grinned at her and tugged her down to kiss him again. The pad of his thumb brushed against her cheekbone, like a small, silent thank-you.

Behind her, Ken and Soolin came up to look.

"Cool," Soolin said. She didn't sound all that impressed, but then, she didn't think of Ray like Stella did.

Ken scratched his head. "The spark plugs?" he asked, sounding confused.

Ray stopped kissing her to give his brother an annoyed look. "Shut up," he said. "Stella likes it." He left the that's what matters unspoken.

Stella smiled down at him. "I love you," she said.

Ray smiled up at her. "I love you back."

"Great," Soolin said. "Now that we all love each other, let's get these guys home."

Soolin left her keys with a friend who lived around the corner so that she could drive Ken home in his car, while Stella drove Ray in his. Ray was probably sober enough to drive, but Stella didn't want him jostling his arm. As brave as he had been while getting it, she could see it pained him a little to move.

Ray didn't have a curfew- hadn't had one since he turned eighteen, and didn't really have much of one before that- so driving up to his parents' house at midnight wasn't a big to-do of parking a block away and pushing it, like it would have been at her house. She went around to his side of the car and helped him out. Ray slung his untattooed arm around her shoulders and leaned on her like it was his leg that hurt while she walked him up to the door.

"You're amazing," she said, opening the front door as quietly as she could.

"Nah," Ray said, though he looked pleased at the compliment.

"You are," Stella said. "I don't know how you sat through that, Ken made it look like torture—"

"He was just putting on a show for Soolin," Ray said. "It didn't really hurt that bad."

"What didn't hurt that bad?" a third voice asked out of nowhere.

Ray and Stella both nearly jumped out of their skin. There was never anyone up this late when they went to Ray's house. She had thought they were alone.

Mr. Kowalski was standing in the kitchen, looking at them through the passthrough in the wall. He was wearing pajamas and seemed to have been making a sandwich before they came in.

Stella fidgeted nervously and looked at Ray. He was standing stock still and staring at his dad like a deer caught in the headlights. Stella's heart was pounding hard enough to make her sick at her stomach, and she tried to remind herself that Mr. Kowalski had a tattoo as well to calm it.

This seemed to occur to Ray, too, who pulled his sleeve down to show his dad his bandaged shoulder, rather than answer aloud.

Mr. Kowalski's eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he realized what that bandage must be covering. To Stella's relief, he just shook his head and chuckled. "That better say 'mom' under there," he said. Then he seemed to think the better of it. "Or Stella, of course." He raised his sandwich to her in a toasting gesture. Stella felt herself blushing.

"Sorry," Ray said.

"What are you sorry to me for?" Mr. Kowalski asked. "It's your funeral when your mother sees it." He looked to Stella. "You need me to take you home, kid?"

Stella thought about the fact that Soolin was probably busy right now with Ken and unlikely to pick her up, and how much she dreaded the idea of riding a bus or the L by herself this late at night. She swallowed her pride. "Yes, please."

"Lemme get my keys," he said. He looked to Ray. "Try to be quiet and not wake your ma. Even a Stella tattoo wouldn't save you if you woke her up this late." He stepped past them and headed to his bedroom.

The second he was gone, Stella heaved a relieved sigh. "Well, at least he wasn't mad," she said, offering Ray a tentative smile.

Ray nodded. "He reminded me of something, though," he said, with a hint of an amused smile.

"What?" she asked.

"How come my parents think we're getting married?"

—-

While it didn't snow much those first weeks of December, it was getting cold enough that Stella was going out less and tying up the phone talking to Ray more. (Unseemly for a native Chicagoan, Stella was, in Ray's words, "kind of a giant baby, Stell" about cold.)

Since she had explained to him about the pill and Barbara's mistaken belief that Ray had officially proposed and her own inability to correct that misapprehension, Ray had taken to teasing her about it at every opportunity. If people bothered him when he called her during his break at work, he told them, "Fuck off, I'm talking to my fake fianceé here!" He addressed her as "my bride" whenever he felt like being obnoxious, and had even once called her- when Barbara asked him who he was talking to- "the wife."

"Are you going to let this go any time soon?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I want to savor every second of it. I'm claiming it as one of my husbandly rights."

"You don't have husbandly rights," Stella said. "You have, at best, fake fiancé rights."

"Oh, yeah? What are those?" he wanted to know.

"All the rights you enjoyed as my boyfriend," she said, "with the new benefit of my not revoking those in retaliation for not letting this go."

"I'd just hang by your window and sing 'til you're not mad at me anymore," Ray said.

"Good luck with that," she said. "I'm not opening my window this month for love or money."

"Har-dee-ha-ha," he said.

Stella's mother was thrilled with her winter-born aversion to the outdoors. It seemed to Stella like her mom was at her door every minute, inviting her to watch TV with her, asking her to come play board games like they used to when she was little, or just asking if she wanted to talk. Stella felt bad for rebuffing most of these requests, but she was starting to feel like a particularly fat mouse being stalked by an overeager cat. The change in her mother confused her. It was only a few years ago that she had been elated to see Stella growing up, but now that she was most of the way grown, she seemed to want Stella to go back to being a little girl again.

"She knows there's only a little time left before you go off to college," her dad explained. "She's trying to make the most of it, I think."

"You know there's only a little time left before I go off to college," Stella said. "Why aren't you chasing me down to play Monopoly?"

He shook his head. "We're different, your mother and I," he said. "I expect you to graduate and come back here, as I did. I imagine she's worried you'll go tearing off to New York and Europe, like her."

Stella frowned. "It's not as though she ran off to them forever," she said. "She came back here, too."

Her father sighed. "To be honest, Stella," he said, "that wasn't her plan. She gave up on quite a few dreams when that film didn't work out."

This cleared up very little for her. "What does that have to do with me, though?" she asked. "I don't want to go off to New York and Europe and make movies. I want to stay in Chicago."

"She doesn't want you to settle," her father said. "She wants to see you dream as big as she did, only make a successful go of it. In her mind, that means you'd shake off Chicago and leave it behind."

"So she wants me to run off to Hollywood or something, but she doesn't want to lose me?" This made absolutely no sense to her.

"It's very complicated," her father said. "You might consider talking to her about it."

"I don't want to talk to her about it," she said. "All she ever wants to talk about is college and the kind of people I want to meet there, anyway."

Her father froze a little and focused on his ledgers, not saying anything.

Stella knew that move of old. It was what both of her parents did when they became aware of skirting an unpleasant truth. "It's about Ray, isn't it?" she asked.

"Probably," he admitted. "You have invested an awful lot of time and attention into him, Stella."

"What's wrong with that?" she asked. "Ray's a good person and he loves me."

"He's a nice boy," her father allowed. "But your mother and I would both like to see you branch out a little. You are allowed to have other friends, my dear."

"I have lots of other friends," Stella said.

"I suppose," he said. He sounded skeptical.

"I do, I do!"

"All right, well, I won't quibble about that with you," he said. "But you ought to think about spending some more time with your mother, at least so that she doesn't feel as though she's losing you."

Stella made more of an effort after that, but it really was an effort. Her mother talked about Stella's future at college like it was going to be a great escape from her current life. She didn't seem to get that Stella was going for an education, not the chance to socialize with new and exciting peers, or the chance to get away from everything she had going right now.

Halfway through the month, Ray finally hit on the perfect temptation to lure her out of her cocoon. He left work early to come by her house, beaming with good news. He skipped saying hi all together to pick her up, hugging her harder than ever, and swinging her in a circle.

"I got it," he said happily. "I got it, I got it, I got it!"

Stella laughed and squirmed to be put down, dizzy from his enthusiasm. "Got what?" she asked. "Your head examined?"

"Make fun of me all you want," he said. "Nothing can ruin the mood I'm in right now. I really got it!"

"Got what, Ray?" she asked.

Ray took a set of keys from his pocket and brandished them in front of her like an unbeatable straight flush. "Look," he said.

Stella stared at the keys for a minute, uncomprehending, then a grin began to spread across her face as realization sank in. "The apartment?" she asked. "You got the apartment?"

"I got the fucking apartment!" he said, sticking both of his fists in the air in triumph.

Ray didn't need to pick her up this time. She leapt on him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she squealed. "Oh, my God, oh, my God, you got it! I can't believe you got it!"

Ray wrapped his arms around her waist and began to spin her again. "Believe it, Stell, I got it- I got my own place! I am officially not a little kid bedroom-having, parent-dweller as of four thirty this afternoon!"

Ray's plans for an apartment had seemed like a pipe dream all year. He'd scrounged and saved every single penny he could to afford it, and had wheedled all the relatives he had that didn't share his last name into agreeing to be references for him so he'd look better on paper. But finding a place that was convenient to work, Stella, and his family, that wasn't run down, and that he could afford had proven a task worthy of Hercules. He'd found only one place that fit those criteria a few months ago, but it hadn't had any apartments available at the time.

"Is the loft?" Stella asked. "Did you get the loft?"

"I got the fucking loft," he said.

Stella shrieked and jumped up and down in his arms. "Ray, that's so great!"

He buried his face in her hair and hugged her tight. "I finally have a place I can take you where nobody's hanging around watching," he said.

Stella's stomach jolted and her heart skipped a beat. "Oh," she said, realization sinking in as she remembered Soolin's advice from weeks ago: Wait until he has his own place. Now Ray had his own place.

Ray put her down and gave her a hopeful look. "You wanna come see it?" he asked.

Stella hesitated. She felt unprepared for this. Which was crazy, because they had discussed it- and she had talked it over with Soolin and Barbara- and she had gone on the pill. All of that had built up to this. She was as prepared as she could get. But she still felt nervous and caught off guard. She told herself not to be a ninny and go with Ray, but she couldn't seem to make herself say that, or anything else.

Ray seemed to read her mind, anyway, and looked startled. "No!" he said, out of nowhere. "No, Stell- that's not why I asked. You don't have to do anything. We don't have to do anything. I just want to show you the place, that's all. I swear."

Stella recovered the ability to breathe. "Of course I want to," she said. "See it, I mean." But she still felt like she had ruined the moment.

Ray pulled her close and stroked her hair. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm an ass. I didn't mean to—"

She took a few breaths through her nose, inhaling the scent of his jacket, and took in the feel of his hands in her hair. Of course he hadn't meant anything. He was Ray and he'd never. She felt the muscles in her body relax and she wrapped her arms around his waist. "It's okay," she said. "I know you—" She let out an awkward laugh.

"You okay?" he asked. "'Cause, we can skip the new place all together if you're worried. I don't mind. Honest."

"No," she said. "I want to see it." She smiled against his neck. "I'd like to be alone with you, too."

Ray let out a relieved sigh in her ear. But then he went stiff in her arms.

"What's the matter?" she asked. Oh, Jesus, had she just scared him the way he scared her? She drew her head back to look up at him. "Ray, you know I didn't mean—"

"Hi, Miss D," Ray said, cutting her off.

Stella jerked out of his arms and turned around to see her mother standing at the foot of the staircase. The nervous, sick feeling was back and far worse than before. How much had she heard?

Her mother gave them both a light smile. "Hi, Ray," she said. "It's nice to see you again." She extended her hand towards him.

"Thanks," he said. He shook her hand, smiling nervously.

"What brings you by?" she asked.

"Ray got an apartment," Stella said. She nearly winced. Somehow, just the word "apartment" seemed to implicate her in conspiracy to commit fornication. "He came by to tell me about it," she added, like that would cover it over.

"Oh," said her mother. "That's good for you, Ray. Congratulations. I know how exciting the first apartment can be. I was a little older than you when I got mine, though, of course."

"Yeah, that was, uh- when you lived in New York, right?" he asked. He seemed like he was trying to charm her by remembering the trivia he'd been told over the years.

"Yes," she said. "Just after college. I didn't have an apartment when I went- I stayed in the dormitory."

"Right, in the—" Ray forgot the word as quickly as he'd heard it. "The thingamawhatsit."

Stella tried to squash the panic building inside her. "He's been looking at this place for ages," she said. "It's a loft in an old factory."

"Well, that sounds perfectly charming," her mother said. "I'm really happy for you, that you got it. Loft spaces are hard to get- you must've really stood out from the other applicants."

"I dunno," Ray said, shrugging. "I saw the 'for rent' sign, I put in an application, I got the call, I signed the lease." He offered her mother a tentative smile. "I been packed and ready to go for months. My dad and me moved all my stuff in already."

"So quickly?" her mother asked, her eyebrows raising. She looked impressed. "You must've been really eager to go."

"Well, you know," Ray said. "You gotta grow up sometime."

Her mother laughed. "Indeed."

Stella relaxed. If she was laughing, she couldn't have heard anything too incriminating. She turned a tentative smile to her. "Ray was asking if I could go see it," she said.

"Tonight?" she asked.

"If that's okay," Stella said.

"I'd have her home on time," Ray said. "And my ma's probably gonna be there."

"I see," her mother said. "Well, I suppose it's all right, but do be quick about it. I'd like to have dinner with my daughter for once."

"Righty-o," Ray said, still giving her that awkward smile.

"Thanks, Mom," Stella said.

"Of course, darling," she said. "I'll see when you get back."

Stella nodded and ran to fetch her coat before Ray collapsed under the awkwardness and started confessing things. Once she had it on, she started dragging him straight to the car.

In the driveway, Ray heaved a sigh that seemed to force all the air from his body, so that he sagged. "Jesus, I have never been so fucking scared in my life," he said.

"I know," Stella said. "For a second there, I thought we were dead."

"She's got the tread of a cat," Ray said. "How's she go down the stairs in high heels without making any noise? That's what I want to know."

"Your guess is as good as mine," Stella said. She reached for the passenger side handle on his car. "You ready to go?"

"Am I ready to get very far away from where I almost just crapped myself?" Ray asked. "Yeah, I think so."

Stella laughed. "It's not that far, is it?"

"Far enough," he said. "Get in."

---

A lot of the old, closed down factories in Chicago had been repurposed into apartments- many of them nice, large spaces with quaint history so that just the apartment itself was a conversation piece, no objets d'art need apply. Funky, artsy places in high demand among the elegantly starving Bohemians who cashed checks from their parents every month to be able to make the rent.

Ray's loft was not one of them.

On the fourth floor of a former drum factory, the loft was definitely big and definitely had a view out of its gigantic windows, but that was about all it had to recommend it. Hard wood floors that could have been beautiful if anyone had bothered to restore them from their scratched and dull state stretched wall to wall, dusty and cold. The bare minimum number of lights to pass an inspection had been put in, and there were long stretches of the loft that were impossible to see in at night; the exposed brick walls absorbed sun so it wasn't very bright even in the daytime. The pipes banged and rattled, and the water always came from the tap brown and rusty for a minute or two before it ran clear. Between the building's history and the previous tenants, the whole place smelled like cobwebs, sawdust, old leather and cigarette smoke.

Ray not being able to afford much in the way of furniture, the place was a bit barren on top of being decrepit. There were milk crates serving as book shelves, end tables or record cabinets in nearly every room, and all of Ray's clothes were stuffed in an old cardboard refrigerator box by his bed to serve as a dresser. His parents had given him a small formica dining table and a pair of matching chairs that had been theirs in their first apartment as a married couple, and Ken had managed to scrounge him a futon bed that had belonged to a friend of a friend. Ray had hung some posters to make it look a little nicer, and the old icebox fridge that had come with the place was taped over with pictures of him and Stella.

"I'll probably move some stuff around," Ray said as he finished describing the loft's flaws to her while she looked around. "I'm not real sure I like where everything is, you know?"

Stella shivered a little at the chill in the air. "It needs rugs," she said. "I bet if I took my shoes off, this floor would be icy."

"Yeah," Ray said, giving her a rueful grin. "The apartments don't have their own hemostats—"

"Thermostats," she corrected.

"Whatever," he said. "There's just one for the whole building, so only the super gets to turn it on."

"When's he gonna do that?" Stella asked.

"When it's cold enough," Ray said.

Stella gave him an incredulous stare. "This isn't cold enough?"

"Not everybody's a wuss about cold like you, Stell," he said, snickering.

Stella stuck her tongue out at him. Then she thought about the possibility it might freeze that way and put it back in her mouth.

"What do you think about it?" he asked. He had that look he'd had when he was showing her his tattoo, like he was seeking her approval.

She grinned at him. "Well, I did love it," she said, "before I found out that you were going to freeze to death in it, anyway."

He laughed. "I'll get a bunch of blankets," he said. "I promise."

"In that case, I guess it can stay," she said.

Ray smiled and tugged her close. "You mean it about the loving it part?"

"Yeah, Ray," she said. "I do." She didn't see how it was possible for her not to love it. Ray loved it and she loved Ray. She was excited for him to get what he wanted. And now that she was away from the immediate panic of the first moment, she could be excited, too, for them to have a place to go to be by themselves if they felt like it.

He rested his chin on her shoulder and looked around the loft with an expression of total contentment. "This place is the second most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said.

"Only the second?" she asked.

"You know what the first is," he said, rolling his eyes.

"I do," Stella admitted. "But I like hearing you say it."

Ray turned her around in his arms so they were face to face. He stared at her eyes for a long moment, his face taking on a soft, soulful quality. "My car," he said.

Stella burst out laughing and smacked him on the shoulder. "Very funny," she said.

"You thought it was funny," he said, grinning at her and letting his arms drop to be around her hips.

"Lies," she said, draping her arms around his neck.

"God's honest truth," he said, and bent down to kiss her.

Stella ran her hands up into his hair as she kissed him back. She ran her tongue across his teeth, trying to savor every inch of him.

"Mm." Ray wound her hair around his wrists and kissed her deeper. He pulled her closer, so all of her weight was against him, and Stella began pushing his jacket off his shoulders.

Ray broke off and gave her a worried look. "I meant it, Stella- we don't—"

"Sense the tone," she said.

"I love the tone," Ray said, and dropped his jacket on the floor before he went to work on the buttons of his shirt.

Stella didn't know what she was doing- she hadn't even the faintest idea- but he looked good, felt good, and she thrilled a little that she could just make him do what she said. She took off her own coat and bent to unzip her boots.

Ray had his shirt off now and for all his bluster about being weather resistant, his skin was breaking out in goosebumps. He pulled her close and kissed her again, and Stella felt his hand on her back, lowering the zipper on her dress.

Stella shivered at the feel of his hands and his bracelets on her bare skin and thought, with dizzy relief, that she wasn't afraid- or maybe it was just that sometime on the way over here, her mind had found the place where fear met with anticipation so that all that was left was excitement. It was a complete one eighty from how she'd felt before, and she wasn't sorry at all.

Ray was fumbling with her bra hooks, cursing under his breath as they kept slipping. "How do you work this crazy thing?" he asked.

Stella reached behind her to help him. "It's just a couple of hooks, it's not that—"

Ray abandoned the hooks to kiss her again.

Stella giggled. "Oh, sure, give up now—"

Ray planted a series of kisses down the side of her neck. "I'm not giving up," he said, "I just wanna—" He cut himself off to bite her on the collarbone.

Stella jumped, startled, and then pushed his head lower down. Ray went with it, kissing and nipping his way around her chest while he tugged at her dress' neckline to pull it down.

"I love you," he said against her skin. "I love you so fucking—"

A knock at the door stopped him from finishing his sentence. They both froze.

"Are you expecting someone?" Stella asked, in a hushed tone that seemed to happen of its own accord.

"No," Ray said, just as quiet. He looked stiff and frightened.

The knock came again, louder, faster, more urgent. "You guys, it's me! Open up!"

"Soolin," Stella said, some relief trickling its way into her brain. She started dressing as fast as she could.

"If you two don't open this door right now, I swear to God," Soolin yelled, still pouding.

Ray started putting his shirt back on and opened the door. "Fucking Jesus, Soolin, what the hell is your problem? This is not a good time."

"You don't even know how right you are about that," she said, squeezing past him and heading straight for Stella. She looked spooked, like something had happened that scared the crap out of her.

"What's wrong?" Stella asked, wobbling on one foot as she worked the other back into her boot. Fuck, she had not been wrong about how cold the floor was, and now she didn't have Ray distracting her from noticing.

Soolin went behind Stella and started zipping her dress back up. "We have to get the hell out of here," she said. "Your mom just called me and sent me to come get you."

Stella blinked. Not once in the eight months she'd known Soolin had that ever happened. Stella hadn't even known until this moment that her mother had Soolin's number. "My mother what?" she asked.

"She sounded pretty freaked, Stella," Soolin said gravely. "She sounded really fucking freaked, on the order of do not fucking question or ignore it. She wants you home and she wants you home now."

"But why?" Stella asked, putting her coat back on.

"I told her I'd have her right back," Ray said.

"Did you not hear me just say I didn't question it?" Soolin asked, as if the two of them were hopelessly stupid. "I don't know what her problem is. I didn't ask. But it sounded really bad, like really bad."

Stella could feel her heart racing. "Did something happen?" she asked. "Is it my dad?" Stella's dad was only forty-two, and had no real health problems Stella was aware of, but how many magazine and newspaper articles had she seen just like that? And she couldn't think of anything else that would upset her mother so much- not enough to call Soolin and demand that Stella be brought straight home.

"I don't know," Soolin said. "But we better go. Now."

Stella buttoned her coat and ran for the door. Ray stopped her with a hand on her elbow. He looked worried. "Stell," he said. "If anything happened—"

Stella tried not to burst into tears. "I'll call you," she promised. "I'll need to call you. Oh, God, Ray—"

He hugged her close and kissed her forehead. "It's gonna be okay," he said. "I'm here, Stella. Okay? I'm here."

Stella grasped his forearms tight in her hands, wishing she could take him with her. This whole roller coaster evening was leaving her spun out, tired, drained. She wanted him with her, like a good luck charm. Like a shield.

"We really gotta go," Soolin said, tapping both her watch and her foot.

Stella kissed Ray quickly, then let go. "Ray," she said, her voice choked.

"Go on," he said. "I'll still be right here."

Stella nodded, bit her lip, and ran.

—-

Stella found she couldn't say anything to Soolin the entire drive back to her house. There was a lump in her throat, too thick with fear. What if there had been an accident? What if someone had had a heart attack? What if she was, right now, without knowing it, down one parent or grandparent?

Soolin didn't seem to expect her to say anything. She drove fast, focusing on the street ahead of her; her eyes were steely, her jaw was set. It was the face Stella had seen her make in hospitals while Ken got his cuts stitched or his concussions diagnosed. It was as if she had built an impenetrable wall around herself to keep everyone and everything out until the crisis was over.

Stella's hands shook and fidgeted of their own accord while she tried not to cry. There was an ache in her legs that felt like she needed to get out of the car and run, far away from whatever she was going to hear. What if?

The second Soolin parked the Impala in front of her house, Stella leaped out of it and ran inside, stomach churning, knees quaking. Soolin followed her, silent and slow, like she was marching in formation with an invisible army.

"Mom?" Stella yelled, her voice hoarse and shaky. "Mom?"

"In here, darling," her mother called back. Her voice sounded hollow and far away, like she was only just holding herself together.

Stella tried not to throw up and tore off in that direction.

Her mother and father were sitting together around the coffee table, in the small parlor with a wet bar just off the foyer. No strangers were with them- no police or doctors or insurance men, none of the stuff Stella pictured when someone had died. She nearly cried with relief.

Stella moved into the room to kneel in front of her parents, partly so she could reach her mother's hands to grab them, but mostly so her knees didn't give out and drop her where she stood. She looked into her mother's face, searching, but her mother seemed to be looking somewhere else, off in the distance.

"What is it?" Stella asked. She looked to her dad. His jaw was balanced on the back of his hand, elbow propped on the arm of his chair. She could see a vein pounding in his forehead, and a hardness around his mouth like he was clenching his teeth. "What happened?"

Neither of them said anything, still frozen in those terrifying postures. For a moment, Stella wondered if they had even heard her- if she had even asked the question out loud. Then she noticed Soolin standing in the doorway, with a definite oh shit expression on her face. Soolin jerked her head to the side, trying to get Stella to look at something behind her.

Stella frowned and looked over her shoulder. Then her stomach sank down somewhere in the vicinity of her ankles.

On the coffee table was the little beige clamshell case, opened to reveal the spiraled rows of Stella's blue and green birth control pills.

Stella stumbled backwards a step, letting go of her mother's hands. She turned to face the case, which seemed to be staring back at her. She swallowed, reached out with one finger, and pushed it closed. Without even really deciding to, she picked the case up and put it in her coat pocket. She turned around to face her parents again as she realized, with a sickening lurch, that those looks on their faces weren't aggrieved. They were furious.

"I'd ask you to explain this," Stella's mother said. "But I don't know right now if I could trust your answer." Her lips were pressed together in a thin, white line. Those beautiful fingernails that normally made her look so elegant were curved like claws, pressing into the backs of her own hands like she was thinking of raking them across Stella's face.

"They aren't drugs," Stella said, a little stupidly.

"Do you think I don't know that?" her mother snapped, her voice severe enough to make Stella flinch. Unbidden, the mental image of her mother with her own identical case in the bathroom, popping out one pill in the morning as she brushed her teeth, came to Stella's mind. Of course her mother knew what they were. And worse, of course she knew what they were for.

"I haven't done anything," Stella said. "Not- I just wanted to have them, just in case."

Her mother let out a terrible, mocking laugh. "Am I supposed to believe that?"

"It's true," Soolin put in from the doorway. "She just got 'em to be prepared. Better safe than—"

"Thank you for bringing Stella home, Soolin," Stella's dad said. "If you go to the dining room, you'll find a little money on the table to reimburse you for the gas and the trouble."

Soolin's jaw clenched and Stella could tell she was insulted. "I don't need your money," she said. "And she really didn't do anything."

"Will you please leave?" her mother asked, her voice sharp and angry.

"Fucking rich white people," Soolin said quietly, though she sounded just as angry. "You think anybody who's not from the country club—"

"Please leave," her mother repeated. "I don't need to discuss this about my daughter with someone like you."

Soolin's eyes widened a little, and she staggered back a step, looking angry and- oh, God, even a little hurt.

"God, Soolin, I'm sorry," Stella said. She shot her mother a disgusted look. "Christ, Mom."

Soolin put up both of her hands, shook her head and walked out. Stella heard her slam the front door.

"I hope that made you really happy," Stella said, resisting the urge to spit on the carpet, right at her mother's feet. "I hope that gave you the thrill of a lifetime."

"I don't want to hear it right now, Stella," her mother said. "Right now, all I want to hear about is where these came from and how long you've been taking them."

Stella seethed. "You do not get to press me on this after you talked that way to one of my friends."

Her mother gave an incredulous laugh. "And you will not tell me how I can or cannot talk to you or anyone else. How long has this been going on, Stella?"

"What does it matter?" Stella asked, folding her arms across her chest. "I thought you couldn't trust my answer."

"Stella," her dad said, warning in his tone.

"Well, you seem to have decided behind my back that I'm a complete slut," she said. "What difference does it make what I say?"

"No one said that," her father said.

Stella scoffed. Yeah, right, no one had said that. Except for the part where they had treated her having birth control pills as a full-scale emergency worthy of dragging her home and calling her to the carpet like she'd committed a crime. Like she'd done something wrong.

Her mother drew in a breath through her nose and tried to make herself soften. "Stella, this is serious."

"No, it isn't," Stella said. "They're pills. I have them. They're legal for me to get. They're legal for me to take. I don't have to tell you everything."

"Hopping into bed with some boy is a big deal, Stella!" her mother cried.

"I haven't hopped into bed with anyone!" Stella said. "And Ray is not just some boy!" Ray had never been just some boy. How had they missed that? Had they slept through the last five years?

"I waited and waited for you to grow out of it," her mother said, sounding like she was saying it more to herself than anyone else. "I told myself to have an open mind, it was just a first crush, you'd get over it eventually—"

"Well, you bet wrong, then," Stella said. "That's not my fault."

"Don't you see where the road you're on ends up?" her mother demanded.

"It doesn't end up anywhere!" Stella said. "Don't you see that that was the whole point of the fucking pills?"

"Stella," her father said. "You will not address your mother with that kind of language."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child," Stella snapped. "I'm not anymore."

"Yes, you are," her mother said. "If you weren't, you wouldn't be sneaking around, lying, hiding things from us—"

"When did you ever make coming to you with the truth about anything look okay?" Stella asked. "I didn't tell you about the pills because I knew this was how you'd react! Like I'm a little kid you have to protect from the big, bad poor boy!"

"That's enough," her dad said.

"The hell it is," Stella said. "Soolin was right. Would we even be having this argument if my friends and my boyfriend were trust fund theatre nerds and rowing team jocks gearing up for Harvard and Radcliffe?"

"Stop it, just stop it," her mother said. "Stop making us out to be cartoon villains because we care about the decisions you're making for your future."

"Stop making it about my future," Stella spat. "My grades are perfect. You couldn't ask for better college board scores than I got. I have never been in trouble. I have never done anything. My future's not in any kind of danger and it never has been!"

"You can't say that about anyone you hang around with," her mother said. "That kind of thing matters, Stella. People look at it."

"Who died and made you Joe McCarthy?" Stella said. "I'm going to be blacklisted because I hang out with a couple people from the Southside? That's stupid, Mother."

"Sex, drugs, and acting like a punk," her mother said. "See how well that flies at a university. Let alone anywhere else."

Stella rolled her eyes. "Cut to the chase for once in your life, Mom. Is this about what I'm doing, or who I'm doing it with?"

"It's not about either!" she cried.

"Then what?" Stella asked. "What do you want me to do different? You want me to cut my hair, join the glee club, and pretend I like it?"

"Of course not," her mother said.

"You want me to stop taking the pills?" she asked.

"No," her mother said.

"Then what, Mom? What do you want?"

Her mother's face went so cold that it chilled Stella to the bone. "I want you," she said, "to stop seeing Ray Kowalski."

Stella felt like her heart had stopped.

"It's played its course," her mother said, "but it needs to stop now. It's time. Before you get in some kind of real trouble."

Stella couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her jaw worked silently for what seemed like forever as she tried to think of something to say and no words would come out. Finally, she burst out, "That's crazy!" She looked at her father. "Dad, tell her!"

Her father said nothing. He looked away.

She raked her nails back through her hair, wondering if she was going insane. "How can you- he's not some strange punk I just picked up! He's Ray! You know Ray! You've known Ray since we were kids!"

"It was cute when you were kids," her mother said. "He rescued you and you became infatuated. It was adorable. But it's not anymore." She gestured towards the pocket where Stella had put her pills. "You're growing up. You're starting to make grown up decisions. And they still all hinge on Ray."

Stella gritted her teeth and told herself that under no circumstances whatsoever was she fucking going to cry.

"You've never let yourself want anything else," her mother continued. "You've never let yourself see anything else. You can't keep clinging to each other like children. You can't keep tying your lives up together. They don't fit. Maybe you'll drag him up, but if you don't, he'll drag you down."

Stella shook her head wildly. She didn't know what to say, but she knew that everything her mother said was wrong. That wasn't what they were like. That wasn't how they worked.

"For God's sake, Stella," her mother said. "If you won't do it for yourself, think about him. Doesn't he deserve the chance to see what he could be without making his whole life about you?"

Resolve wasn't working anymore. Hot tears were burning their way through Stella's eyes. "This is not about me or Ray or what we deserve," she said. "This is about you. This is about you never getting what you really wanted. This is about you having to settle."

Her mother's face hardened. "Regardless of what you think my motives are," she said, "it's over. It's done with. I won't hear another word on the subject."

"Dad?" Stella asked, quiet, pleading.

"Now would be a good time," he said, "for you to go to your room."

Stella closed her eyes and fled up the stairs. She wanted to throw herself on her bed and weep when she got to her room, but she didn't. She wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of even a single second of acting like she was beaten.

She grabbed her schoolbag and dumped all of its contents on the floor. She started yanking up every piece of clothing that she could find and stuffing it inside.

"They're wrong," she muttered to herself out loud as she packed. "They're bigots. They don't know anything."

Once it was stuffed as full as she could get it, Stella slung the bag over her shoulder, opened the window, and began the long climb down. It was the first time she had ever done it without Ray, but she still wasn't scared. She was too angry to be scared.

She made her way around the back of the house, hopped the fence and started walking. She didn't know the bus schedule as well as she could, but she had enough money in her pocket that it didn't matter. She dropped a few coins in the first payphone she found and called a taxi.

When she got up to Ray's apartment, she beat on his door as frantically as Soolin had earlier that night. He answered a lot faster for her.

"Hey," he said, wrapping his arms around her as she flung herself on his chest. He rubbed a soothing circle into her back and kissed her hair. "Hey. What happened? I been going crazy all night- I was gonna call Soolin in another minute—"

Stella breathed him in. He was stripped down to his boxers and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, but he still had that same Ray smell she had come to associate with safety and warmth. That smell her parents would have her give up for some hypothetical guy who was richer than God and wouldn't embarrass them by mixing up vocabulary words at a dinner party.

Fuck them, she thought. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them.

Ray kept on rubbing her back, but his tone when he spoke again was gentle, worried. "Stell," he said. "Stell, what happened? Was it your dad? You're kind of freaking out your boyfriend here, not gonna lie."

Stella wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed as hard as she could. How could anyone expect her to live without this? To live without him?

She sniffled a little and rubbed her eyes dry on his blanket. "Ray?" she asked.

"Yeah?" He was stroking her hair now. Soothing her like only he could.

"You know how you're my fake fiancé?" she asked, so quiet she wasn't sure he'd hear it.

"Yeah?" he asked, with a quiet chuckle.

Stella drew her head back to look up at him. "Would you like to be my real one?"

—-

The next morning, Stella cut school with reckless disregard for the perfect grades she had tried to use to win over her parents the night before. She had bigger problems now. School didn't even rate in the top fifty.

Ray had left her his car for the day, unconcerned about what the hell she needed it for. "You're gonna be my wife," he'd said. "Community property, you know?"

Once she'd showered and dressed, she drove herself out to Waukegan to sit outside Shimer and wait for Soolin.

The campus was new- the school had been out in Mount Carroll the year before- and was still very small, only two buildings. While Stella didn't know Soolin's exact course schedule, she knew that she could count on Soolin being here.

It was well into the afternoon before she came out, and Stella was relieved to see Soolin looked like her regular self. Her hair was still teased up high in the air, she still wore her layers of eye make-up, her artfully ripped clothes, and her tons of jewelry. However upset she had been the night before, it hadn't rattled her enough to throw off her daily routine.

"Soolin!" Stella yelled, raising her arm above her head and waving. "Over here!"

Soolin looked over at her with her usual cool, unsurprised look. She excused herself from the other students she was talking to and walked over to Stella.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said.

Stella winced. "I'm really sorry about last night," she said. "About my mother, I mean. That she dragged you into that and- and what she said to you."

Soolin looked at her for a moment, as if assessing her for sincerity. Finally she nodded. "It's cool," she said.

"No, it wasn't," Stella said.

Soolin laughed. "No, it wasn't," she agreed. "But we're cool. Can't control who you're related to."

Stella exhaled, relieved. "Thanks," she said.

Soolin shrugged. "You cut school and came all the way out to Waukegan just to say you're sorry?"

"No," Stella admitted, guilty. Suddenly she wished she had.

Soolin didn't look bothered, though. She looked amused and unsurprised. "I didn't think so. So what happened?"

"It wasn't the pills they were mad about," Stella said. "Apparently, they didn't realize until they found them, what's really going on with us. They didn't think Ray and I were that serious."

"Mm." Soolin looked like she had expected as much. "You're too old for the fairytale, I guess. The princess isn't supposed to live happily ever after with the stable boy."

"Heh." Stella gave Soolin a weak smile. "I guess we're going to test that."

Soolin frowned. "Meaning what? You talked them down from the freakout?"

Stella swallowed and shook her head. "They don't want me to date Ray anymore." She ran her nails through her hair. "So I'm going to marry him."

Soolin stared at her. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," Stella said. She jammed her hands into her coat pockets and looked at the ground to hide a smile. She knew it was crazy; but it still seemed to her like the perfect solution.

"You're seventeen," Soolin said. "You can't get married in Illinois without your parents' go-ahead when you're seventeen."

"Yeah, I thought of that," Stella said. "But I think I've got a plan. I just... I need help." She bit her lip and chanced a look at her. "I can't pull this off on my own. And- I have to pull it off fast, because my parents are probably already looking for me."

Soolin looked appalled. "You ran off?"

"I snuck out," she said. "Last night, after they sent me to my room. Probably the school's already called them to tell them I didn't show up."

"Oh, Jesus," Soolin said, rubbing her temples, looking frustrated. "I'm contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

"You contribute to the delinquency of a minor all the time," Stella said, laughing incredulously.

"Yeah, but your parents didn't know about it," Soolin said. "Now they're going to be out looking for you. Ray's place and then mine are gonna be the first places they'll look."

"I know," she said. "That's why we need to get the hell out of dodge tonight."

"Who's we?" Soolin asked. "Love you, kid, but I am not getting arrested for driving a runaway across statelines. The CPD doesn't look too kindly on that kind of thing when it's girls like you running off with someone like me." She inflected the last with bitter sarcasm.

"Ray and me," Stella said, hiding a wince. "You don't have to go with us. I just need your help to make sure it doesn't fall apart when we get there."

Soolin looked at her for a moment, as if she was weighing pros and cons in her head, trying to decide if this was an amount of trouble she was okay with getting into.

Stella gave her a pleading look.

Soolin sighed. "What do you need from me?"

"I need you," Stella said, "to twist your brother's arm."

—-

Yo-han Ahn, Soolin's older brother, was a resident of internal medicine at UIC. He wasn't a full-fledged doctor yet, but he had the credentials to have a nice side business writing work and school notes for Soolin's friends when she asked. He had written one for Ray back in May when Senior Ditch Day hadn't been as consequence-free as it had seemed before he did it. If you had twenty bucks and Soolin's vouch, he was usually good about signing off on whatever you needed.

"Oh, no," Yo-han said. "Absolutely not. That is way too heavy."

Soolin gave him an exasperated look. "It's going to be in another state," she said. "No one's really going to be able to trace it back to you."

"Yeah, if they actually make it over the stateline," he said. "What happens if the cops pick them up first?"

"They're not gonna get picked up by the cops," Soolin said. "No one cares that much about rich girls from the Gold Coast running off with a boy. It's gotta rank behind all the murders and shit in terms of priorities."

Yo-han scoffed. "Big donors to the Policeman's Ball can usually work a pretty good number on people's priorities."

"I'll give you fifty," Stella tried. "Please?"

"I don't even know what could happen if you got caught," Yo-han said. "I could probably go to prison."

"For a first offense?" Stella asked. "Really?"

"That's a pretty damn major first offense," he said. "We're not talking about a school note that I can write off as just trying to get an annoying kid out of my office."

"You don't have an office," Soolin said, rolling her eyes.

"That's not the point," he said. "The answer is no."

Stella felt panic rising. She didn't have a back-up if this plan failed. She bit her lip and looked at him in pure desperation. "A hundred," she said. "I'll give you a hundred." It would clean out a good portion of her life savings, but she didn't know what else to do.

Yo-han looked at her, scrutinizing, as if trying to decide whether or not she was serious.

"She's good for it," Soolin said. "I swear."

"And I'll eat the note if we get pulled over by any cops," Stella added. "No one'll ever know."

Yo-han hesitated.

Soolin made another exasperated noise. "Oh, just take her money," she said. "Or I'll tell Eomeoni that you were the one who gave me the Percocets last year."

Yo-han looked aghast. "I didn't do that!" he said.

"Which one of us is she gonna believe, me or you?" Soolin asked, folding her arms across her chest.

Yo-han groaned. "You're a nightmare."

"Yeah, but I'm your nightmare if you don't help us out," she said.

"Fine," he snapped. "Give me ten minutes."

Yo-han stalked out of the room, his coat swishing behind him, while Stella squeaked and threw her arms around Soolin. "Oh, my God, thank you," she said. "Thank you so much."

Soolin patted her back. "Great, whatever, just be quiet about it. Don't get us caught before we even get out of here."

"Sorry," Stella said, letting go of her.

"I really hope you know what you're doing," Soolin said. "You're doing all kinds of crime to make this thing happen."

"I know," Stella said. She gave Soolin a hopeful smile. "I'll run for mayor or something later to make up for it."

Soolin snorted. "Another corrupt mayor," she said. "Just what Chicago needs."

"Ha ha," Stella said. She bit her lip. "Are you okay with this?"

Soolin shrugged. "It's your life," she said.

"It's your felony," Stella said.

"I didn't say I wouldn't break your neck if you get caught," Soolin said.

Stella laughed. "Okay," she said. She leaned over and hugged her again. "Thanks."

"I'd say 'any time,' but I'm not doing this for you twice," she said.

"You're the best," Stella said.

"Don't you ever fucking forget it," Soolin said. Then she looked a little like she was relenting and hugged Stella back. "Good luck," she said.

"We'll need it," Stella said. Then she let go of her.

Yo-han came back into the room, holding out a piece of paper. "You better burn this thing after you're done if you pull it off," he said. "Don't keep it for the wedding scrap book."

"Agreed," Stella said. "Thank you so much."

"Just have Soolin bring the money by later," he said. "I have to work." Then he turned and left the room again.

"He got everything right?" Soolin asked.

Stella unfolded the paper, which was printed on the UIC letterhead, and read.

To Whom It May Concern,

Stella Dubois is a patient of mine who is currently pregnant with an estimated date of confinement of July 25, 1980, which puts her currently at 8+ weeks of gestation.

The pregnancy was confirmed by laboratory analysis on December 13th, 1979.

Sincerely,
Dr. Yo-han Ahn
Resident of Internal Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago

"Nice," Soolin said. "Think a judge will buy it and give you the veto?"

"I hope so," Stella said. "I really, really hope so."

—-

"What's the book say?" Ray asked. They were parked outside a Baskin Robbins in Waukegan- the only place they could think of where they weren't close enough to anyone they knew to get spotted. He was drumming his hands on the steering wheel wildly, like he couldn't sit still if his life depended on it.

Stella was curled in the passenger seat, her head against the window, her feet tucked next to the gear shift, with a large book called Marriage and the Law propped up on her thighs. "I'm not sure yet, Ray," she said. "There's a lot of pages to get through."

"Can you gimme the gist?" he asked.

"It's fifty states worth of law," Stella said, looking up at him over the cover. "There's no gist. There's only headings, paragraphs, and subsections."

"Do you even know if there is a place we can go where this is gonna work?" Ray wanted to know. His drumming was intensifying, like he was getting more worried the longer the cross-reference took.

"Your cousin Celia," Stella said. "Remember? She got pregnant and she ran off somewhere, and they got married without having to ask anyone's permission because she was pregnant—" Stella cut herself off at his blank look and sighed. "Your mother was telling us all about it this summer," she said.

"You were listening to that?" Ray asked.

Stella laughed. "Weren't you?"

"Not really. I kinda tune out the family gossip stuff," he said.

"It helps more than you'd think," Stella said.

"Is that book helping more than I think?" he asked.

"Would you like to look?" she asked, turning it towards him.

Ray put both of his hands up. "Sorry," he said. "But, you know, I'd kinda maybe like to have an idea of where the hell we're going before we get picked up by the cops and I go to jail for this, so if you don't fucking mind hurrying up a little—"

Stella drew a shaky breath and looked up at him. "We're down to either Georgia or Oklahoma," she said. "I don't think Oklahoma's going to work, because they have a three-day wait after you get the license before you can do it."

"Okay, so no Oklahoma- what's wrong with Georgia?" he asked.

"It'd probably take that long to drive there," she said.

Ray rubbed at his face and laid his head against the steering wheel. "You think this might be crazy?"

"Yes," Stella said. She looked up from the book and bit her lip. "Does that bother you?"

Ray blinked. "Bother me?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. She hesitated. "I mean, I- I know I asked you, but- it didn't look like we'd get to see each other again, and I just couldn't—" She closed the book on her arm with a shaky breath, feeling as if she might cry. She had felt so sure all day, but she had been carried through most of it by excited momentum. Sitting here now, with pages and pages of laws in front of her, tring to figure out where the hell they could even go, was starting to wear her down. Worse, it was starting to scare her. Why had she even thought this would work?

Ray's hands went still and he scooted over the gear shift to crouch on the floor in front of her. "Hey, hey, hey," he said. "Stella."

She could feel herself starting to cry. "I'm sorry, Ray," she said. "I was just- I was scared, and I wasn't thinking, and I'm getting us in so much trouble—"

"No, no, c'mon," he said. "I'm sorry I snapped at you, okay? I'm sorry."

Stella shook her head. "I don't know if I can do this," she said, and she heard her voice crack. Fuck, she was coming apart at the seams.

"Hey, yes, you can," he said. "All right? It's you. It's you and me. Remember?"

She buried her face in his shoulder and tried not to cry harder.

"Stella," he said, soft and frustrated-sounding. He didn't sound frustrated with her, though. He sounded frustrated with himself. "It's not that bad."

Stella laughed. "Not that bad? We're up to harboring a runaway, medical fraud, blackmail—"

"There's blackmail?" Ray asked.

"Soolin told Yo-han that she'd tell their mom he sold her drugs if he didn't help us," she said.

"Oh."

"Bribery of a health official," Stella added. She wasn't sure about that one, but it sounded likely. "Conspiracy to transport a minor across statelines. Intent to defraud a public official. Illegal marriage." She lifted her head to look up at him. "Ray, this is such a bad idea."

Ray looked at her with a small, feeble smile, like he was both amused and trying to get her to be amused. "You know what's a bad idea?" he asked. "This book. This book was a seriously bad idea." He took the book away from her and tossed it into the backseat. "So nix the book. And forget all that other stuff, okay? It doesn't matter. It's just gonna be a funny story someday that we tell our kids about how true love conquered diversity."

"Adversity," she said.

"That, too," he said. Stella laughed. He grinned at her. "See? It's already funny."

"I guess," she said. She bit her lip. "Ray, what if this is a huge mistake?" It felt disloyal to voice the possibility out loud, like she was betraying him even by thinking it.

"It's not," Ray said. "Trust me, I know from mistakes." He brushed her hair behind her ears. "Stell... you're the best and most important thing that's ever happened to me. Your parents can toss me down the deepest and darkest hole in the world for this crazy scheme, and the only thing about it that'd bother me is I wouldn't get to see you again."

Stella couldn't help it. She smiled. "You mean that?" she asked.

"Yes," Ray said. Now he bit his lip. "Stell... I believe the whole reason I exist is you. That I'm not here for any other reason. Just you. Loving you."

Stella closed her eyes and drank that in. God, how did she ever live before she had him? She couldn't even remember who that person was anymore. Life with Ray was so much better. Just this side of perfect. "Oh, I love you, too," she whispered, burying her face against his neck.

She could hear the smile in his voice when he spoke. "I know," he said. "That's what matters, Stell. Everything else is just details. And fuck the details. Just tell me where you want me to drive and we'll go."

Stella held onto him for a moment and just breathed him in. Of course that was what it came down to. Of course the solution was that simple and obvious. She dried her eyes with her knuckles and pulled back to look at him. "Georgia," she said. "Let's go to Georgia."

Ray smiled. "Okay," he said. With some difficulty, he climbed back over her and slid into the driver's seat. "Georgia it is. Let's go get some peaches and then married." He started the car, pulled out of the space, and headed for the interstate.

—-

From what Stella was able to plan out using the road atlas Mr. Kowalski made Ray keep in the car and a piece of scratch paper to do the math, the trip wouldn't be nearly as long or arduous as she had first thought.

"We just take Skokie Highway to 94, 94 to 90, and then the 65 to Chattanooga," she said, "then get on the 24 to get into Georgia." She scribbled out a few figures. "We can be there by tomorrow afternoon if we drive through the night."

"What about, uh, stopping for gas and food and stuff?" Ray asked.

"We'll just have to do that when we can," she said.

Ray made a face. "I'm not driving this thing on vapors in the backwoods of Kentucky," he warned.

"I'm sure we can get a full tank somewhere between Chicago and Kentucky, Ray," she said.

"It's really bad for the car," he told her.

"So we'll stop before it gets down that low," Stella said.

"It's really, really bad for the car," he insisted. "You want to wreck an engine, go below a quarter of a tank."

She laughed. "So we don't go below a quarter of a tank," she said. "What's the problem?"

Ray looked ahead at the road for a moment, saying nothing. Then, "How are we paying for this, Stella?"

Oh, that. "I cleared out my savings," she said. "Earlier today. We have about four hundred and fifty dollars left after paying Yo-han."

Ray looked at her. "You serious?"

"Yes," she said. "Why?"

"No reason, I guess," he said. There was a beat. "How'd you save that when you've never had a job in your life?"

"I've been banking half my allowance and most of my birthday money since I was seven," she said. "In theory, I was saving for a car of my own."

"You started saving for a car when you were seven?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I started out saving for a pony."

Ray laughed. "You never told me that."

Stella shrugged and gave him a helpless smile. "I didn't want you to make fun of me."

"What makes you so sure I won't make fun of you now?" he asked.

"I'm claiming it as one of my wifely rights," she said.

Ray laughed about that all the way to 94.

Neither of them had ever been on a road trip before. All of Stella's long distance travel, for as long as she could remember, had been on airplanes. (Not that she had been very many places- she spent a week every summer in Martha's Vineyard with her grandparents, and had gone to Manhattan with her mother for her tenth birthday.) Ray had once taken a train with his family to Milwaukee to visit relatives, and a year before they met had taken a bus to Florida for baseball camp.

Neither was really sure what to do on a long trip in a car.

The first few hours, they just flipped around the radio, but somewhere in Indiana, all the stations they were familiar with faded out; while Stella was sure there were stations that played something other than country music out there, they couldn't find one. They entertained themselves with a license plate game for a while ("Oh, look," Ray said, "another Indiana- hey, more Indiana!") and then started and quickly abandoned a game of Slug Bug when Ray trying to reach Stella to slug her in the arm nearly jerked them into the other lane.

"You know something," Ray said, "I think road trips might be for little kids and suckers."

"I think you're probably right about that," Stella said.

The scenery along the highway seemed to pass by without leaving an impression, Stella supposed because it was too dark to really see anything. When they drove through those backwoods of Kentucky Ray had been so anxious about driving through, Stella couldn't see anything but the vague suggestion of trees.

The most interesting- or at least, educational- parts of the trip, Stella found, were whenever they stopped for gas. It was cheaper outside Chicago, but the snacks in the attached stores were priced at a level Ray declared to be highway robbery. (He refused to let Stella pay for her own M&Ms. Stella suspected that it rankled his pride enough that she was paying for every gallon of fuel.)

Around the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Stella permitted her mind to wander back home to Chicago. She wondered what her parents were doing now, if they were talking to the police, or haranguing the Kowalskis for information on where in the hell their son had taken their daughter.

Poor Barbara must be frantic, Stella realized with regret. Her son had been out of the house a whole twenty-four hours and was already kidnapping a Gold Coast girl, and Stella's parents were probably blaming her and her husband for it. Stella promised herself that she'd apologize to her for putting her through this when they went home.

Stella was thinking very little about what would happen when they came back. She didn't know how the four parents were going to react to the elopement, but she wasn't optimistic that any of them would be very happy. Her mother would probably have an aneurysm out of rage; Ray's would probably have one out of worry. Mr. Kowalski would probably be upset about what they'd put their mothers through, but would maybe find the idea very funny in private. Her father would be devastated, but probably quiet about it; reserved, like he was in every other situation.

Ken and Soolin would be nice about it, she thought. But Soolin's reaction to their engagement thus far had been from a stance of problem-solving. Stella's parents wouldn't let Stella be with Ray anymore, so Stella had to leave them for Ray. It was practical, period. Ken would probably just shake his head at the two of them for for making the kind of decision sober that he would reserve for being high out of his skull.

Stella fell asleep with her head against the passenger side window, wishing that she could go home to someone- anyone- who would've hugged them and said congratulations.

—-

"Hey, Stell," Ray said, prodding her gently in the side. "We're here."

"Tired," she said, almost as a reflex. Even with how uncomfortable she was after spending the night in the car, she didn't want to wake up.

"I don't even wanna hear that," Ray said, sounding annoyed. "One of us had to keep driving this vehicle while the other took a nap. I'll give you three guesses as to who that was, and the first two don't count."

"Sleepy," she insisted, curling in on herself as much as her seatbelt would allow.

"Stella, come on," he said. "I need you to wake up and tell me where we're supposed to go next, unless you wanna live in Georgia for a couple months til you feel like getting up."

Some of his urgency penetrated the fog around her brain, and Stella sat up, peering blearily at him across the gear shift. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Ray said, "we picked a state, but we never picked, like, a city. A township. You know, one of them places where people like to live that states are broken up into?"

Stella groaned and leaned her forehead against the dash. "Are you serious?"

"Yes, Stell, I'm serious," he said. "You got any idea where we're going? 'Cause the only city I know in Georgia is Atlanta, and I don't think that's just over that hill."

"What city are we in now?" she asked.

"I dunno," he said. "Chattanooga-ish."

"What's the nearest city?" She was distantly aware that she was the one with the road atlas, but it was on the floor by her feet and at the moment seemed very, very far away.

"Uh- um—" Ray squinted out the window for what felt like several minutes, watching for road signs. "Rossville, I guess."

"Okay," Stella said. She yawned, stretched and tried to curl back up in her seat again. "So we pull over and get married in Rossville."

But once they had taken the exit, it took less than five minutes to see the flaw in that plan.

"Do you see anything around here that even passes for a chapel?" Ray asked.

"I see churches," Stella offered, feeling stupid.

"Church weddings are kind of a members-only thing, Stella," he reminded her. "You can't just show up on the doorstep and throw one of them together in half an hour."

"I know, I know," she groaned. She rubbed at her eyes. She was not awake enough for this.

"We're running out of town here," he said. "This place really isn't all that big."

"There's probably more if we tried taking some turns," she pointed out.

"No way," he said. "I am not in favor of just randomly turning on roads somewhere we've never been in the hopes that we'll pass a big sign that says 'Chicago Kids, Get Your Elopements Here.' That is a negative."

"Well, we can't just follow this road all the way to Florida on the off chance we'll run into that sign, either, Ray," she said. "We have to do something."

"This is the worst planned running away together ever," he said.

Stella glared at him. "I'm pretty sure it's bad luck to annoy a bride on her wedding day."

"Not technically your wedding day until we manage to scout a location," he said. He ran his hand back through his hair and gave the town a suspicious glare, as if he thought it was willfully hiding all the places to get married. "I'm going back to the highway and looking for a bigger city."

"How do you know there's going to be a bigger city anywhere near here?" she asked. "They don't exactly print it on the exit signs."

"There might not be," he said, "but I'm taking my chances on what seems like a safer bet." He pulled into one of the church parking lots to turn around. "What about the map? What's on the map?"

Stella unbuckled her seatbelt so she could bend down and scoop it off the floor. She flipped through the pages until she found Georgia, but it was too early in the morning for her to make much sense of it. "I don't know," she said. "They're kind of all just names next to lines, Ray."

He pulled up to a stop sign and dropped his head against the steering wheel. "This is going to be one damn long day, I can feel it already."

His prediction wasn't far off. They pulled off into three more small towns with no visible get-married-quick amenities before someone at a gas station advised them to try the courthouse in Lafayette.

—-

"We should've gone to Vegas," Ray said.

Stella looked up at him. They were sitting in a waiting area while the frowning clerk took their driver's licenses and Yo-han's letter to a judge to "see what she could do" about getting their marriage license issued.

Well. She was sitting. Ray was pacing the room in a tight circle, looking agitated.

"It wouldn't have helped, Ray," she said. "Nevada isn't any better than Illinois. They won't even take a doctor's note."

"It's the capital of quickie weddings," Ray said.

"Not for kids, it's not," she said.

Ray paced a little more. "Mexico," he said. "We should've gone to Mexico."

"I don't speak Spanish," Stella said. "Neither do you."

"Some people speak English in Mexico," he said.

"With our luck, we wouldn't happen to get a judge who did," she said. She wished he would stop pacing. He was making her nervous all over again.

"Our luck isn't too bad," he said. "We got this far, didn't we?"

Stella bit her lip and glanced at the clock. The clerk had been talking to the judge for nearly twenty minutes. "Yeah," she said. "This far."

When the clerk came back, Stella was already convinced that the news wasn't going to be good. Sorry, Stella imagined her saying, but this is obviously fake, and we've called the highway patrol to come pick you up. They'll take you back to the station and call someone to come get you. By the way he was still pacing like a maniac, she thought that was what Ray was imagining, too.

This was such a bad idea, she thought. Why did I ever think this was a good idea at all?

But the clerk was smiling and motioning them over to her typewriter. "It took some convincing," she said. She had a warm voice with only a little accent that reminded Stella of Olivia de Havilland in Gone with the Wind. "We don't usually accept letters from out of state doctors. The judge ended up calling your physician to make sure it was all in order." She gave them a reluctant look. "He said to tell you he'd be billing you for the hour?"

Stella stared. Ray started to laugh. "You're kidding," he said.

"Nope," she said. "You're in such a tough spot and you've come such a long way. He had some reservations, but in the end, he just couldn't turn you down." She gave them a wide, kind smile. "You can call it an early Christmas present from Walker County."

"We can really get married?" Stella asked, recovering her voice. She felt dizzy; awkward, elated, and nervous as hell. This was really happening. They had pulled it off!

"As soon as I type up y'all's license," the clerk said. She was already pecking away at the keys. "Let me see if I got this right- Stanley Raymond Kowalski, born April 16th, 1961, Chicago, Illinois?"

"You got me," Ray said, sounding a little giggly. Stella was trying not to giggle herself. They'd pulled it off.

"Your parents' names, honey?" she asked.

"Damien and Barbara Kowalski," he said.

She typed for a while. "What's your mama's maiden name?"

"Babruscz," he said. "It's, uh, you know. Polish."

"How do you spell that?" she asked.

Ray looked trapped. "Oh, uh- it's- uh, B-A- um—"

Stella stopped him with a hand on his arm and spelled it for him. She smiled at the clerk. "Like he said, Polish."

The clerk nodded. "Where were they born?" she asked.

"Chicago," Ray said. Then he shook his head. "Wait, no- just Dad. Ma was born in Detroit."

The clerk typed that up. "Know their birthdays?"

Ray groaned. "Oh geez," he said. "Dad's birthday is always, like, the first week after school starts and Ma's is around spring break sometimes—"

"Mr. Kowalski's is September 8th, 1937," Stella supplied. "Mrs. Kowalski's is March 12th, 1941."

Ray gave her a fondly annoyed look. Stella gave him a tentative smile.

The clerk resumed typing. Ray gave her a worried look. "You're not gonna want to know about my grandparents, are you?" he asked. "'Cause I don't know where the heck they were from."

"Krakow," Stella said.

Ray's annoyed look was less fond this time. "What, do you listen to everything my mother says?"

Stella gave him her best beatific smile. "One of us should."

Ray snickered and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. "She knows everything," he told the clerk.

The clerk laughed. "I think it's nice," she said. "And I don't need to know about your grandparents." She looked to Stella. "Your turn, honey."

Stella rattled off her full name and birthdate. "I was born in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts," she said. "My father- Barry Dubois- was born in Evanston, Illinois." It took her a moment to remember his birthday. "My mother, Diana Cooper, was born abroad. Ensenada, Mexico." Stella felt a slight pang at the thought of her mother. She had forgotten until now the number of times her mother had drawn the parallel that they'd both been born on vacation. It hurt to think about now. She had been trying so hard not to think of her at all.

The clerk looked concerned. "You okay, honey?"

Stella shook it off. "Yeah," she said. She returned to the task at hand. "She was born August 21st, 1938." Her mother hadn't been much older than Stella when she had gotten married- only twenty-three. She had turned twenty-four just after Stella was born. For the first time, Stella wondered how that math worked out- if her mother had been pregnant with her when they married, the way Stella was lying to say she was now.

She thought of Barbara Kowalski telling her that when she was older, she'd want her mother's stories. She didn't know she'd get so much older so fast.

Ray reached over and rubbed Stella's upper back, asking her with his eyes, Are you okay?

Stella's eyes were tearing, but she smiled at him and squeezed one of his hands. I made my decision, she told herself. My back was against the wall and I picked Ray. If they don't like it, they shouldn't have made me choose. A little defiantly, she leaned over to kiss him on the lips.

The clerk kept on typing for what seemed a very long time. She asked, without looking up, "Now you two know that, because she's legally a minor, we are obligated to send her parents a letter informing them that we issued you this license?"

Stella laughed. "Really?" she asked. For some reason, that idea struck her as hilarious.

"Is that a problem?" the clerk asked.

"Nah," Ray answered for her, slinging his arm around Stella's shoulders. "We were gonna tell them when we got back, anyway."

Stella shivered a little and drew closer to him.

"Okey-dokey," the clerk said. Then she pulled the paper from her typewriter and held it out to them.

Gingerly, Stella took it from her and stared at it. It was a heavier paper, beige in color, with a gold seal at the bottom next to the lines for their signatures and the signature of whoever married them. It was pretty. Stella traced her fingertips over the labels beneath their names, the ones that said "bride" and "groom." She was literally holding her future.

"This is it?" she asked.

"That's it," the clerk said, smiling again.

Ray looked over Stella's shoulder at the paper and touched the same lines she had. "This whole thing is everything we need?" he asked. "We can take this anywhere and get married any time we want?"

"Anywhere in Georgia, any time in the next three months," the clerk said.

"Wow," Ray said. He gave Stella a goofy grin. "Any time, anywhere, within limits." He looked overwhelmed by the realization.

Stella smiled at him for a moment, then bit her lip and looked at the clerk. "What about here and now?" she asked.

Ray looked at her. "Really?" he asked.

"Yeah," Stella said. "I mean, if- if you want to. If that's okay."

Ray leaned over and kissed her. "Yeah," he said. "Here and now sounds great."

Stella looked to the clerk again. "Can we do that?"

"If you've got twelve more dollars," the clerk said.

Ten minutes later, they were married.

—-

Their wedding reception, such as it could be called, involved a lunch at a hamburger joint a few blocks away from the courthouse. They weren't able to get peaches- they were out of season- but Ray did manage to swing free pie by flashing their newly-typed marriage certificate at the waitress. (It hadn't been his plan, so much as it seemed he was excited to tell anybody who held still within six feet of them, "You see her? She's my wife. I got the papers to prove it!")

"You wanna try some of mine?" Ray asked. Low on whole pies, the waitress had brought him pecan, while Stella had cherry.

"Sure," she said. Stella started to slide her plate in his direction and reach for his at the same time when she found a fork with a bite of pie on it an inch away from her face. She jerked her head back reflexively, then found herself giggling. "You're not planning to smash me in the face with it, are you?"

"Hey, that's what people do at weddings, isn't it?" Ray waggled his eyebrows at her, grinning.

"Not at my wedding," she said. She held Ray's fork in her hand and bit the pie off the end.

"My wedding, too," Ray said, nudging her under the table with his foot.

"Oh, well, if you want me to do that to you," she said, spearing a few cherries on her fork.

Ray shook his head. "Not with a fork," he said. "You'll stab me in the eye."

"I would do no such thing," she said.

He snorted. "Not on purpose, maybe." He poked a little at the pecans on his plate. "Too bad it's not cake. You don't need to use a fork when it's cake."

Stella smiled at him and held the fork out at a respectful, non-eye-stabbing distance. "We can get cake when we get home," she offered. She wasn't really all that fond of cake- at least, no more than any other dessert- but, like Ray, she was missing the rituals of getting married. It would have been nice, she thought, to have the whole thing, with their families and friends and traditions.

Ray ate the bite she offered and stared at her.

"What?" she asked.

He gave her the same goofy grin he'd been making since they had left the clerk's office. "You're my wife," he said. "You're my wife and we're gonna get cake."

Stella couldn't help it. She laughed. "The cake is what you're thinking about?"

"Nah," he said. "The wife." He thought for a moment. "And what's next, I guess."

"What's next?" she asked. Her stomach gave a slight nervous flutter. She was still trying not to think about what would happen when they went home.

"Like are we gonna get a motel room," Ray said. He said it in a sort of mock casual, like it wasn't a big deal and he didn't really care either way, but.

Stella's stomach began a full scale rebellion while her heart began to beat at the pace of a rabbit's. "Oh," she said. Stella poked at her pie a little and let out a quiet laugh. "I guess married people do that, don't they?"

Ray looked worried. "Stell--"

"No," she said. "I'm not--" She tried to think of how to put it. Would it sound stupid to say that she was a little scared? Not even scared, really, now that she thought about it, but... "Nervous," she said. "I'm nervous."

Ray scooted around the booth until he was next to her and could wrap an arm around her shoulders. "Hey," he said, "Me too, okay?"

"Really?" she asked. She felt a little skeptical. She didn't think that Ray's track record so far matched up with nervousness- or at least, not the same kind of nervousness she had. Ray had, after all, been the one to bring it up every time the subject had arisen so far. For all intents and purposes, it was his idea. He was the one asking her now, And will there be a honeymoon following this crazy scheme, Stell?

"Yeah, really," he said. The look he was giving her was rare- one of open vulnerability, without any search for approval. Ray may have been the one bringing it up, but he was still scared.

Stella wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head against his chest. "Are you gonna divorce me if it's not any good?" she asked, muffled against his shirt.

Ray laughed. "No chance of that," he said. "Scout's honor."

"You were never a scout," Stella said, giving him a mock-glare.

Ray rolled his eyes. "Kowalski's honor, then," he said. "Me and my whole family's."

Stella thought about that for a moment, then let out another laugh, louder and more genuine this time.

"What?" he asked.

"That's me, too, now," she said. "I mean- Kowalski." Sort of, she thought. The clerk had explained she'd have to take the papers to court after the wedding to change her name. "Your family," she added, since that made more sense.

"Oh," Ray said. He laughed, too. "You're really, really my wife."

"You keep saying that," she said.

"It's still weird!" he said. "And cool. Cool and weird." He drummed his fingers on the table, like he was trying to think of a better way to put it.

Stella nestled herself more firmly against his chest. "I like it," she said.

"Yeah?" he asked, looking down at her.

"Yes," she said. She smiled at him. "My husband." She bit her lip. "It doesn't really feel real yet," she admitted. "Like we're just kids, playing house." She cringed as she thought of how that sounded. "I know we're not, though. It just hasn't really sunk in."

Ray laughed. "I think that takes more than half an hour to go away, Stell."

She shook her head at herself. "You're right." She laughed. "You're obviously right."

"It's one of my new married man super powers," he said, grinning.

She made a face at him. "I don't think so."

"No?" he asked.

"Nope," she said.

"I had to try," he said, shrugging.

"I know," she said. Gently, she kissed his neck. She relaxed into his arms and wished, for a moment, that they could just stay newly married in this diner forever. It'd be so nice not have to deal with anything more complicated than avoiding stabbing each other in the eye with pie forks. Not to have to think about wedding nights in motel rooms and upset parents seven hundred miles away. She shuddered as she thought of it again, then admitted, "I think we should head back to Chicago."

"Your mom?" Ray asked. "I mean, you're worried about that?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sorry."

He shrugged. "Forget about it," he said. "You're the bride. You're the boss."

Stella laughed. "Is that one of my new married woman super powers?"

"Nuh-uh," Ray said. "Wedding day tradition. Redeemable one time only."

"We'll just have to see about that," she said, smiling.

"Oh, I bet," Ray said. "You wanna go now?"

Stella thought about it. Did she want to go now? Did she really want to start on the long journey home, back to where she had no idea what awaited them when they got there? Was that really how she wanted to spend the rest of her wedding day? Back to where there were parents who by this point must be worried to the point of hysteria?

She sighed. "No, I don't want to," she said, "but I think we should."

Ray nodded, as if he got that, and raised his hand to call the waitress over with the check. "They're gonna kill us," he said, casual, offhanded, as he took his wallet from his pocket and began counting out what little was left of the money he'd had on him at the start of the trip. Stella pulled some money for her own pocket to help cover it.

"Maybe we'll get a reprieve," she said, "on account of my delicate condition."

"You show them that letter, you're gonna get me axe murdered," Ray said. "Not to mention they'd probably notice when you didn't have a baby."

Stella laughed. "Yeah, okay," she said. She drew a few slow, deep breaths. "I'm still scared, Ray."

"You are not alone in that," he said. "I'm the vice president in charge of that."

She hugged him. "Okay," she said. "So we'll be scared together." She nearly laughed as she thought that that had really been the whole point of the marriage. The chance to spend the rest of her life getting through every emotion with Ray.

"Yeah, that sounds good," he said. He slid the money and check to the middle of the table and stood up. "So let's go."

Stella slid out of the booth and hooked her thumb through one of his belt loops. She really wanted to hang onto him just now. "Let's go."

---

Despite Ray's protests that he wasn't really that tired, Stella insisted on being the one to drive them back during the return trip. Also in spite of those protests, Ray fell asleep in the passenger's seat about thirty seconds after they reached the highway. Stella felt bad for him- he had gotten through this whole day and been brave for her during the deepest exhaustion she had ever seen him in. She glanced at the sleeve covering his tattoo and thought that it really was very fitting.

The drive home seemed to go a lot faster than the drive down. Stella knew it wasn't because she was driving any faster than Ray had- she never drove as fast as Ray did- but she couldn't account for it. The mile markers seemed to whiz by as often as she blinked, and she had already crossed two statelines by nightfall. It all added to her sense of nervousness and impending doom; she wanted to have a quiet, reflective drive that took a long time, during which she could prepare herself for however their families were going to react, but that just wasn't working out in her favor. Even if time hadn't altered itself so that it flew by faster, just to torment her, Ray was a noisy sleeper, tossing and turning in his seatbelt, moaning in unconscious pain every time he struck his head on the window, and muttering to himself every few minutes. (From what Stella could gather, he was dreaming of playing cards with someone or something that kept accusing him of cheating.)

Stella kept trying to picture what her parents would do and say. She expected that the first thing they would do would be to scream at her for leaving the way she had, for worrying them this much. Then when they heard of her marriage, they'd- what? She couldn't picture that.

She was sure that she was going to be kicked out- that part, she could deal with; she was going to be living with Ray from now on, anyway. She was nearly as sure that they would cut her off, which worried her far more. She had no idea how she would pay for her college if her parents wouldn't do it. All of the schools she had been planning to apply to were "good" schools- good meaning expensive. Was it still early enough in the year to apply for scholarships? She didn't know. She had never looked into the option. She hadn't thought she would need to.

Were her parents even going to speak to her again? Stella knew no one who had ever been in her situation, or done what she had done. She knew Ray's cousin Celia had been able to secure forgiveness and that her elopement, while not quite a family joke, hadn't been a family catastrophe, either. But Ray's family wasn't like her family. While her parents had worried about her throwing away her future on a boy with few prospects, Ray's parents had only cared whether or not they liked her. They did, so it didn't matter. They had already been expecting Ray to marry her for the last month as it was. Her parents could possibly be so angry that she had done exactly what they had feared she'd do that they would disown her outright.

She set her jaw and tried not to cry, glancing at Ray in the passenger seat and wishing he were awake so that she could talk to him about all this. Everything had been less scary a few hours ago when he had been conscious for her to confide in.

For a while, she thought about pulling over to wake him up. That was something wives could do to husbands, wasn't it? Interrupt desperately-needed sleep to say, I'm terrified. Hold me? But somewhere along the road- Stella nearly laughed at herself as she realized it was in Kentucky- she decided against it. Ray was tired. He needed the rest. He'd fought enough of her emotional battles for her today.

"I love you," she said to him in the darkness.

"Check my sleeves yourself," he said back, without waking up.

---

When they pulled up to the loft building, about an hour after midnight, Ray was awake and they already knew they were in trouble.

Mr. and Mrs. Kowalski's car was in the parking lot.

"Shit," Ray said when he recognized it. "You think they've been here the whole time?"

"I don't know," Stella said. "They're your parents. You tell me."

"I dunno," he said. "Fuck." He rubbed at his face, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. "I got nothing for this, Stella. I dunno what they're gonna do."

"I don't, either," she said. "But we can't just sit here."

"We'll just go in and be cool about it, I guess," Ray said.

Stella gave him a skeptical look. "That'll work?"

"You got a better idea?" he asked.

Stella had to admit, she didn't. She took a breath and nodded. "Okay." She opened the door and climbed out.

Never, before or after, would she be so grateful for the four flights of stairs that went up to the loft. Unlike the trip home, climbing them seemed to take exactly as long as it should.

They knew we were planning to get married, she told herself, and she felt thankful for Barbara's misinterpretation. They're not going to be upset about that, she thought. They're going to be more relieved to see us alive than anything else.

Somewhere around the door's threshold, that refrain stopped working.

"We should've just decided to live in Georgia," Stella said, groaning.

"Can't unmake the bed now," Ray said. "We gotta lie in it."

"Aren't you scared?" she asked.

"Shitless," he said. Then he opened the door.

Barbara was on them in less than a second. "Oh, my God, you two," she said. She hugged them both so hard their heads banged together. "What the hell were you thinking, disappearing like that? Two days- not a call, not a note, nothing! I didn't know what happened!"

"We're okay, Ma," Ray said, trying to pull away from her clutches to rub at the bump that was forming at his hairline. "Really."

"Not going to be too okay for long," Mr. Kowalski said from a few feet away. "Her parents have been here and our house and Ken's and Soolin's twenty times apiece looking for you."

Stella winced. "I'm really sorry," she said. She squirmed out of Barbara's arms as best she could. "We didn't mean to scare you. Any of you."

"You don't want to scare people, you leave a note," Barbara said.

"Did you think we were gonna dust it for fingerprints or something?" Mr. Kowalski asked. "And just what was so important that you two had to get out of here in such a big hurry?"

Stella looked at Ray. He looked back at her. This was the moment where they were finally going to have to tell people and see what happened next, the moment Stella had been dreading since she climbed out of her bedroom window in the first place.

Ray reached over and held her hand. Then, as before with his tattoo, he said nothing. He took their marriage certificate from his pocket and handed it to his father.

Mr. Kowalski unfolded it and began to read, while Barbara leaned over to read over his shoulder.

"Oh, kids," she said, looking overwhelmed.

"This can't be real," Mr. Kowalski said, frowning first at the paper, then at the two of them. "You're putting me on. She's seventeen. There's no place in the country you could get around having to ask her folks."

"You don't have to ask them if you have a note from a doctor saying you're pregnant," Stella said.

Barbara grew pale. "Stella, honey, you're not—?"

"No," she said quickly. "God, no."

"She got a dummy note from Soolin's brother," Ray admitted. "Then the judge called and asked him to back it up when we got there."

Barbara covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, my God."

Mr. Kowalski was groaning. "Fraud," he said. "My kid just secured nuptials with a minor by committing fraud."

"I got the note," Stella said. "So really, I committed fraud if anyone did."

Barbara gave her husband a tortured look. "Damien," she pleaded, letting the How are we going to fix this? hang unsaid.

"I don't know what there is to do about it, hon," he said. "It's done with. Illegal, but done with."

Barbara turned the tortured look on Stella. "Your mother's going to be so upset," she fretted, twisting her hands together. "She's been so frantic."

Mr. Kowalski snorted. "She's been a force of nature," he corrected. "I bumped into ice storms that scared me less than she did."

Stella winced. "She didn't yell at you, did she?"

Mr. Kowalski snorted. "She yelled at everybody," he said. "She made sure we all knew that she'd be in touch with the cops and her lawyers to make hell for all of us if we knew where you were and didn't pony up."

"I'm sorry," Stella said. "I'm really, really sorry."

Mr. Kowalski grunted, but looked a little mollified.

Barbara recovered her voice. "Well, it's too late to be worrying about it now," she said. "What we should be doing is heading over to your folks' place, so they can see you're all right."

Stella felt panic starting to edge in again. "Oh, God, do we have to?"

Mr. Kowalski laughed. "Shouldn't you have been thinking about that already?"

"Ignore him," Barbara said. "When my mother found out I was marrying him, she went to bed in tears and stayed there for a week."

"It wasn't a whole week," Mr. Kowalski said.

"Hush," she said. She wrapped her arms around Stella's shoulders. "She was really worried, honey. And she's not gonna be happy, but- it means the world to a mother to know her baby's okay."

Stella's stomach sank. She looked at Ray helplessly.

He shrugged. "Not much they can do but yell now, Stell."

Stella thought of being disowned, cut off, and kicked out again. She thought there was an awful lot that Ray wasn't thinking of. But she hung her head and nodded. "Okay," she said.

"We'll ride you over," Mr. Kowalski said. "I don't think they'd be happy to see Ray's junk bucket in their driveway right this second."

"Hey, the Javelin is not a junk bucket," Ray protested. "It got us all the way to Georgia and back no problems, didn't it?"

"Stanley," Mr. Kowalski said. His tone was firm, not to be argued with.

Ray sighed. "Fine," he said. He looked so petulant about it that Stella nearly laughed. Or would have, if the situation didn't feel so dire.

They walked downstairs together as a group and piled into the Kowalskis' station wagon. Mr. Kowalski refused to let Ray drive, "even if it is your wedding day," and Ray climbed into the backseat looking very put upon.

Stella squeezed next to him as close as she could. He's my husband, she thought. They're just going to have to get used to that. As if sensing her thoughts, Ray bent to kiss her forehead and held tighter to her hand.

On the drive over, Barbara turned around in the passenger seat to look at them. "Where'd you two get married, anyway?" she asked.

Stella understood that she wasn't referring to Georgia in general. "A courthouse," she said. "We got our license from the clerk and got married right after."

Barbara tsked. "Not much of a ceremony," she said.

"It's not like we planned it out a year in advance," Ray said.

"I'm not criticizing," Barbara said. "I'm just saying." She turned her gaze back to Stella. "Can I see the ring?"

Stella cringed. "We didn't have one," she admitted. In the part of the ceremony that had called for rings, they had had to use whatever they had onhand. Ray had taken off a ring he'd bought in a record store over the summer that she didn't much like- a big, tacky gold number with a twisty design that looked like a snake nesting on top of Roman numerals, which was wide enough he didn't even usually wear it on his ring finger. It had very nearly fallen off of hers. Ray hadn't faired much better- all Stella had had was a mood ring she'd gotten by mail order that wouldn't fit his finger past the first knuckle. They'd traded them back the second they walked out of the courthouse.

Barbara looked scandalized. "Stanley!" she cried.

"What?" Ray asked.

Barbara glared at him. "You couldn't even get her a ring?"

"We're gonna get one later, Ma," he said.

Barbara sniffed and turned back around in her seat. "After we've cleaned up this mess with her parents, I expect you to do this over and do it right," she said.

Ray rubbed his face with an expression like he couldn't believe this was happening to him. "Okay, Ma."

Mr. Kowalski chuckled. "You know she means a church wedding, right?"

"Yeah, Dad, I figured," Ray said.

For a moment, Stella let herself forget about their predicament to wonder if they could even have a church wedding. Was that an option available to young civilly wed elopees in a mixed marriage where neither partner was especially religious?

Then Mr. Kowalski pulled up the driveway at her parents' house and Stella remembered to worry about that with a vengeance.

Everyone got out of the car at once, with Barbara immediately moving over to wrap her arms around Stella again. "It's going to be okay, honey," she said as she walked her up to the porch. "You'll see. They'll calm down."

Stella didn't feel very confident about that, but she said nothing. She looked at the doorknob like it was going to bite her. She closed her eyes, turned it and pushed open the door.

Unlike the Kowalskis, her parents weren't clustered right by the front door in case anyone came in. Stella walked into the foyer and realized with a pang of guilt and fear that they were sitting together in the same room she had last seen them in, when they'd had the argument that had gotten this whole thing started.

Her mother spotted her first. Slowly she rose from her place on the sofa, looking at Stella as if she were a ghost. She walked in her direction with the pace and demeanor of one being escorted to the electric chair.

"Hi, Mom," Stella said quietly, unsure what expression she should be affecting, if she should give her a reassuring smile or an apologetic one or something else that she just wasn't thinking of. In all of the lessons they'd put her through on the proper way to behave, why had no one covered what to do in a situation like this?

"Stella," her mother said, her voice sounding hoarse.

They looked at each other for a very long time, as if neither of them was really sure what to do.

And then her mother did something that neither she nor anyone else had ever done in Stella's entire life. She drew back her hand and slapped her.

Stella wasn't sure if she stumbled back from the pain or the shock of it, but she fell against the doorway, her ears ringing, her eyes tearing. She could feel a bright red, burning handprint forming on her cheek. "Mom—"

Her mother's hand came up again. Ray started to move in to stop her, but Mr. Kowalski got there first, gently but firmly taking hold of her mother's wrist.

Her mother tried to jerk her arm away. "Let go of me!"

"Look, Miss Dubois," he said, "I know that's your daughter and you've been worried and everything, and normally I wouldn't intrude on your business. But I can't let you smack around my son's wife, okay? I think we both know that ain't proper."

"His—what?" Her mother stared at him in shock. "What did you say?"

Stella's father had moved over to them- just when he had done that, Stella didn't know. She hadn't noticed. He took her mother's wrist from Mr. Kowalski and looked at them for an explanation. "Stella?"

Stella swallowed hard, rubbing her cheek. She decided to follow Ray's example and silently offered her parents her marriage certificate.

Her father took it first, reading and absorbing with a visible weariness that made Stella feel guilty all over again. Her father- who jogged every day and played squash at the club on weekends, who was normally the very picture of health- looked so tired and so old. He looked at Stella with a blank, careworn expression and held the certificate out to her mother. She snatched it away so fast that if he had offered any resistance at all, it would have torn.

Her mother hardly glanced at it before shoving it back at Stella. "I don't believe it," she said.

"It's real," Stella said.

"Trust us," Ray said. "We had to go all the way to Georgia to get it."

Her mother looked so ready to spring at Ray and claw his eyes out that Mr. Kowalski gave his son a little shove so that Ray was just behind him.

"It's not legal," her mother spat. "There's no way it could be. She's a child."

"They exploited a loophole," Mr. Kowalski said. "Sorry."

Her mother shook her head, her eyes narrowing. "It's worth less than the paper it's printed on," she said. She turned her gaze on Stella. "I'll have it annulled in a minute. Then you're going to finish the school year in Montpelier with my parents- and every other year until you forget all about this."

"Mom," Stella said, giving her a pleading look. "Please—"

"Miss D," Ray tried to intervene.

"Both of you, shut up," she snarled. "I can't believe you would do this- that either of you would be so stupid—" She looked close to tears. "I'm going to fix this. I won't have it. You hear me? I won't have it. I'm not letting this stand for another second." She began to march off- Stella guessed for the telephone to call their family's lawyer- when her father stopped her.

"Diana," he said, "enough."

Her mother glared poisonously at him, like she would claw his eyes out now. "Enough? Enough? Oh, not hardly, Barry—"

"Diana," he repeated, in that firm, quiet tone of voice. "I mean it. It's over. It's done with. It's time to stop now."

"You can't possibly support this," her mother said, sounding betrayed.

"It doesn't matter whether I do or not," her dad said. "It's done. If not with you annulling it now, then next year, when she's eighteen and can do the same thing all over again without you able to do anything about it. She's decided. It's over."

Stella wished he didn't look so sad when he said it.

Her mother shook her head wildly. "She's so young, Barry," she said, her voice choked. "She's barely had a chance to live at all."

"I know that," he said. He didn't say anything else.

Her mother turned on them, her eyes pained and watery. "You two," she said. Her lower lip quivered. "You don't even know what you've done."

Stella could feel her own eyes tearing and a pair of arms wrapped themselves around her- Ray's or Barbara's, Stella wasn't sure. All she could see was her parents.

Her father looked at everyone and sighed. "I'm going to bed," he said. "It's very late. All of us should get some rest." He let go of her mother and stepped around them. He paused at the foot of the staircase and looked back at Stella. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said. Then he looked at Ray. "And you." His voice sounded oddly thick. "I wish you all the best." He trudged up the rest of the stairs.

Stella's mother looked at her, then at Ray. Her mouth pursed like she was just this side of sobbing. "I hope you're very happy," she said. It was hard to tell if she meant it sincerely or was saying without saying, You cut out our hearts and I hope you're sorry. She looked to the elder Kowalskis and said, "Thank you for bringing them here. I- I appreciate that very much. Goodnight." She went upstairs after Stella's father and didn't turn around to glance back even once.

It wasn't as bad as Stella had expected. But for one tiny moment, she still almost wished that she could take it all back.

—-

The drive away from Stella's parents' house was very quiet. No one seemed to know what to say to her.

Ray sat next to her in the back seat, holding her hand and looking worried and helpless, even a little guilty. Stella knew that over the years, there had been times when Ray felt envious of her family- how her mother didn't work two jobs and was always home, eager to talk and listen, while his own had depended on him since he was young to look after himself so that she could help keep food on the table; how her father was so dignified and educated, good at problem-solving and able to help her with anything she cared to ask him, while his father was prone to scratching his head and saying, "I guess that looks right. I dunno, kid, didn't they explain it in class?"

But as cookie cutter perfect as her family was compared to his, the scene that had just transpired would never, in a million years, have gone down in the Kowalski household. His parents had been disappointed or angry before, but they had never exploded the way hers did. They couldn't have; Stella was sure Ray would have told her about it if they ever had.

That, she thought, was why neither Ray nor either of his parents could think of how to fill the stretching silence in the car. None of them knew what to do with parents who had such firm, not-be-argued-with convictions about who their child was supposed to be and what she was supposed to do.

Stella could almost see the thoughts going through Barbara's head in the front seat while she twisted her hands. Hadn't Stella always been a good girl? With straight As and good manners, and little notes from her teachers about what a pleasure she was in the classroom? (Barbara had read every report card Stella had ever gotten before she took it home, and was always effusive with praise. She couldn't have been prouder if Stella had been her own child.) Sure, what they had done had been reckless and inconsiderate, but was it really that bad?

Mr. Kowalski was more inscrutable. Stella had never spent as much time with him. But she thought he looked pitying and regretful, as though he felt sorry for her and her parents, and as though the situation was a dirty shame. Not quite mountains out of molehills, but- something like that.

He caught her eyes in the rearview mirror for a moment, and Stella suddenly felt embarrassed. She had put him and Barbara into such an awkward position, and now she was sitting around staring, trying to guess what they were thinking about her.

"Thank you," she said. "For standing up for me to my mother." She swallowed. "I know that couldn't have been easy, and it was- it was unfair to you, that it even happened at all."

Mr. Kowalski made a "pfft" noise. "Forget about it, kiddo, okay? No big deal."

"It is a big deal," Stella said.

"Nah," said Mr. Kowalski. "She may have been upset, but she was out of line to hit you. Someone had to tell her so. I'd have done that for any one of my kids." He tried to give her a reassuring smile in the mirror. "Which you kinda are, now."

Stella colored a little, but said nothing. She leaned against Ray, who wrapped his arms around her and gave his dad a look.

Barbara turned around in her seat to look at them. "I'm real sorry that all this happened, honey," she said.

"Thanks," Stella said. She wanted to tell her that she didn't have to be sorry- it was Stella's own fault- but she didn't trust her voice at the moment.

"It's going to be okay, you know," Barbara said. "They're mad now, but they can't be mad forever. It'll get better, you'll see."

Stella felt her face crumple while her eyes burned with tears.

Ray held her tighter and turned the look on his mother. "Ma, she doesn't want to talk about that now," he said.

Barbara scrutinized her face and said, "Yeah, I see that." She looked to Mr. Kowalski. "Head to our house, hon."

Mr. Kowalski nodded and turned off.

"Whoa, wha- why?" Ray gaped at his mother.

"Stella's obviously upset," Barbara said. "You got work in the morning. She shouldn't be alone in that excuse for an apartment you got all day tomorrow."

Ray made an incredulous face. "You got work tomorrow, too!"

"I'll call in," Barbara said. "I can do that now I don't have two kids to feed."

"Oh, no, please—" Stella tried to say, but they weren't listening to her.

"I could call in," Ray said. "I don't have any kids to feed."

"You got a wife to feed," Barbara said. "And you don't got seniority like I do, and you just took a day off to get married. Forget about it."

"Please," Stella said. "I don't want you to go to any more trouble."

"Hmmph. I can pick and choose what kind of trouble I wanna go to for myself, thank you," Barbara said. "Let a woman have a day off to spend with her only daughter-in-law."

"But—" Stella began.

"Don't argue with her," Mr. Kowalski said. "Just take the favor, trust me."

Stella looked up at Ray. He was frowning, but he shrugged.

"Okay," she said.

When they got to the Kowalskis' house, Barbara immediately set about making Ray and Stella a bed on the living room floor out of blankets, pillows, and sheets.

"If you need anything," she started to say, but this time Ray cut her off.

"If she needs anything, I'm the husband and I know where everything is," Ray said. "Christ, Ma, I lived here two days ago."

"All right, all right," Barbara said. "Sue me for living."

"We're fine, Ma," Ray said. "I got it, okay?"

Barbara made a face at him and looked to Stella. She grasped her hands. "I'll let you sleep in tomorrow as late as you want," she promised. "And then we'll have breakfast and talk and you'll feel better."

Stella could only nod. She didn't really see herself feeling better, but she didn't want to argue about it, either.

Barbara gave her a hug and kissed her cheek. "Goodnight, sweetheart," she said. "I love you."

"Hey, what about me?" Ray asked, mock-affronted.

Barbara rolled her eyes, but hugged him, too. "Of course I love you, too, Stanley. Be a good boy. Goodnight." She turned off the living room lights and headed for her bedroom.

Stella laid on the pallet she'd made for them and curled into a ball. A part of her thought she ought to take off her shoes and jeans, as she was watching Ray do, but the rest of her felt too worn out and listless to care. What was physical discomfort to her now, after the night she'd had?

Ray settled down beside her and immediately drew her close. He ran his hands through her hair and kissed her, looking at her with worry and tired gentleness.

Stella gave him a weak smile and tried to joke. "Some wedding night, huh?"

"Yeah," he said. "Some wedding night."

Stella didn't know why the dam broke just then, but it did. Her eyes welled up with hot, stinging tears and she had to bury her face in Ray's shoulder to muffle it when she started to sob. Not quiet movie sobs, either. Big, loud, wracking ones that shook her whole body and clawed up her throat. Even to her own ears, she sounded like a small child that had gotten lost in a department store.

Ray held her as tight as he could, almost tight enough that it was hard to breathe. He held her with his whole body- his chin against her temple, his arms around her back, both of his legs wrapped around hers so that she could feel his calves straining against her own while he rocked her. He stroked her hair and whispered softly, "Shhh. It's gonna be okay, Stell. It's gonna be okay."

"How do you know that, Ray?" she cried, her face still pressed against his shoulder so that it was lost somewhere in the fabric of his shirt.

"I just know," he said. "Okay?"

She tried to shake her head.

"I know," he whispered. "I just know. Trust me."

Stella wrapped her arms around his neck, but kept crying. He didn't know. He couldn't know.

"I got you," he whispered. "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay." He kept holding her and whispering that promise until she fell asleep.

—-

When Stella woke up the next day, it was nearly noon and Ray was gone. There was a note on the pillow beside her that said only, "Love you, coma patient. I'll see you when I get home. —Ray"

Stella smiled at it for a moment, then turned to stretch out. Barbara had opened all the curtains in the room so that it was flooded with bright sunlight. Very little had changed about the room in the last five years; some of the afghans had moved around, and some of the pictures were new. Photos of Ray and Ken's respective high school graduations beamed down at her now, and there was a shot near Ray's from her last birthday, of the two of them at Albion Beach. Stella wondered how that had managed to make its way to the wall; neither of the elder Kowalskis had been there. Ken had taken the picture with Soolin's camera.

Was that really only five months ago? It felt to Stella like another lifetime. In the picture, she wore a red sundress- not her best color, she thought- and hung on Ray's side, laughing so hard her eyes were closed. She didn't even remember now what the joke had been. Ray was in his usual jeans and t-shirt, smiling at her like she was the only thing that mattered. Even though they'd owned them by then, neither was wearing the rings they used for stand-ins at their wedding.

It was a weird sensation, envying yourself in a photograph, but Stella really did envy that girl. She envied her uncomplicated life, her mostly okay relationship with her parents- and, if she were being honest with herself, how far from her mind marriage had been. (Stella was not sorry to be married to Ray. She was sorry to have gotten married when and how she did. You weren't supposed to elope when you were seventeen, to your parents' explosive anger and disappointment. It wasn't supposed to be this way.)

Stella rubbed her forehead and told herself not to think about it.

Luckily, her stomach did not seem to be clued into the fact that she was upset. It gave an insistent rumble that reminded her there were other things going on around her.

Barbara was in the kitchen. Stella could hear and smell food being prepared- coffee, bacon, toast. Her stomach gave another gurgle and she headed in that direction.

Barbara was still in her nightgown and humming while she worked. She didn't make toast in the toaster, like Stella's mother did- or got Eva to, anyway. She had four slices of bread laid out on a griddle on the stove, poking them around with a spatula.

"Morning," Stella said.

Barbara jumped a little, startled, then turned to beam at her. "Ooh, you scared me. Morning, honey. You hungry?" She prodded the bread again. "I wasn't sure you'd get up yet, but I thought I'd make you something, anyway."

"I'm starving," Stella said. She moved over to Barbara's side. "Can I help?"

"Oh, no, don't worry about it," Barbara said. "Call it a wedding breakfast."

Stella laughed. "Isn't that supposed to be on the day of the wedding?"

"Heck if I know, sweetie, I never knew anybody who had one," she said. "I had a pot luck dinner at my wedding." She flipped bacon and toast onto a plate and held it out to her.

"Thanks," Stella said. She waited for Barbara to make her own plate before she sat at the table. "Ray never told me anything about your wedding."

"Tch. You could knock me over with a feather if he knew anything about my wedding," Barbara said, sitting across from her. "It's the trouble with boys. They're not real curious about things like their parents' weddings."

"That might be a Ray-specific problem," Stella said.

Barbara laughed. "Maybe," she allowed. Then she gave Stella an intent look. "How are you feeling, honey? Any better?"

Stella picked at her toast's crust for a moment before answering. "A little," she said. "Not much."

She nodded. "I don't blame you," she said. "It was a pretty bad blowout. But she's probably calmer now that she's slept on it. Nothing looks as bad the next day as it did the night before."

Stella shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "I don't know. She can stay mad for a pretty long time. Ask her sometime about how Diana Rigg stole her career."

"Oh, come on now, that's silly," Barbara said.

"I know it is," Stella said. "She wasn't even on TV until after I was born. I checked."

"That's not what I'm talking about," Barbara said. "I mean the idea that she could stay mad at you for a very long time. You're her little girl. She's bound to come around. Your father did."

Stella snorted. "My father works in finances," she said. "He did a cost/benefit analysis in his head and decided they didn't stand to gain enough from taking a stand against my marriage to justify what it'd do to our relationship. My mother's an actress. She can keep a drama going forever."

"Don't be too hard on her," Barbara said. "It was a big shock after a lot of worry."

"You got the big shock after a lot of worry," Stella said. "You didn't flip out."

"Well, we're different," she said.

"Yeah," Stella said. She looked down at the table and picked a little more at her breakfast. "Believe me, I noticed."

Barbara gave her a sad look. "Aw, honey," she said. "I hate to see you so upset." She reached across the table to tuck some of Stella's hair behind her ears.

Stella tried to smile, but found that she couldn't. Instead she slumped in her seat and laid her cheek against Barbara's hand, pinning it under her face against the table. "Everything's so messed up," she whispered.

"Oh, sweetheart," Barbara said. "I know how you feel. It'll get better, I promise."

"Because it got better when it was your mother reacting to your engagement?" she asked.

Barbara gave her a small smile. "My father died when I was nine," she said. "My mother had five of us, all by herself. I was the oldest, after my brother, and the only girl, so she relied on me. I was her favorite- her best friend. She was real young to be by herself with so many kids. In a way, it was like we grew up together." She paused to wipe her eyes. "I'm not saying it was rosy between us all the time, you understand. She asked me to do a lot. She told me things I was too young to hear. There were a lot of times she treated me like a short grown-up instead of a kid. But she loved me, and it was hard for her to see me leave our house to go have a life of my own. It's hard for any mother, but I think it's hardest for a mother who feels like her daughter's all she's got."

"I don't think my mother feels that way," Stella said.

Barbara laughed and shook her head. "Of course she does, honey. She's been alone with you every day since you were born. She hasn't had a life of her own in almost twenty years. Why do you think she wants so bad to see you live out her dreams?"

Stella bit her lip. "But I don't want to live her dreams," she said. "Or anyone else's. I want to live out mine."

"I know, sweetie," Barbara said. "And so does she. In the end, she'll understand."

Stella looked at her, and asked, her voice feeling choked again, "Think that's going to come up any time soon?"

"Of course it will," she said. "Look, I'll talk to her, okay?"

Stella blinked. "You will?"

"Sure," Barbara said. "I'll level with her, mom to mom. I'll smooth things out."

"Do you really think you can?" she asked.

"Pfft." Barbara waved her hand. "Course I can. I promise."

Stella smiled a litlle and pressed her cheek more firmly against Barbara's hand, the closest she could manage to a hug at this angle. "Thanks," she said. She hesitated, then added, "Ma."

Barbara beamed at her. "C'mon," she said. "Eat your breakfast and get cleaned up. We'll go to the movies and then get a sinful amount of ice cream."

—-

By the following Monday, Stella and Ray still hadn't returned to the loft, but Barbara made Stella return to school.

"You're not dropping out just because you got married," she had reasoned. "You have dreams, remember? Finish the year like a grown-up."

It was completely surreal for Stella to return to calculus and geometry after a weekend spent moping about how her life would never be the same. Some things, it turned out, insisted on proceeding as normal, no matter what shape the rest of her life was in.

On the bright side, she thought, pedaling back to the Kowalskis' with a bag full of assignments, at least being annoyed about school took her mind off of everything else.

She was prepared to launch into an empassioned rant along those lines when she walked back into the house and completely forgot every word of it right away.

At the kitchen table, Barbara Kowalski was sitting with her mother.

The two of them, by the look of the dishes in the sink, had spent most of the day together. Besides the breakfast and lunch dishes, they had gone through quite a few coffee cups, two of which were still sitting on the table between them. They were talking in low voices, comparing their address books and making notes on a yellow legal pad. Stella's mother had a large garment bag in her lap.

Even more horrifying, Stella had clearly walked in on a bonding moment. Whatever Barbara had just said was making her mother laugh.

It was then that Barbara noticed her, and, giggling, waved her in. "Hey, sweetheart," she said. "Come on in."

Her mother stopped laughing and turned around in her chair to peek at Stella through the passthrough. She gave her a feeble, tentative smile. "Hello, darling," she said softly.

Stella moved into the kitchen at the pace of a zombie, gaping at the two of them. She was aware she probably looked like a suffocating codfish, but she couldn't help it. She had no idea how the scene before her was possible. "Hi," she said, a little stiff and wary. She still couldn't stop staring. "What's going on?"

"We're planning your wedding, honey," Barbara said, as if this was a completely normal and expected thing to be happening.

Stella tried to absorb that, and found that her brain didn't really want to. It seemed to be stuck, like a skipping record, on the word "we." She tried to shake it off. "What?"

"Your wedding, darling," her mother said. 'We're just... trying to put together a guest list." She looked cool, calm. Some clarity began to trickle into Stella's brain. She knew that look; that practiced calm was her mother's way of getting through functions she didn't particularly want to be doing, but recognized as an obligation. The proper thing to do.

The territory was safe and familiar enough that the rest of what was going on hit her all at once. "Wait, you're what?" Stella asked, blinking in confusion.

"Probably not a lot of people are gonna make it," Barbara said, looking regretful. "We're putting this thing together so quick, we might be able to get my family from Wisconsin down, but your grandparents probably can't make it from Vermont."

"That's probably for the best, really," her mother said. "My parents will handle it better if they're sent an announcement afterwards and left to their own devices for a while."

"What about the mister's parents?" Barbara asked.

"Barry's parents have both passed away, unfortunately," her mother said. "Our family's really very small."

"Cuts down on the number of people who'll feel left out, at least," Barbara said.

Stella squenched her eyes shut tight, hoping that if she did it hard enough, reality would be different when she opened them. It wasn't. She shook her head. "I'm sorry- why are you planning my wedding?" she asked. "I'm already married. I had a wedding." She looked from one to the other in confusion. "It was a small wedding, but it still counts."

"Your church wedding, honey," Barbara explained. "Remember?"

In fact, Stella almost didn't. The drama of her parents' reaction had overwhelmed her recollection of Ray's promise to Barbara that they'd have a proper wedding after. "Oh," was all she could think of to say.

"Barbara and I have been planning it since lunch," her mother said, giving Stella the implication that Barbara had been bringing her around to the idea since breakfast. Her mother looked a little tired, and vulnerable. Stella realized with a jolt that, besides being the proper thing to do, this was her mother's way of saying she was sorry.

"Oh," Stella said again.

Barbara nudged Stella's mother under the table. "Diana has something for you."

"You do?" Stella asked.

"Yes," her mother said. Then with a deep breath and a visible marshaling of her strength and her composure, she stood up and handed Stella the garment bag.

Stella gaped. Inside it was a dress. Not just any dress- it was a dress she would know anywhere, even wrapped in plastic. It was a dress she had walked past in the portrait over their living room fireplace a thousand times since she was little- a long gown, its outer layer made of white organdie embroidered all over with tiny flowers, its lower layer unadorned white silk; the organdie layer included the collar and sleeves, both of which were quite long. The collar was chin high, with a v cut in front down to the collarbone so that it didn't constrict the throat, and the sleeves went to the wrists, where they were trimmed with a small amount of lace. There was a satin piece built into the waist, which covered too much of the stomach to properly be called a sash, and from the end of the collar v down to it was a row of tiny decorative pearl buttons. In the bag with it was a veil, also organdie, matched perfectly to the dress, and from the pictures, Stella knew that it nearly reached the waist piece in front. Her mother had told her once that the whole outfit was partly modeled on Grace Kelly's dress of the same function.

It was her mother's wedding dress.

"Mom," Stella said, her voice quavery and weak. She had dared to imagine that maybe someday her mother would speak to her again, but she had never pictured her doing anything like this. That dress meant the world to her mother. She had once joked to Stella that it would almost be worth it to divorce her father and marry him over again to wear it a second time. Stella couldn't pick out many things that were special to her mother, but she knew just how much she valued this one. And just how big of a gesture it was for her to give it to Stella.

"Would you like to have it?" her mother asked, her voice just as unsteady as Stella's. "I-I would have to take it to get it cleaned." She chuckled weakly. "It's been in a closet for eighteen years." She gave Stella an anxious look. "But- if you want it—"

"Of course I do," Stella said. "Mom- of course." She set it aside on the table so she could pull her into a hug.

Her mother hugged her back, tighter than Stella could ever remember her doing before. She laid her face against Stella's hair and whispered, so quiet Stella almost didn't hear, "I'm sorry."

Stella closed her eyes and drank it in. Her mother didn't hate her. Her mother hadn't stopped speaking to her for years on end. She hadn't even stopped for more than a few days. Ray and Barbara were right. It was going to be fine.

"It's okay," Stella whispered back. "Thank you."

Her mother slowly released her until she was only holding her hands. She gave Stella a soft, watery smile. "I best take it now, then," she said. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed. "We don't have a lot of time."

"Right," Stella said.

Her mother looked at Barbara with a different smile- a grateful one. "You'll call me with the list, won't you? Our family's used the same printer for years. They can probably make us up something very lovely, very quickly."

"Of course I will," Barbara said. "But you know, we're probably going to be inviting most people by phone, anyway."

"We'll just have to see about that," she said. She took the dress off the table and her purse off the chair. "You'll call me later, darling, won't you? If you need help with anything."

"Yeah," Stella said. "Sure."

"Wonderful," she said. "I'll see you later." She headed out the door.

Stella stared after her for a long time. It was hard to believe that any of that was real.

"What on earth did you say to her?" she asked, turning that stare on Barbara.

Barbara gave her an innocent smile. "I leveled with her," she said. "Like I said I would."

"I didn't know leveling with somebody involved magical powers," Stella said.

Barbara laughed. "It's a talent," she said. "I'll teach you later. Now sit down and help me with this list, huh? You can point out some of the really rich ones that can't come so they'll send you some really nice gifts."

—-

The next several days went by in a flurry of activity that Stella only half-understood. For all that she was the bride- the boss, according to Ray- the plans for her second wedding didn't seem to overly include her. Her mother and Barbara were handling the whole thing, from choosing the location to figuring out what they could reasonably get on such short notice. Her mother had already informed her that there was no way they'd be able to get a caterer, while Barbara had apologized for the impossibility of flowers. Neither of those things had even occurred to Stella.

If the planning only barely included Stella, it was still more than it included Ray. More than once, he'd tried to voice an opinion about just what should go on- it was his wedding, too, dammit, he reminded them- and been shooed away to the next room like a small child that was getting underfoot.

"You get the feeling that we're amenities to this whole thing?" Ray had asked her.

"Accessories," she had corrected.

"Whatever," he'd said. "I'm just saying, we're decorative."

Stella would have completely agreed if it weren't for their major task regarding the wedding.

Somehow- Stella did not know how- her mother and Barbara had come to the conclusion that the best place for them to marry was in the Kowalskis' church- St. Basil's over on Garfield Boulevard. It was a nice building, and Stella understood the significance it had to their family- Ray and Ken had both been baptized, reconciled, confirmed and had their First Communion there, and while both of her sons had lapsed in attendance, Barbara went to mass every weekend and volunteered during the week. But the gamut they had to run to get it had to have been something their mothers chose to punish them for running off in the first place.

The pastor was happy to marry them in his church, so he said- on the understanding they would not be getting a full mass with the ceremony. (They were, in fact, getting an hour and a half squeezed between regularly scheduled masses.)

But there was that tiny little hiccup regarding their marriage that meant they'd need permission from the diocese. Stella was- nominally, at least- Episcopalian. Not a very good Episcopalian- Stella's family were Christmas and Easter churchgoers who didn't bother with it the rest of the year- but even still, a barely observant Episcopalian was not a Catholic. Stella and Ray had to spend a day in counseling, and swear to the bishop that their children were not going to be Episcopalians, of any level of observance. Additionally, Ray had to go to confession for the first time in three years.

"That's going to be a lot of sins," Stella had noted.

"Tell me about it," Ray had said. "Think 'not coming back here until my funeral' counts as one of 'em?"

—-

The day of their church wedding was miserable-looking outside. It rained on and off all morning and the streets were nearly invisible under the cover of a dense fog.

"Why couldn't it have snowed?" Stella grumbled when she saw it. "Snow could have been pretty."

"Be thankful it's not icy," Barbara said. "We can go to church without breaking our necks. Besides, it'll look better when the sun comes up."

Barbara had roused Stella before dawn because otherwise, she wouldn't have time to dress and eat breakfast before the ceremony. Stella resented somewhat that most likely Ray was subject to no such conditions- he had spent the night at Ken's, per Barbara's ideas about grooms seeing brides before the wedding (even if they were already married), and Stella doubted that Ken was getting him up at six to do his hair and make-up.

Boys have it easy, she thought, scowling.

Barbara brought her a cup of coffee and tsked at her expression. "What kind of face is that for your wedding day, huh?"

"A tired one," Stella said. "I'm not a morning person." She wasn't really a coffee person, either, but she took the cup and sipped from it, anyway.

"Try to get yourself moving," Barbara said. "Your mother and Soolin are gonna be here any minute."

Stella choked on the coffee. Her mother and Soolin? Both here? At the same time? She thumped her chest with her fist to clear her lungs of coffee and rasped out, "Really?"

"Yeah, why?" Barbara asked. "Is that a problem?"

Before Stella could answer, the front door opened and Soolin traipsed in, looking- to Stella, anyway- like Punk Rocker Prom Barbie. She was wearing the bridesmaid dress she had worn for her cousin's wedding back in the spring, a pale pink sheath with spaghetti straps underneath a sheer pink layer with darker pink horizontal stripes and dolman sleeves. The whole number ended just below her knees. She had her leather jacket over it and a pair of jeans on underneath- Stella assumed so she wouldn't freeze to death on the trip over- and wore her regular army surplus jump boots with hearts and skulls painted on them in red nail polish. Her hair was in its usual Siouxsie Sioux up-do, though she had toned down her make-up for the occasion.

"I brought a curling iron," she said, by way of greeting, "and a couple pairs of heels. I'm gonna wear the ones you don't want. Is that coffee?"

Barbara poured a cup for Soolin. "Thanks for coming over to help out, sweetpea," she said.

Soolin waved her off with one hand and accepted the coffee cup with the other. "It looks like I'm starting to specialize in last-minute weddings," she said. "Last-minute Stella weddings, anyway."

"Hopefully this will be the last one," Barbara said.

"Maybe we'll do it every year for our anniversary," Stella said, sticking her tongue out at both of them.

"God, I hope not," Soolin said. "I don't like getting up this early any better than you do. And I'm not wearing anymore spring dresses in December, either."

"You should have your wedding in winter, too," Barbara said, giving her a wink. "Then you can make her wear that dress in the snow for you."

Soolin snorted. "Don't count on that being any time soon, Babs," she said.

"It could be a little soon," Barbara said, somewhere between teasing and hopeful.

"Sure," Soolin said, "and I could sprout fairy wings and shoot stardust out of my—"

Stella wasn't sure whether it was lucky or unlucky that her mother chose then to show up, walking in the door with the wedding dress in its garment bag and calling out, "Good morning! I'm sorry to come in without knocking, but it's really dreadful out there. I hope it tapers off before we leave."

Soolin stiffened at the sound of Stella's mother's voice. Her eyes narrowed and she shot a look at Barbara and Stella as if to ask, What the fuck is she doing here?

Stella cringed and tried to think of something to say. She had about two seconds to come up with something to prevent an explosion.

She didn't think fast enough. Her mother walked into the kitchen and reached to set the dress down on the table. "Oh, good, you're up already. I was worried that—" She cut herself off as she spotted Soolin. "Oh. Hello."

"Hi," said Soolin, her lips pressing together as if she were holding back angrier words- and only barely doing it.

Barbara, who was not oblivious to the tension but was oblivious to why, gave Stella's mother a nervous smile. "Hi, Diana," she said. "We were just about to get started. You want some coffee?"

Her mother was still looking at Soolin and almost didn't notice Barbara at all. Then she cleared her throat. "Coffee would be lovely, thank you." Her gaze strayed back in Soolin's direction. Soolin's gaze hadn't moved at all.

Stella looked from one to the other, tense and unsure what to do.

Stella's mother seemed to be having similar feelings. She was twisting her hands together nervously. "Hello, Soolin," she said.

"You said that already," Soolin reminded her, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

"Of course," her mother said, shaking her head. She heistated. "I- I wanted to apologize to you, for my behavior the last time we spoke."

Soolin folded her arms across her chest, waiting.

"I was upset," she continued, "and I took that out on you unfairly. You had done me a favor, and I was- ungracious and unkind."

Soolin snorted. "That's one way to put it," she said.

"My behavior was uncalled for," her mother said. "I don't blame you if you're still upset. But I hope that you'll forgive me."

Stella held her breath. She could see the gears turning in Soolin's head, the scrutiny of her gaze as she tried to determine whether or not Stella's mother was sincere, and whether or not that apology was good enough.

"What happened?" Barbara asked Stella in a whisper.

"I'll tell you later," Stella whispered back.

Soolin looked at them, then back at Stella's mother, finally shrugging. "It'll do," she said. She turned her attention back to Stella. "C'mon, princess. I gotta make you look pretty."

"I've got just the thing for that," her mother said, and she picked the garment bag back up so that Soolin could see the dress.

"Nice," Soolin said. "Can she get in that by herself?"

"Oh, I should think so," Stella's mother said. "Perhaps she might need a little help."

"Shouldn't the dress go on last?" Stella asked. Not that she was averse to putting it on, but the thought of sitting around in it for a while wasn't a pleasant one. Organdie was itchy.

"Not unless you want to get make-up all over the inside of it and mess up your hair," Barbara said. She handed Stella's mother a cup of coffee. "C'mon, honey, we'll help you into it."

"In the kitchen?" Stella asked, feeling awkward.

"Living room," Barbara said. "More space. Don't worry, no one's going to see you. I sent Damien out to take Stanley his tux."

Stella was startled to realize that Ray would be wearing a tux. Somehow, the idea hadn't occurred to her. She hadn't seen him dressed up since her twelfth birthday, and even that had been a suit. Ray just wasn't a formal wear kind of person. It added to Stella's ongoing sense of her marriage being an elaborate game- first hide and seek, then married, now dress-up. Tomorrow they'd start playing house.

She headed to the living room and began shimmying her way out of one of Ray's t-shirts that she'd repurposed as pajamas. The shirt was halfway over her head when Soolin asked, "So, white dress. Is it gonna be a white wedding after all, Stell?"

Stella nearly fell over. "What?" she asked.

"You heard me," Soolin said. Stella could hear her unzipping the garment bag.

Stella pulled the t-shirt the rest of the way off and dropped it on the floor. "I heard you, I just don't get what you're asking." Or, more precisely, why she was asking now, with this particular configuration of people in the room.

"I believe," Stella's mother said, "that she's asking if you and Ray have 'done it.'"

Stella gave a violent shudder. "Mom," she whined.

"Well, you can hardly blame us for being curious, darling," she said. "Considering the, er, road that brought us all here."

It was amazing, Stella thought. It was her wedding day- her second wedding day, no less- and yet somehow, inside, she was still eleven years old, wanting to die while her mother quizzed her about the boy she liked.

"Is this appropriate we're-about-to-go-to-church conversation?" Stella asked.

"Hey, this is traditional wedding day conversation," Barbara said. "When I got married, my mother took me aside to tell me all about the facts of life."

"She was kind of late with that one, then," Stella said, glaring.

"They always are," her mother said. "My mother made a big to-do telling me all about my wifely duty, and the entire time, I was nauseated as could be with morning sickness. She thought it was nerves."

Barbara and Soolin both snickered. Stella groaned. "I knew it," she said.

Barbara laughed. "C'mon, honey, you don't have to be so embarrassed. We're all married women here."

"Hey, speak for yourself," Soolin said. "Some of us are staying out of wifely duties."

Barbara nudged Soolin with her hip. "Don't act like you're apart from this," she said. "A little birdie told me when she was asking me for the pill the real reason you wanted yours."

"Oh, so you're where they came from," Stella's mother said. "I'd wondered."

"Even so," Soolin said, glaring briefly at Stella, "not a married woman. And I definitely don't think of fucking Ken as a duty, wifely or otherwise."

Barbara hooted. "That turned around quick," she said. "And watch your language."

"Why?" Soolin asked. "I thought we were all adults here." She gave Barbara a beatific smile.

"Oh, I hope he ties you down as fast as he can," Barbara said, laughing. "I truly do."

"Let's focus on the wedding we got, not the one that might not happen," Soolin said. She began helping Stella into the dress. "C'mon, Stella. You never spilled."

"I didn't want to spill," Stella whined. "It's weird." She lifted her hair out of the way while Soolin buttoned up the back of her dress. "Besides, I don't think Ray'd appreciate it if I blabbed about it."

"So that's a no, then," Soolin said. "You two still haven't."

"Really?" Stella's mother asked.

Stella glared at her over her shoulder. "I told you that, didn't I?"

"Well, you have gotten married since then, honey," Barbara pointed out.

"In a mad twenty-four hour dash where we tried to get back before you set the FBI on us," Stella said. "We didn't exactly have time to—" She gestured vaguely.

"Consummate your union?" Soolin asked, quirking her eyebrows.

"Right," Stella said. "Can we please talk about something else?"

"I never knew you were so delicate," her mother said, looking amused.

Stella made a face at her. "How's the dress look?" she asked.

There was no mirror in the living room, so Stella had to trust that the delighted expressions that appeared on her mother and Barbara's faces as she turned around were genuine. Soolin stepped around her to give her an appraising eye.

"Looks good," Soolin said.

"It looks beautiful," her mother said. She clasped her hands together near her chest. "You look amazing."

"Like a princess," Barbara said. She was beaming, and looked excited enough to jump out of her skin.

Stella bit her lip. "You think so?" She looked down at the dress. As nice as it was, she felt a little silly in it, with the puffy skirt and the long train. She half-wondered if Ray would even recognize her in it, the same as she wondered if she would know him in a tuxedo.

Barbara smiled at her and patted her cheek. "Of course I do, sweetie."

"You look perfect," her mother said, and was Stella imagining it or did she really have tears in her eyes?

"Not yet," Soolin said, and she rattled her make-up bag for emphasis. "We still got a little more work to do."

"Oh, yeah," Barbara said. "We should finish up in the kitchen so she can eat while you fix her hair."

"I don't know if I can eat," Stella said, which was true. Her stomach felt as if it was full of squirming insects a lot less pleasant to imagine than butterflies. She didn't know why; as she had pointed out to the rest of them a dozen times, she was already married. Yet somehow, the weight of the moment seemed to be getting to her; she really felt like a bride about to do this for the very first time.

"Don't be silly," her mother said. "I brought croissants. Just let me get them from the car." She headed out the front door before Stella could protest.

"C'mon," Soolin said, dragging Stella to the kitchen by her arm. She maneuvered her into a chair. "Sit. I'll plug the curling iron in here."

Stella drew a breath and sat up as straight as she could. "You're not going to do my hair like yours, are you?" she asked.

"Ha," Soolin said. "You wish you could pull this off." She plugged the curling iron in and sat it down on a trivet before grabbing a comb and getting to work on Stella's tangles.

Barbara cast a sneaky look at the front door before sitting across from Stella. "I'm glad we got a second before your mama gets back," she said. "I have something I want to give you."

Stella blinked, surprised. "You do?"

"Ooh, Babs," Soolin teased, "behind her mother's back? Tsk, tsk."

Barbara laughed. "Hush, you," she said. "This is important." She drew something from her back pocket and set it down on the table between her and Stella. It was a black velvet ring box.

Stella stared at it, taken aback. Soolin peered over Stella's shoulder. "What, are you asking her to marry you?" she asked.

Barbara snickered. "C'mon, be serious." She opened the box and inside was a pair of rings- one with a round cut diamond with six side stones, three on each side of the center, set in a polished silvery band. The other was also a silver band with six diamond studs in it, around a slot cut for the two to fit together.

"Barbara," Stella said, still staring. "That's- oh, my God—" She nearly reached for it, but found she was afraid to touch it. It looked so delicate.

"These were my mother's wedding and engagement rings," Barbara said. "My father scrimped and saved for ages to get them for her. They're from Wellendorff's, in Germany."

Stella didn't know the name, but she nodded, anyway. Soolin, however, seemed to know it and let out an appreciative whistle.

Barbara leaned in closer to Stella. "When my parents got out of Poland and came here, just before the war, this ring and the clothes on her back were all she had. And when I was pregnant with Stanley, she took 'em off, put 'em in this box, and gave 'em to me- for my daughter."

Soolin snickered. "Does Ray know you thought he was gonna be a girl?"

"Don't tell him," Barbara said. Then she thought about it and amended, "Well, don't tell him today."

Soolin laughed. "What was his name gonna be?"

"I'll tell you later," Barbara said. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Stella's mother hadn't returned yet. "I want you to have these," she said. "Since I figure you're the closest to a daughter I'm gonna get." She looked up at Soolin and added, "For a while."

Soolin rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

Stella looked at the ring set for what seemed to her like a very long time. She was being given a piece of Barbara Kowalski's history- of Barbara's family. Because she loved Stella. Because she thought of her as a daughter.

She leaned across the table to give Barbara a hug.

"Hey, hey!" Soolin cried. "Still working back here!"

"Thanks, Mama," Stella whispered.

Barbara patted her back. "You're welcome, honey. Welcome to the family."

Stella let go of her, smiling, and leaned back. Soolin grumbled and set about fixing the damage.

—-

Twenty-odd minutes into her church wedding, Stella decided that the entire institution was an elaborate joke that society played on little girls that ought to be banned immediately.

She wasn't opposed to marriage- wasn't her week-old civil marriage proof enough of that?- but weddings. For all that she'd dreamed of this as a child, she hadn't been prepared for the interminably long reality of it all- the standing up, the sitting down, the singing, the praying, the reading. Stella knew that she was supposed to be reflecting in her heart on the joy and solemnity of the sacrament she and Ray were undertaking, but all she could think was how bored she was.

For his part, Ray didn't seem to be that interested in the ceremony, either. His eyes kept wandering to her- her face beneath her veil, the elaborate cut of her dress. Whenever he caught her looking back at him, he made faces at her, crossing his eyes or waggling his eyebrows, trying to get her to laugh; once he succeeded, setting her to giggling, so that her father and the priest both glared at her, and she tried to hide it in a cough.

We can't be adults about anything, she thought, wishing it was permissible for brides to pinch grooms in church.

Not that anyone else in their wedding party was helping. Ken and Soolin looked equally bored, and unlike Stella and Ray, they didn't have to pretend to be anything else. Ken fiddled with his hair and his tie and gave his mother helpless What? I'm doing my best to stay awake here looks whenever she scowled. Soolin yawned and fidgeted.

Stella's mother sat in the pews with Mr. Kowalski, some of Barbara's relatives, and Soolin's parents- the only people they could rustle up for a Christmas Eve ceremony on a week's notice. ("Wait, Christmas Eve?" Stella had asked when they'd told her the date. "Really?"

Barbara had shrugged. "Hey, hard to argue with free flowers, sweetie."

"More importantly, you'll always remember your anniversary," her mother had said.

"It's not our real anniversary," Stella had protested, listened to by no one.)

Stella thought, with longing, of when the ceremony would be over. When she and Ray could go back to the loft and start their lives together. Everything had felt frozen since the night they'd come back from eloping- like they were in some kind of limbo between married and not-married. Husband and wife, but not husband and wife; married people didn't sleep on the husband's parents' living room floor, cuddling but not going any farther for fear of being overheard. Stella was ready for them to be alone, away from all this spectacle and people staring.

Ray kept his hands in his pockets, praying and singing when instructed, and giving her conspiratorial looks. This is really something, huh?, his grin seemed to say. Yep. Really some kind of wedding.

Stella reached across the gap between them to twine her fingers through his. She squeezed his hand. I love you.

He squeezed hers back. I love you, too.

The prayers came to an end so quickly after she did that for a moment, Stella thought she was in trouble for touching her husband. But Ray didn't seem worried, and neither did Barbara, so Stella looked ahead at the priest.

"My dear friends," he said, so that Stella had to stifle a snort- he hardly knew her or Ray, "you have come together in this church so that the Lord may seal and strengthen your love in the presence of the Church's minister and this community."

Stella glanced over her shoulder again at the small number of people who'd come. Ray tugged on her hand to turn her around.

"Christ abundantly blesses this love," the priest said, lifting his chin and pitching his tone to sound more grandiose, like he knew he was losing the bride's attention every time he paused for breath. "He has already consecrated you in baptism and now he enriches and strengthens you by a special sacrament so that you may assume the duties of marriage in mutual and lasting fidelity. And so, in the presence of the Church, I ask you to state your intentions."

Stella shot Ray an alarmed look. I'm supposed to talk?

Ray gave an easy shrug. No biggie. Just follow my lead.

"Stanley and Stella," the priest began. Stella saw Ray grit his teeth. "Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?"

"Sure," Ray said. Barbara elbowed him. "Ow. I mean, I have."

"I have," Stella agreed. Ray gave her an annoyed look for jumping right into formalities. She gave him an innocent smile.

"Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?" the priest asked.

This part, Ray seemed to take more seriously. He nodded and said, "I will."

Stella looked at him, squeezed his hand again, and said, "I will."

"And will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?"

They had already been asked this, Stella thought, but they both agreed anyway.

The priest gave them a warm smile. "Since it is your intention to enter into marriage, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church."

Stella's heart started racing as Ray let go of her hand to grab it with his other, turning to face her. This was it. They were almost done.

"Stanley," the priest asked, while Ray grimaced, "do you take Stella for your lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

"I do," Ray said. Stella shivered. It was just like the first time he'd said it; like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. Like committing to her was both the easiest thing in the world, and the most important thing he'd ever say.

If I cry right here, Stella thought, he'll never let me live it down. She held her breath.

"And Stella, do you take Stanley for your lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

"I do," she said. She was proud of herself for getting it out without squeaking this time. She let the breath out, and tried not to laugh when Ray gave her a thumbs up on his left hand down by his hip.

"You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings," the priest said. "What God has joined, men must not divide."

"Amen," Ray said.

"Amen," Stella echoed.

"The rings, please," the priest said.

Ken dug the rings Barbara had given her out of his pocket and passed them to Ray, while Soolin took a gold band Stella's mother had picked out from her purse and passed it to her. They held them out to each other while the priest raised his hand above them.

"Lord, bless and consecrate Stanley—" Ray made a face again. "—and Stella in their love for each other. May these rings be a symbol of true faith in each other, and always remind them of their love, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Ray fitted the ring set together, muttering quietly to himself. They had rehearsed what to say during the ring exchange, and he seemed to be trying to remember it. He slid the ring set onto her finger. "Stell," he said, then cleared his throat and tried again. "I mean, Stella. Take this ring as a sign of my love and fiduciary—"

Stella supressed a giggle. "Fidelity," she corrected.

Ray flinched and made a face. "—fidelity. Fidelity." He shook his head at himself and recited, "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."

Ken reached over and clapped Ray on the back. "Good job," he said.

Ray didn't elbow him, although he looked very much like he wanted to.

Stella grasped his hand and pushed the ring onto his finger before they could start brawling at the altar. "Ray," she said pointedly, smiling at him. He beamed at her. "Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

On Ray's other side, she could hear Barbara sniffling. Stella and Ray both tried not to snicker. The priest cleared his throat and said, "You may now kiss the bride."

Stella started to reach for the end of her veil to lift it for him, but Ray got there first. Twice he grabbed the outer layer of her dress instead before she grabbed his hands and showed him where the edge was. They lifted it up together and Ray leaned in to kiss her.

Stella clasped his face in her hands as she kissed him back and giggled against his mouth as their families applauded and the priest began praying again.

"You look beautiful, Stell," he whispered against her mouth.

"Says the blind man," she whispered back before kissing him again. "You couldn't wear your glasses for this?"

"Not a chance," he said. He ran his hands up and down her shoulders, kissing her harder.

Stella pulled her head away a little. "No tongue in church, Kowalski," she grinned. Ray rolled his eyes with a smile.

They were kissing again when Barbara prodded at them and hissed, "You're supposed to kneel."

Ray let out a put-upon sigh and went to his knees, tugging Stella down beside him. She grinned at the floor, feeling the same sense of giddy triumph she had felt when they'd secured their Georgian marriage license. It was as if they'd pulled off some great con job, only bigger and better this time because their whole families had been in on it.

And now Ray was hers, forever.

It was with real gratitude that Stella closed her eyes and listened to the priest bless them, waving his hands above their heads and reciting a long prayer. The words almost didn't matter. Stella was just happy to have gotten this far.

Ray tugged her to her feet as the blessing finished. He looked like he was barely restraining himself from picking her up and swinging her around when everyone around them said, "Amen."

The priest made the sign of the cross in the air. "Go now in peace. Love and serve the Lord."

"Thanks be to God," chorused Ray's family members, while everyone else let out a general murmur of assent.

Ray whooped, and gave up on restraint; he picked her up and swung her around. Stella laughed and flung her arms around his neck and held him as tight as she could. "You're all mine now," she whispered into his neck. "Forever."

"I got that," he said, smiling back at her.

"Any regrets?" she asked.

"Nada," Ray said. Then he took her hand and held it high in the air, before running down the aisle, back the way they came, laughing and laughing.

---

It was pouring out when Ray and Stella got back to the loft building.

"Hurry up!" she cried, giggling, while he rummaged through his pockets for his keys.

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying," he said. "The pockets are kinda crazy on this thing, Stell. This was Ken's when he was doing the birthday magician thing."

Stella fidgeted in the wet. "I could drown in this dress," she said. "It's starting to weigh a ton!"

"I know, I know," he said. "Don't rush me."

"Ray," she whined, "I'm freezing. And don't say it's because I'm a baby!" She was soaked to her skin and it was almost, though not quite, cool enough to snow. She could feel her teeth chattering.

"I got it, I got it," Ray said, unlocking the door. Stella pushed her way past him and ran straight for the stairs.

"Hey!" he called after her, running to catch up.

Stella was already halfway up the first flight. "I've got to get out of this, Ray! I need to dry off!"

"You think I don't want to get out of this wet penguin suit?" he asked, trying to keep up without stepping on her train. It took an effort; the soles of his shoes kept sliding on the stairs.

Stella caught him under the arms so he wouldn't fall, and quickly kissed him. "Think we got enough towels?" she asked.

"We're about to find out," he said.

As they reached their floor, Stella stopped him in the hallway to kiss him again. Ray wrapped his arms around her waist, moaning softly against her lips.

"God, you're gorgeous," he said, squeezing her waist.

"I bet I'd look better dry," she said. She ran her tongue across each and every one of his teeth, tasting bits of leftover cake.

Ray made a contented noise. "Not possible," he said.

"Bet me," she said, and he laughed as he tugged her down the hall. As Ray started unlocking their door, Stella prodded him in the ribs. "Hey," she said.

"Hm?" He looked up from their locks to glance at her.

"Aren't you going to carry me in?" she asked, grinning.

"You serious?" Ray asked.

"C'mon," she wheedled. "Let's be romantic."

Ray shook his head, groaning and chuckling at the same time. "If I fall and break both our necks," he said.

"I'll represent you when you sue me," she said.

"Yeah, okay," he said. He pushed the door open with one hand, then scooped her up. He tried to adjust his hold on her. "Geez, you weren't kidding about this dress."

"Told you," she said. She tried to pull her train out of the way of his feet.

Ray slipped and slid, carrying her as far as he dared- about five feet- before he set her down and started taking off his jacket. "I gotta get out of this thing," he said.

"Hey, me too," Stella said, taking off her veil. She set it down on the nearest surface she could lay it smooth. "C'mon, Ray, help?"

He pulled off his bow tie and then moved behind her back, going to work on her dress. "Christ," he said, "how many buttons does this thing have?"

"I know," Stella giggled. "There's a million. I'm sorry. Soolin had to help me get in it."

Ray kept working out the buttons and leaned forward to kiss her shoulder. His face was warm. Stella held his head there and shivered.

"I'm cold," she said.

"I know," he said. He kissed her shoulder again. "Let me get you out of this, okay?"

Stella shivered again, and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. Her skin tingled and her stomach fluttered with butterflies. She could feel her skin breaking out in goosebumps as Ray opened more and more buttons, so that he could see more and more of her bare back under the dress. He had it open to her waist when her breath hitched and she turned around. She swallowed and her voice came out shaky when she said, "Here. Let me help you for a bit."

Ray didn't protest, but stood still while Stella worked on the buttons of his vest and shirt. Her hands were as shaky as her voice. She gritted her teeth and tried to steady them.

You're being ridiculous, she told herself. All she had wanted, all day, was for them to get home and be alone. What had she been planning to do when they got here? Play backgammon?

But it was like that first time he had shown her his apartment keys all over again. She was nervous- nervous and unsteady and asking herself, Oh, God, what did I just sign up for? Her mind, like her marriage up until today, seemed to operate on some kind of limbo where she wanted this in theory, up until it came too close to actually happening. Then some sort of primal fear took over- fear of things changing, fear of pain, fear of failing.

Yes. That was the biggest part of it, she thought. She was scared she'd fail somehow, that she'd disappoint him, and Ray wouldn't want her anymore. The thought almost made her burst into hysterical giggles and tears at the same time. After everything they'd been through in the last week, she was afraid that somehow, she'd lose him.

Some of this must have shown on her face, for the second she had pushed his shirt off his shoulders, Ray wrapped his arms around her and cradled her head to his shoulder. He kissed her hair and rubbed his hand up and down her back.

Stella took a few deep breaths and tried to focus on the reassuring smell of him, still detectable somewhere beneath the smells of rain water and Ken's cologne on the tux. This is Ray, she thought to herself. It's Ray and me. If we don't get it right the first time, then we'll just do it over again until we do. Hadn't this whole church wedding been just that? The do-over after their first wedding had been small, lacking in family and friends, missing out on cake?

She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him close, grateful all over again that if she was going to be married as young as she was, at least she was married to him.

As she held onto him, it broke through the cloud of nervousness around her brain that Ray was shaking. Stella drew her head back to look up at him, asking with her eyes, Hey, are you okay?

Ray had put his glasses back on during the drive home, and was able to read her just fine. He gave her a small, crooked smile and chuckled weakly. "This stuff's kind of scratchy," he said, plucking at the outer layer of her dress.

She ran her hands over his chest and belly for a moment, both to soothe him and to take in the feel of him. She gave him a small smile of her own. "I'm going to slip into something warmer," she said. Maybe they'd both feel better if they had an extra minute to breathe.

"Yeah, good idea," he said, brushing her hair behind her ears. He kissed her quickly on the lips.

Stella smiled to him and shuffled into his- their- bedroom. She pushed the door most of the way closed behind her and stepped out of the dress as fast as she could without tearing it. She jerked off her wet bra and underwear while she was at it, and then wished she hadn't. As cold as she had been in the wet dress, she was even colder standing there naked. Gritting her teeth, she cast about for a place she could put the dress where it wouldn't get ruined, and, seeing no other alternative, she pulled down the blanket Ray had draped over the curtain rod. The blanket was chilly from hanging against the cold glass, but she wrapped herself in it, anyway, and hung the dress up over the curtain rod.

Stella wished she had given more thought to what, exactly, she was going to change into. While she did more or less officially live here, none of her things had been brought over from her parents' house yet. She'd arranged with Soolin to go pack up after New Year's. ("What are you gonna need clothes for the first couple days you're married, anyway?" Soolin had teased.) Rubbing herself dry with the blanket- a scratchy wool army surplus number- she began to go through Ray's box of clothes by his futon. Near the bottom, she found a sweater her mother had given him for Christmas the year before, which was not only clean, but never worn- Ray and her mother didn't really see eye to eye on sweaters.

Stella dropped the blanket to the floor and pulled the sweater over her head. It was warm, dry, and- by the feel of it, Stella realized with a snicker, made of angora. No wonder Ray had never worn it. She tugged it down as far as she could- almost to her knees- and was about to head back out into the living room when the bedroom light flicked on.

She turned around and gave Ray a tentative smile. "I forgot I don't have any clothes here," she said.

Ray didn't look as if he minded, though. He eyed her up and down. "Looks better on you than it would on me," he said.

She laughed and struck a pose. "You like?" she asked.

He smiled at her. "I like," he said. His smile faded and he gestured towards his box. "I gotta—" He waved his hand vaguely.

"Right," she said. She hugged herself and turned around. She thought the better of it and sat down on the futon with her back to him. Behind her, she heard him take off his shoes and socks, then his wet clothes. Her heart began to race again when he sat down beside her on the bed without putting on anything else. When she turned to look at him, he had the wool blanket she'd dropped wrapped around his waist.

"This okay?" he asked, looking nervous.

Something about him looking wet and nervous in nothing but glasses and a makeshift army surplus loincloth disarmed her. She smiled at him and nodded. "Yeah," she said. "That's okay." Taking a breath to collect herself, she laid down, folding her hands on her waist.

All the breath seemed to go out of his body at once. Ray sagged sideways, deflated, and pillowed his head on her stomach, his chin nudging against her hands. She moved them and started stroking his hair.

"Some day, huh?" he asked.

She laughed a little. "That's one way to put it," she said. She twirled his hair around her fingers to make curls. Unsure of what else to say, she noted, "I thought we couldn't have a mass for the ceremony."

Ray snickered. "That wasn't a mass," he said. "That was the short version."

Stella raised her eyebrows. "That was short?" she asked. "I thought I was going to pass out. It went on forever."

He shrugged. "Trust me, it was shorter than it coulda been." He rubbed his cheek against her belly. "I been to weddings that lasted all day."

Stella groaned at the thought. "I would've died," she said.

"You'd have made a real pretty corpse," he said, grinning up at her.

She laughed and nudged his leg with her foot. "That's gross, Ray."

"Well, yeah," he said. "But you know what I mean." He laid his head against her stomach again and rubbed his hand along her thigh. "You're beautiful, Stell."

Stella could feel her nerves creeping up on her again. She forced her hands and feet to go loose, forced herself to breathe, and combed her fingers through his hair again. It's going to be all right. She swallowed. "You are, too, Ray," she said.

Ray laughed a little. "That's a first," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "But I mean it."

Ray said nothing, just kept rubbing his hand up and down her leg. His breath felt warm and soft against her stomach through the weave of her sweater, and deliriously, she thought she could actually feel how nervous he was.

Her own insides were twisting themselves up again, and she wished she could have the moment they'd come to this loft for the first time back. When she had managed to forget her nerves in the car and they had almost. But that moment was gone and this one was here, and they were never going to get anywhere if she kept lying here worrying. Moment of truth, she thought.

Ray seemed to have been thinking the same thing. "Stell," he began, sounding unsure of himself, of what he would say next.

She closed her eyes and bit the bullet for both of them. "I want to make love to you," she said.

He looked up at her, surprised. "Now?" he asked.

Stella laughed. "Yes, now," she said. "When if not now?"

Ray wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her up a little, and moved so they were almost eye to eye. "Are you sure?"

Stella combed some of his hair away from his face. Her heart was pounding and her fingers were trembling and the butterflies in her stomach seemed to be mounting a full scale assault, but- "Yes," she said. "I'm sure."

Ray slid his hands into her hair. She could see written all over his face the same insecurities, the same worry, the same love. "If it hurts," he started to say.

"I'll say," she said. She drew his face to hers and kissed him. He kissed her back like it was a relief, and she understood it- she felt the same way. Kissing was familiar; it was safe. They'd kissed a thousand times, in a thousand places, from punk clubs to her house to his house to the back of the Javelin at the movies while Ken threw kernels of popcorn at them from the front seat. She knew how he tasted almost as well as she knew the taste of her own mouth.

When he ran his hands up under the sweater, squeezing her ass and then stroking her sides until he found her breasts, that was safe, too. (Distantly, she remembered the first time she'd let Ray touch her there- her fifteenth birthday, just after he'd bought the car; he'd tried a few times before that to get his hands up her shirt, but that time, she let him.) Ray's thumbs circled around her nipples and she moaned into his mouth.

"I want this to be good for you, Stell," he whispered, kissing her again. "I want- I don't wanna—" Then she twisted her hips so his blanket came down and she could feel him, hard and smooth and completely bare, against her thigh. Whatever Ray was going to say was lost in a groan.

Stella had felt him get hard before- through his clothes, probably a dozen times- but this was different. She had never felt how smooth his skin there was, and she had never felt the size of him unimpeded by jeans.

She didn't have much time to dwell on that, though, because Ray was pulling the sweater over her head. "I want to look at you," he said, kissing her neck. "I wanna look at you in the light and touch you all over—"

Stella moaned and kissed his cheek. "Please," she whispered.

Ray adjusted his glasses and began moving downward, kissing her neck and chest. He dipped his tongue in the hollow of her throat and squeezed her breasts at the same time. "Beautiful," he said again. "I wanna—"

"Shut up and do it," she said, and was that really her voice that sounded so husky and impatient?

Ray laughed. "I'm taking my time," he admonished. He kissed the top of each of breast and looked back up at her, startling her with the sincerity in his eyes. "I don't wanna rush through it," he said. "I want to show you a really good time."

She smiled down at him and adjusted his glasses again for him. "I have the best husband," she said.

Ray grinned back up at her. "Yeah, that's me," he said. "I love you, Stell." Before she could answer, he bent his head and sucked one of her nipples, obliterating every thought in her head but what he was doing. She locked her knees together around his back as he moved to the other.

He kept sucking, kept kissing, moving down her belly and nudging her thighs further apart. She started to sit up, to look down at him- but then she felt his tongue and felt it there and she fell backwards against the mattress gasping.

Jesus, she didn't know that was something people did- wouldn't have thought something like that could feel like this if she had. She could feel him kissing her, tasting her, sucking at her like his life depended on it. Before she even knew what she was doing, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled.

Ray moved his head with it and looked up at her. "Are you okay?"

"Keep going," she said.

"Are you—?"

"Keep going," she repeated, tugging sharply at his hair to guide his face back where it was. Ray took the hint and went back to work.

Stella lay still, gasping and moaning. She could feel Ray's tongue laving across her, up, down, in circles. Every twitch and twist sent shocks of pleasure through her, building her to greater and greater heights by the second.

Every part of her body jolted at once and she forgot to be nervous or afraid. She let go of Ray's hair to grab his shoulders instead and hauled him up until they were face to face.

"Please now," she said, in a gasping voice she could hardly believe was her own.

"Okay," he said. His face was flushed and sweaty and he was gasping as much as she. He slid one of his hands between them, down to where he had just tasted her- and she felt his fingers probing, pushing, spreading her open. Then he moved and Stella found herself crying out with pain.

She clenched her teeth as hard as she could. It didn't hurt as much as she'd expected- but it wasn't nearly so good as everything had been a minute ago. She felt stretched to the point of burning, like her flesh was on the verge of tearing. She closed her eyes tight.

"Stella?" Ray asked, breathless and worried. "It's not--?"

"It's okay," she ground out. "I think." Why hadn't she asked Barbara or Soolin or even her mother for advice on what to do during this part?

Ray started to pull back, but Stella grabbed onto his hips, digging her fingers in. (Hard enough to hurt, it seemed- she heard him wince.) "Don't," she said. "I'm okay." Already, it was starting to hurt less, and she thought she might know what to do now. She took a dep breath. "Keep moving. Just- slow, okay?"

"Right," he said. "Slow, sure." He moved further into her again, and now he was the one closing his eyes and clenching his teeth.

Stella winced and made herself look at him. "Is it hurting you?"

Ray let out a weak laugh. "No," he said. "It's--" He pushed, shuddering, and dropped his face against her neck.

"You feel amazing, Stell."

She smiled at him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he said. He lifted his head to kiss her.

Slowly- very slowly- they worked out a rhythm together, moving and breathing as one. Pleasure began to build up again, less intense and immediate than before, like a slow wave that washed over her instead of a flash flood. Ray kissed her with each movement, combing his fingers through her hair and murmuring things too soft
for her to hear.

"I love you," Stella whispered. "I love you."

"You, too," he said, muffled against her lips. "Jesus, Stella--"

She twined her arms around his neck and her legs around his back. She was close now- she knew it, she could feel it--

She never knew which of them came first- they seemed to cry out together at once, in one voice, and collapsed on the futon in a heap.

"Wow," she breathed.

Ray dropped his head to her shoulder again, laughing. "Did that really just happen?" he asked.

"I think it did," she said. She kissed his forehead. She could taste the beads of his sweat on her lips, but she thought she didn't mind so much. She felt warm and content, and languid despite that they were both wet and sticky. She didn't think she'd ever want to get up again.

Ray sucked a little at her neck, then bit. She moaned. "Was it everything you hoped for?" he asked.

Stella cuddled closer to him, shifting them around until they spooned. "More," she said. She closed her eyes and settled into his arms. Hazily, she thought she would never want to be anywhere else.

"Merry Christmas, Mrs. Kowalski," she heard Ray whisper, just before she fell asleep.