What had started out as the worst queuing experience of my life gradually became one of the best. Not that, in all honesty, there was that much competition. The evening got a flood of last-minute warmth, like a guilty start from the sun just as it was slipping away.
I couldn’t help but notice that lots of other people were drinking wine but Jessi had gone all ascetic on me and only brought water. Probably it was the right call, because I wasn’t sure whether my capacity to appreciate classical music would be improved or diminished if I was drunk out of my mind. And, besides, I was slightly floaty anyway—on the balmy evening air and the brush of heat across my skin and the strange liberation of having nothing to do but wait.
We were briefly interrupted by the click-whir-flash of a camera.
