I turned thirty in January.
Dana threw a party. I had told her not to and she had agreed and then thrown the party anyway, which was the most Dana behavior possible and which I had, honestly, expected.
The studio was full of people I had chosen deliberately. My mother. Claudette, who had driven down again for it. Kezia and Priya and Marco and Lena. Dana's husband, who was a quiet man that I liked in exact proportion to how little space he took up. Three clients I had become fond of. Marcus, standing in the corner talking to my mother with the ease of a man who had spent two years earning back the right to be in this room.
I stood in the middle of it and thought: this is what I have built.
Not the party. The life around it. The people who were in the room and the reasons they were there
