Chapter 49: Starting The New Year Right

Monday, December 31, 1984

We slept a bit late, as planned, then got up and had breakfast with Camille and Francis. Midway through breakfast, Angie called and told us Cammie was driving down from College Station. That made a lot of sense. I’m not sure why it hadn’t occurred to any of us.

She’d be staying here tonight, which also made sense, since this is where we’d be for our party.

Angie and Paige were staying here tonight, too, which might have been a first. They wanted Tony and Jean to have a quiet New Year’s Eve at home.

Meanwhile, Jas and I were staying at Mom and Dad’s. I was (by far) the best one to drive after a midnight glass of champagne (after a bit of a wait, of course). One glass of champagne wouldn’t impair me, and I had the most practice at night driving.

Assuming the Rileys made it back in time, we expected not only Mel but also Mark, Morty, and Emily. They would go home a bit after midnight with one of the guys driving.

Jas and I met up with Paige and Angie and headed to the grocery store. We were in search of snack food of all sorts, plus decent (but not overly expensive) champagne (or, more properly, sparkling wine — though Jas insisted on one bottle of actual champagne, which we would have to drink at midnight Central time).

It was much like shopping for the party, only without any particular need to worry about keeping to a certain budget. We didn’t splurge all that much, though. A few things were a bit pricier than Cammie would have really been comfortable with, but this wasn’t ‘her’ party.

We hung out at the Nguyen house, cooking a few things which needed cooking and talking with Camille and Francis. Cammie arrived around four, and Mel, Mark, Morty, and Emily arrived about five. Emily hadn’t gone on the Riley trip either, of course, but she was in town and as happy to be reunited with the twins as Cammie was to be reunited with Mel.

Camille and Francis went off to their bedroom around five to change, and came out half an hour later looking quite elegant. While they were changing, I gave Rita a call. We all wished her and Anderson a Happy New Year. I think she was touched so many of us were together and thinking of them. We owed her and Anderson a great deal and always would.

Camille and I flirted just a bit before they took off for their party. Their last comment was, “Don’t wait up for us - we don’t know when we’ll be back!” Sleeping over was apparently a distinct possibility for them.

Once they left, we got to catch up a fair bit. The Riley family trip (which had been to the Caribbean) had apparently gone well. It wasn’t quite like ‘the old days,’ but both the twins and Mel agreed it was more like them than they’d expected at first. After all, this was the fifth family trip in which Emily and Cammie weren’t along, and the fourth in which everyone knew the twins and Emily were really, seriously ‘together.’ The only new part — for the parents — was Mel’s secret being out of the bag.

It might (perhaps) be the last one where Mark, Morty, and Mel would simply concede that girlfriends weren’t invited. No decisions had been made, but they could point to us and say it certainly hadn’t hurt the Marshalls at all.

For that matter, the Seilers were plotting a vacation sometime soon and it might include Angie. As for Camille and Francis, they had a good reason for not inviting me along on the ‘family’ trip, and Jas wouldn’t go without me. That didn’t preclude the four of us going somewhere else, though.

In the short term, Mel was staying one more day. That meant Cammie would stay down here until Wednesday, when she and Mel would head back. I gathered the Rileys weren’t entirely happy with that, but they weren’t truly upset, either. Mel had gone on the trip, and the trip had gone well, even with Mel’s angst over the horrible Christmas card.

Rationally, they knew Mel really, really wanted to be back with Cammie, and for good reasons. As much as they wanted Mel around their empty nest a bit longer, they had to face it: this was not the year. Until Cammie was not just ‘admitted’ but welcomed into their lives, it wasn’t going to get a lot better.

No one would have believed an invitation this soon was sincere, either. Next year? We would see.

The whole thing really was good news, if ‘complicated.’ Things were getting better. There was a reasonable chance the Rileys would navigate things with relatively good grace and get things calmed down. I had to hope that was true. One broken family was enough.

Mark, Morty, and Emily shared stories of life at UT (some of which I found familiar), and we shared stories of life at A&M. They professed amusement at some of the more ‘Aggie’-sounding stories, while we made gentle fun of ‘Tea-sips.’ The cultural divide was hardly as deep as it might seem to outsiders, but Aggies were always going to make fun of UT’s tiny little cannon (compared to our war-surplus howitzer), and Longhorns were always going to make fun of over-the-top things like Bonfire. Or the Yell Leaders. Or...

Well, there were plenty of things to poke fun at on both sides.

A while into the evening, I got a chance to briefly talk with Mel apart from Mark, Morty, and Emily. I asked how things had gone now that she was in on ‘the big secret.’ She said it’d mostly been fine, but she’d found herself watching her words a bit more carefully. It wasn’t as if she might blurt out we had been ‘reborn,’ but disclosing I (or we) owned the house was a real possibility. She’d avoided it, but it gave her even much more of an appreciation for the balancing act Angie and I had managed for all of these years.

For me, it seemed to become harder and harder not to ‘slip’ as more people close to us knew the story. At the same time, had we never told Jane, telling Jas would have been a nightmare — and Jas would have had to have been told, in my opinion, once Laura was in the picture. After that, the rest followed. We might have been able to avoid telling Cammie, but at the cost of having to step back and distance the relationship a bit. No Cammie would mean no Mel. It might also mean no Jess — how could I tell Jess and not Cammie?

The worst part of it would have been the isolation. Jane proved ‘normal people’ could understand, sympathize, and be trusted. The wider the circle, the less isolated Angie and I felt.

Had Angie and I never figured each other out, though? That would have been the true nightmare. The isolation would have been complete, and it would have worn on both of us. Laura was an example of that. The isolation had clearly worn on her. It continued to, to some extent, but now it was by choice. We were, after all, only a phone call away. I couldn’t fault her for wanting to blaze her own trail either.

‘Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead,’ true. But, at the same time, a secret shared is a burden shared. Being ‘us’ came with many perks, but it was also a burden. We could mess up so many things with the wrong word at the wrong time, both for ourselves and perhaps for everyone else. Wars have been fought over less than the idea of someone being clear proof of the supernatural.

Jess arrived around six. That took some introducing — Mark, Morty, and Emily knew who she was, of course, but barely knew her. We kept repeating that throughout the evening as others arrived.

Sue and Gene turned up around seven, and Sheila and Amit arrived around eight. That was as much of ‘the old gang’ as we were going to get. Jimmy and Connie weren’t even in town. She’d wanted to go right back to school. Something about pre-med work which couldn’t wait. That sounded like life in a top pre-med program to me.

Still, this was a solid turnout. Six months down and we’d stayed at least connected. Change was inevitable, and I wasn’t sure if we’d completed the hardest part or if it was still yet to come. I hadn’t even tried to hold things together this much in my first life, after all.

We again told college stories, with the ‘down home’ kids and the ‘Ivy League elitists’ trading jokes and faux insults back and forth.

Once everyone was here, and before we really got going with New Year’s stuff, a couple of cakes came out. Cammie had baked a cake for Mel, and Emily had one for Mark and Morty. We all gathered around and sang ‘Happy Birthday’. It was a few days late, of course, but we hadn’t gotten to talk to them on their actual birthday.

The TV went on around nine, and we vicariously enjoyed the East Coast celebrations, munching on snacks, drinking sparkling wine, and having a good time. Technically speaking, all of us would again be underaged at midnight, so — as Paige put it — we could start the new year right by immediately breaking the law.

Angie announced she and Paige, plus Cammie and Mel, could break two laws within a few seconds. I wasn’t completely sure kissing was illegal, but we all still appreciated the comment. How silly it was it was even possible two consenting adults who loved each other might be committing a crime by sharing a kiss!

When it finally got down to a few minutes before eleven (aka midnight Eastern time), Gene and I refreshed everyone’s glasses. Everyone stood up for the countdown. When we hit zero, everyone raised their glass, shouted ‘to 1985!’ then sipped.

After that, the couples kissed. That included Mark, Morty, and Emily as a ‘couple.’ The word ‘throuple’ really didn’t exist yet, and had been pretty shaky in 2021. Jess opted to kiss me after I’d kissed Jas, which didn’t even raise any eyebrows. Everyone knew Jess and I kissed sometimes.

Angie cleared her throat after a few minutes and shouted, “Hey!”

“Hey!” most of us shouted back.

She grinned and said, “Look, I just wanted to say something. I first met many of y’all in 1980 and the rest in 1981. If you’d told me back then we’d all be together now, here, and with these relationships and friendships, I would have been speechless! And, as you know, that’s unprecedented!”

That got a good round of laughter.

Angie continued, saying, “I don’t know how many more times we’ll get to have a New Year’s Eve celebration like this, but I’d like to hope we’ll all be friends for many, many years to come, ‘should auld acquaintance be forgot’ notwithstanding!”

“Hear, hear!” Amit shouted, with others joining in.

“To our friendship!” Angie said.

“To us!” Sue said, raising her glass.

Everyone drank.

Things almost settled down, but then Cammie said, “My turn!”

“Hey!” people shouted, making her giggle.

“It’s kinda ‘what Angie said,’ except it’s different. I only knew one of you before 1981 — and you know who you are!”

Mel giggled and waved.

“1981 was...”

She paused, sniffled once, then again harder. After a second, she blew her nose, shook her head, then continued.