Beautiful Days by Anna Godbersen

in a swollen red blaze. The sky began to turn purple, and then Cordelia Grey declared that she was going home, and after that Astrid found that the party wasn’t quite so fun anymore.
    Not that she didn’t try to make it so. That morning she had awoken to a vague headache and a dim recollection that her mother had been trying to stir up trouble, and so she put herself together with the conviction that she was going to be especially gay today and make a big show of how perfect her engagement was no matter what poison her mother tried to spread. She chose a skirt of alternating navy and white scallop-edged tiers (a color combination that Astrid knew brought out the rich yellow shade of her hair) and a loose white top with a neckline shaped like a deep V . The Dogwood crew had traveled over in a big, rowdy pack, and when they disembarked from the Daimler, she made sure to do so hanging on Charlie’s arm. Later she and Charlie had made themselves conspicuous on the dance floor, trotting slyly and then shaking in a frenzy as though no one else could see them. Of course, other people could see them—including her mother, whom she caught watching from the tables set up on the lawn.
    Then Charlie got called off somewhere and she satisfied herself dancing with the Duchess of Malden’s Irish boxer. He had come to the Beaumonts’ as Virginia Marsh’s special guest, along with a few other of her mother’s “interesting” friends who’d stayed particularly late the night before. But this was hardly as much fun—she sensed that it didn’t excite her mother’s jealousy half as much—and she was relieved when the crackling eruption of the first explosive went off over the sound and they could abandon the dance floor to walk toward the blankets, which had been spread out for them along the water’s edge.
    â€œI just adore fireworks,” Astrid said as she put her small, soft hand in the boxer’s big, rough one, the better to balance herself as she lowered herself to the blanket and tucked her legs up under her skirt. “Don’t you?”
    The boxer answered affirmatively, in that inscrutable and lilting accent, and then he sat down beside her. He had lost his jacket in the course of the afternoon, his ivory dress shirt was rolled to the elbows, and she could see that there were no socks beneath the ankles of his pinstriped trousers. But he would not have appeared well put-together anyhow. His hair was cut close to his head, so that the tough bones of his skull were perfectly evident, and his shoulders were broad and meaty. These were not characteristics that Astrid particularly minded; in fact, there was something about him that rather reminded her of Charlie.
    Over their heads, three rockets went skyward and flared out in red, white, and blue bursts that held a few moments, swaying in the heavens like a constellation of giant squid. Some of the ladies on the surrounding blankets shrieked at the noise. But Astrid liked all of it—how artificial and brash the fireworks were at first, and then so delicate as they faded and fizzled down toward Earth—and for a minute nothing else mattered very much.
    The boxer, meanwhile, took a silver flask from his hip pocket and swigged before offering it to Astrid.
    â€œWhiskey?”
    Here was one word Astrid understood perfectly. “Thanks, you dear.”
    There wasn’t much in the flask, which explained why he already smelled of sweat and liquor, but she just giggled faintly, tipped her head back, and drank the rest. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve killed it,” she said with an exaggerated little downturn of the mouth to express her regret.
    â€œNot to worry. I know where there’s more,” he replied, flashing that grin with the gold spots in it.
    There was something in that grin that made her hesitate. Flirting was Astrid’s favorite sport—she liked it even better than