100 Yellow Doors

7:21 p.m.

"It's not dressy. It's not a dressy sort of thing, is it?"

Iman hesitated in front of the bathroom mirror, bright red lipstick still halfway lifted towards her mouth. She awaited Beck's reply, but instead heard a lot of unnecessary cacophony in the kitchen—cabinet doors slamming and bowls clinking and light switches flicking.

Iman set the lipstick down, agitated. It was too red, she thought. Too red for the casual, navy blue chiffon dress she was wearing. "Beck."

The cacophony quieted. Beck called, "You know this guy more than I do, right? Is he the sort to throw dressy things?"

Iman hated to admit it, but she wasn't exactly sure. She'd only ever seen Julien alone, never in the context of elaborate vampire parties or whatever it was vampires got up to. He was not dressy when he was alone. Many times, even, she'd traveled only to find him walking around his house with no pants on. But Julien wasn't always alone, Iman was realizing. Who was he around people besides her? She didn't really know.

"It's a housewarming party," said Iman, scrubbing her lips clean with a gob of vaseline and a washcloth. "Those aren't dressy. Jules isn't dumb enough to make it dressy."

"Jules?"

Iman whirled, facing Beck in the hallway. Despite the barely-stifled jealousy in his voice, in his face, even, Iman couldn't help but chuckle when she saw what the poor man had on. Iman covered her mouth with a hand, turning away.

"Wait. What? Why are you laughing?"

"Nothing. I just—you're gonna wear that?" Iman said, finishing off with a gentle lip gloss instead and stepping out into the hall. Her eyes raked Beck from head to toe, from green-and-white striped dress shirt to navy slacks to brown Oxfords. Only when she saw Beck's shoulders slump did Iman feel bad for laughing.

"Is it the shirt?" he asked, frowning.

"It's the shirt."

Beck's shoulders slumped more. "One of my friends bought it for me a while back, and it's just been collecting dust in my closet. I felt bad."

Iman stepped forward, straightening his collar. It wasn't his best look, that much was obvious, but it would do. As long as Julien wasn't too hard on him. "For your friend, or the shirt?"

Beck looked down at her, an exhale on his lips. "Both?"

She patted his cheek. "Beck, baby, you're too nice."

"I know," he said, reaching around her to grab his car keys from the dish on the hall table. "I know."

It was not a dressy thing, and nor was it a rambunctious party thing that shook Julien's new townhouse on its base. Maybe Iman wasn't at all sure what she'd been expecting, but she knew it was not this.

The entirety of Julien's housewarming crew fit around the edges of his kitchen island. Besides Iman and Beck, Julien had invited two others: a middle-aged white guy who looked like he wanted nothing to do with this, and a younger Asian man who seemed too invested in the hors d'oeuvres to decide if he wanted anything to do with this.

Julien made cocktails, pretty ones in pretty glasses with little green olives in them, while the others talked. The white guy's name was Herbert (until then, Iman hadn't known people were actually named Herbert) and he was Julien's realtor. "It's only fitting," said Julien, shoving a cocktail in Herbert's direction, "that the man who is the reason I now own this house is here to celebrate it with me." Herbert just grimaced.

The Asian man's name was Fritz—who Iman found very familiar for a reason she couldn't place—and he was another friend of Julien's. "We traveled Asia together a while back," said Fritz, rolling a pig-in-a-blanket back and forth across his paper plate. "Mostly I think he was using me for my language skills."