4.

The fourth time Aubrey can be said to have seen Chloe naked isn't like the other times.

In fact, she can't even say if she's seeing the Chloe she knows, or if this Chloe's being in the buff actually qualifies as nakedness. (Though, granted the three other times she's seen Chloe unclothed, how else, really, can she see Chloe naked? Aubrey doesn't want to answer that question.) What she does know is that she is seeing Chloe—a Chloe—and it's part of the Chloe she wants to keep getting to know for the rest of her life.

It's also a Chloe that did not yet have an Aubrey in hers.

(What would it have been like—what could it still be like—if they did not have each other? She doesn't want to answer that, either.)

Aubrey is at the Beales' for the post-Christmas holidays, after opting out of the Posens' New Year's trip to Colorado. Chloe's parents and siblings have been more than welcoming, and in a span of three days, Aubrey has come to feel more at home in their household than she ever has in nearly twenty years in her own.

There has been an endless stream of food, baked goodies, board games, and movie marathons, as well as a snowball fight and the promise of sledding in the coming days. (At least, it's a "promise" to Chloe; to Aubrey it feels more like a threat. She'd much rather go skiing—but that would mean having gone with her family to Aspen.) This night, she and the five Beales have fallen in around the fireplace, teasing Chloe by showing their guest photo albums of her childhood. Chloe makes a show of being mortified by the idea, until she isn't.

There is the newly born Chloe wailing in her mother's arms, cheeks as bright red as her then-short, wavy locks ("You won't believe the high notes I hit right out of the womb, Bree," Chloe quips). There is a slightly bigger baby Chloe, clad only in diapers, pounding her palm on a pillow designed like a piano.

There, too, is toddler Chloe, running naked across the front lawn, having broken free from a plastic pool in the background. Also in the picture is Chloe's mom, hurrying after her runaway child, clutching a towel. ("Yes, yes, Bree, I know what you're going to say about my 'inexcusable immodesty,'" Chloe says with a wink when Aubrey looks up from that photo and gives her a colossal smirk. That earns them quizzical looks from Chloe's parents—questioning glances that Mr. and Mrs. Beale turn to shoot at each other when, at a photo of a four-year-old Chloe cavorting topless at the edge of a lake, bikini top in hand, Aubrey bursts out laughing and Chloe, with a yelp, smothers her laughter with a pillow.)

"Is there something you're not telling us, Aubrey?" Mr. Beale says after Aubrey has closed the last album. "Is my daughter now posing nude for magazines, and that's why you two are giggling conspiratorially about her baby pictures as if her mother and I didn't know she has always shown signs of taking that career path?"

"Dad!" Chloe flies across the room to swat her father, who is now chuckling himself. "Bree, don't listen to him, he'll just poison your mind! He thinks I'm such a degenerate daughter!"

"Mr. Beale, it is my responsibility to inform you that she truly is," Aubrey replies, and that sends Chloe all the way back across the room to tackle her onto the couch, yelling "TRAITOR!"

Nothing of the sort would ever happen in her home, Aubrey knows. (Not that she has naked kiddie pictures; that was improper, even then—not that she has that many candid family pictures in the first place.) Fully participating in Chloe and her dad's inside joke only tightens the warm knot that's been growing in her chest and throat all day. It's a bit nice, and it also isn't. Fitting in with the Beales gives her a chance to feel what she never has, yet it also shows her just what that is. Back home, degenerate daughter wouldn't have been said in jest.

When they go to sleep that night, with Aubrey's guest cot pushed next to Chloe's bed, it doesn't feel like all the other times Chloe has curled up next to her, either. It's definitely not like the times Chloe unceremoniously flopped down on her in a drunken stupor, nor when she snuggled up to her after a nasty little break-up. Neither is it like when Chloe fell asleep with Aubrey in her arms after Aubrey had cried her heart out for the first time about her family.

"Love you, Bree," Chloe mumbles in the dark, like she always does.

"I love you," Aubrey murmurs back, perhaps too many beats later than usual.

Even saying that doesn't feel like it has all the other times.

Probably because this time, Aubrey didn't mean it to.