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Grace still dances sometimes, but it's harder now. The calluses on her feet are gone and her bones creak under the baby weight she's struggled to lose despite living the way they do, paycheck to paycheck with the reusable nappies that Rich hates and pasta for dinner way more than either of them would like. The baby, named Anya for a dancer Grace loves, cries a lot in the middle of the night, extra loud when they have a paper due or an exam the next day. Rich is bored at uni and he hasn't cut his hair in a while, and the Bloods aren't too keen on seeing their granddaughter more than every six months.
They're tired all the time now, more tired than they think they've ever been, and Grace doesn't eat nearly as much chocolate as she'd like, but sometimes it catches her by surprise, the thought that these few years in their cramped apartment with their cranky baby and their piling debt might be some of the best of their lives.
In the evenings, when the baby's asleep and it's raining outside, Rich catches her hand and spins her round the living room, and Alo laughs at them from the second-hand sofa with the scratched and spotted brown leather that he crashes every time he and Mini have a spat, and things feel kind of like they did that afternoon when they all ran down the hill after the first wedding and the sun was shining and the air was full of possibilities.
Franky sends Grace post-cards from her travels, hand-drawn doodles in black pen and notes that say things like, "taking shit from nobody these days. miss you." Grace wallpapers the hallways of the flat with them, runs her fingertips along them as she walks up and down, reading the stories over and over and imagining all the places maybe she and Rich and Anya will go someday.
And on the days when they don't have class or work or a million dishes to do and Anya's with a babysitter, and they can lie around the flat in only their socks and underwear and eat ice cream sundays and pretend just for a little while, just for a few hours, that they're still kids who have nothing but time and nothing more to worry about than maths tests and their parents.
This was never the plan, never, but sometimes Grace catches Rich's eye across the room as she's folding the laundry and he's picking up Anya's toys and she thinks, here we are, still making our own story.